The parents of slain child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, whose still-unsolved murder gripped the nation after her brutal slaying on Christmas Day 1996, were indicted by a grand jury in Boulder, Colorado, in 1999.
This indictment could have led to a conviction for both parents, had the Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter not effectively dismissed the case. Hunter declined to mention this fact during his statements to reporters, according to the Daily Camera.
“I and my prosecution task force believe we do not have sufficient evidence to warrant a filing of charges against anyone who has been investigated at this time,” Hunter told reporters on October 13, 1999.
It’s been said that Colorado legal statutes may have compelled Hunter to sign the indictment, even if he’d chosen not to prosecute the case. Regardless, he believed he could not have proved the case beyond a reasonable doubt. Hunter declined further comment on the case.
Some jurors from the case spoke to the Daily Camera on the condition of anonymity. One such juror told the paper, “We didn’t know who did what, but we felt the adults in the house may have done something that they certainly could have prevented, or they could have helped her, and they didn’t.”
The 6-year-old girl was found bludgeoned and strangled in the basement of her home.
The case was reopened in 2010 and all evidence was reexamined. As indicated in the video above, male DNA evidence was found in JonBenet’s panties that matched DNA found around her body. This was grounds to believe that sexual abuse had occurred on the child before her murder. In 2008, Boulder D.A. Mary Lacy sent a written apology to the Ramseys, stating that they were no longer suspects in the murder of their daughter.
Check out a timeline of the key events in this monumental case below: