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The grand jury record will be released on Friday

One of the most notorious unsolved murders in Boulder, not to mention U.S. history, has recently been moved to the front burner, at least for the time being.

On Dec.26, 1996, six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was found murdered in an obscure basement room in her family home in the University Hill neighborhood. She had been sexually assaulted, then strangled with a garrote.

No one has ever been charged with JonBenet’s murder

Due to the fact that JonBenet was a child beauty-pageant star, the case captured the world’s interest and spawned nearly unprecedented media coverage for several years, never  going completely away.

The case began as a suspected kidnapping due to an oddly written ransom note, which demanded $118,000 for her safe return. Late in the day, John Ramsey discovered her body and brought it upstairs to a roomful of shocked police officers and Ramsey family friends.

In the course of the investigation, District Attorney Alex Hunter empaneled a grand jury in 1999 to consider the case. The grand jury handed down indictments of JonBenet’s parents—John and Patsy Ramsey—but the indictments were never reported until the Daily Camera published a story earlier this year quoting members of the grand jury saying it had indicted the couple for child abuse resulting in death.

Hunter was quoted as saying he had declined to prosecute the Ramseys at that time because he didn’t believe he could prove the case “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Daily Camera reporter Charlie Brennan and a group known as the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press filed a lawsuit in Boulder District Court in September, claiming:

“The plaintiffs believe… that the indictment is a criminal justice record that reflects official action by the grand jury, and accordingly that it is subject to mandatory disclosure upon request.”  Brennan and the RCFP also argue that the indictment should be made public in the interest of government transparency.

The Boulder DA’s office said unsealing the indictment would be “breach of promise” to the jury, citing the importance of maintaining the integrity of grand jury secrecy.

JonBenet Ramsey was a child beauty pageant star

But last week, Weld County Judge Robert Lowenbach, the judge hearing the lawsuit by Brennan and RCFP, ruled that current Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett must show why the indictment must remain secret.

Not surprisingly, John Ramsey opposes the move unless the entire Grand Jury records are released.

Whatever the grand jury transcripts might show, in 2008, then District Attorney Mary Lacy declared that new DNA technology proved the Ramseys innocent of any wrongdoing.

The genetic material matches came from a drop of blood found on JonBenet’s underwear early in the investigation. The authorities determined then that the blood was not from a member of the Ramsey family but could not say whether it came from the killer.

In 2006,  Lacy’s office announced the arrest of John Karr , after several months of investigation. But Karr’s DNA did not match, and less than two weeks later Lacy announced that he was no longer a suspect.

Hal Haddon and Bryan Morgan, attorneys who represent John Ramsey said in a letter to the Camera: “Public release of the allegations of an un-prosecuted indictment only serves to further defame (John Ramsey) and his late wife Patricia. Mr. Ramsey will have no access to whatever evidence the prosecutors presented to the grand jury and will have no ability to disprove those allegations in a court of law. Nor will the public have any ability to evaluate the propriety of the indictment unless the entire grand jury record is unsealed and opened to public view.”

From the beginning, investigators believed someone in the household was responsible, citing the lack of evidence of a break in, the complex layout of the house, the amount of time it took to write the two, 400 +/-word ransom-demand letters and similarities to Patsy’s hand writing. But a key detective, Lt. John Eller, who was the ranking investigator, would not press the Ramseys to be interrogated separately; insisting that the parents were victims, not suspects.

Under pressure, Patsy finally provided writing samples but a forensic handwriting expert ruled that, while very similar, the writing in the sample did not rise to the legal standard required to determine it was hers.

On Wednesday, the judge ordered the grand jury record to be released.

BC1 Editor Ron Baird covered the JonBenet Ramsey investigation for the Colorado Daily, when it was a real newspaper.

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