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As part of the 20th anniversary of the murder of JonBenét Ramsey in Boulder, here is an annotated timeline of events since Christmas 1996.
1996
Dec. 25
- John and Patsy Ramsey say they last saw their 6-year-old daughter alive at bedtime at the family home in Boulder’s exclusive Chautauqua neighborhood. JonBenétap 9-year-old brother, Burke, also is at home that night.
David Zabulowski, AP file
A police officer sits in her cruiser on Jan. 3, 1997, outside the home in which 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was found murdered in Boulder.Dec. 26
- Patsy Ramsey gets up to make coffee around 5:30 a.m. and reports finding a on a back staircase of the house. The note says JonBenét has been kidnapped and demands $118,000 in cash.
- The Ramseys call police, who begin an investigation into what they believe is a kidnapping.
- That afternoon, John Ramsey searches the home and in a spare room in the basement that was used to hide Christmas presents. She has a skull fracture and has been strangled with a garrote, and her mouth has been covered with duct tape.
Dec. 30
- Police take blood and hair samples from John Ramsey and other members of the family. Police also say that John Andrew Ramsey and Melinda Ramsey – JonBenétap adult half-siblings – were out of town the day of the murder.
1997
Jan. 1
- John and Patsy Ramsey grant an in which Patsy Ramsey proclaims “there is a killer on the loose.” John Ramsey calls the idea that he or other members of his family could have committed the crime “nauseating beyond belief.”
- Five detectives from Boulder fly to Atlanta, where the Ramsey family previously lived.
Jan. 3
- Investigators announce that the . If authorities are correct, this means that JonBenétap killer wrote the note after arriving at the house.
- John and Patsy Ramsey return to Colorado after JonBenétap funeral.
Joe Mahoney, AP file
District Attorney Alex Hunter, right, answers questions, Feb. 13, 1997, about the murder of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey during a news conference with Boulder Police chief Tom Koby in Boulder, Colo.Feb. 13
- Boulder Police chief Tom Koby and Boulder County district attorney Alex Hunter hold a news conference where they vow that the killer will be brought to justice. Hunter announces the formation of an , including forensic expert Henry Lee and DNA expert Barry Scheck. Both Lee and Scheck were part of the O.J. Simpson defense team.
March 7
- Sources tell The Denver Post that determine John Ramsey did not write the ransom note. But their analysis is inconclusive as to whether Patsy Ramsey authored it.
March 13
- Veteran homicide detective Lou Smit joins the Ramsey murder investigation. Smit, a retired investigator from El Paso County, is best known for cracking the murder case of in Colorado Springs.
April 3
- DNA testing begins at . This is a second round of testing of DNA in the case. The initial round was conducted at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation labs.
April 18
- DA Hunter for the first time of the investigation.
April 30
- Police conduct their long-awaited – more than four months after JonBenét was found murdered.
- Patsy Ramsey is interrogated for 6½ hours. Her husband later is interrogated for approximately two hours.
- Police release no statement about the contents of the interviews.
Helen H. Richardson, Denver Post file
John and Patsy Ramsey, the parents of JonBenet Ramsey, meet with a small selected group of the local Colorado media after four months of silence in Boulder on May 1, 1997.May 1
- John and Patsy Ramsey, in a rare interview with reporters, . “I did not kill my daughter,” John Ramsey states. His wife states: “Let me assure you that I did not kill JonBenét.”
May 14
- The are delivered to Boulder authorities. Sources tell The Denver Post there are “no surprises” in the report.
1998
Jan. 15
- John and Patsy Ramsey unless they can review the evidence, a condition unacceptable to police.
Jan. 16
- rejects a request by two friends of the Ramsey family to appoint a special prosecutor in the murder case.
Jan. 29
- More than a year after their daughter was murdered, the they were wearing the night before JonBenét was found dead.
Feb. 6
- join to form an “investor group” to buy the couple’s Boulder home. The 15-room Tudor-style house at 755 15th St. is put under contract for $650,000. The to 749 15th St. in 2001 at the request of a tenant who is negotiating to buy the home.
March 12
- After looking for the killer of JonBenét for 15 months, police say the best bet for solving the murder is a and formally call for such a probe after conferring with DA Alex Hunter.
June 3
- Mark Beckner, the lead investigator in the case, reports that he is recently received on evidence taken from the Ramsey home. The case now includes 1,058 pieces of evidence.
June 23
- Although he will become Boulder’s new police chief, Cmdr. Mark Beckner says he will but warns that the city’s most notorious case has no “magic answers.”
June 24
- by district attorney’s investigators and are reportedly questioned together and separately.
- For the first time, the prosecution conducts an extensive interview with their son, Burke, now 11.
Aug. 6
- In a stinging, eight-page resignation letter, an says Hunter’s office is “thoroughly compromised” and has “crippled” the case. Thomas charged critical evidence had not been collected and maintained that other evidence wasn’t tested.
- Romer later whether he should intervene in the case.
Aug. 12
- Revealing that the case is headed for a grand jury, Romer says he wants to help Hunter, not remove him from the case. He invokes a state statute that allows for “special deputies” to assist the DA.
Aug. 19
- Fleet White, who was with John Ramsey when he found his daughter’s body, for someone other than Hunter to investigate the case.
Aug. 20
- Sources tell The Denver Post that an Patsy Ramsey made the morning she found the ransom note includes Burke’s voice in the background. That would contradict earlier statements by the Ramseys that their son was asleep until police arrived.
Sept.16
- Five months after they were chosen, Boulder County grand jurors begin their investigation.
Sept. 24
- , saying authorities are focusing too heavily on JonBenétap parents. In his letter, he says the Ramseys did not kill their daughter and a “very dangerous killer is still out there.”
Sept. 27
- Ramsey family lawyer from his clients.
- On ABC’s “20/20,” former detective gives his first interview since his resignation, calling the case “very disheartening.”
Oct. 13
- , including analysis of handwriting, DNA and hair and fibers found at the scene.
Oct. 20
- for a deposition in a civil case filed against him and the National Enquirer by photographer Stephen Miles. Miles has accused Ramsey and the paper of libel and slander after two 1997 articles labeled him a pedophile and used an unnamed source who said Ramsey believed the photographer killed his daughter.
Dec. 1
- The Denver Post reports the will meet just once in December and then take the rest of the month off.
Dec. 3
- Itap learned that samples to authorities. The five are not considered suspects. Sources say authorities want the DNA to see if it can be linked to unmatched DNA found in the Ramsey home.
1999
Feb. 18
- offers new insight and details into the investigation. The book describes the feud between police and prosecutors the moment the investigation began.
March 17
- who had been hearing evidence in the case since September 1998 are sent home.
Associated Press file photo
Former Boulder Police detective Linda Arndt, right, talks about the dismissal of her lawsuit against two Boulder Police chiefs during a news conference with her attorney Bruce Jones, left, in Denver on Tuesday, June 12, 2001. Arndt was the first detective who arrived at the Ramsey home on Dec. 26, 1996, after Patsy Ramsey called 911 to report that her 6-year-old daughter was missing and a ransom note was found.March 18
- Boulder police Detective Linda Arndt, the on Dec. 26, 1996, resigns. She has endured stinging criticism and ridicule because of what she did and didn’t do once she arrived on the scene and later sues her then-boss police chief Tom Koby for not publicly coming to her defense and for not letting her defend herself.
April 8
- A six-month of the grand jury’s investigation is granted.
May 19
- Burke, now 12, is . The next day Boulder authorities publicly affirm he’s not a suspect, only a witness.
Sept. 13
- Arndt appears on “Good Morning America” claiming . In the five-part interview she says she knows who killed the girl but does not reveal the name.
Sept. 23
- After almost four months off, the . During the time off, investigators were collecting additional DNA evidence.
Sept. 30
- John Ramsey’s grown children, , testify before the grand jury. They had been publicly cleared as suspects in March 1997.
Oct. 13
- that his team doesn’t think it has “sufficient evidence to warrant filing of charges.” In 2013, documents are released that show a of two counts each of child abuse resulting in death in connection with their daughter’s death. The charges allege that the parents permitted the girl to be placed in a dangerous situation that led to her death and accused them of helping her killer. Because Hunter refused to sign the documents, the Ramseys were never officially indicted or prosecuted.
2006
Getty Images file photo
John Ramsey (L) hugs his son Burke at the grave of JonBenet Ramsey after a service for Patsy Ramsey on June 29, 2006 in Marietta, Georgia. Patsy Ramsey's daughter, JonBenet Ramsey, 6, was murdered under mysterious circumstances in the Ramsey's Boulder, Colorado house in December 1996. Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer.June 24
- after battling ovarian cancer for more than a decade.
Paula Bronstein, Getty Images
American John Mark Karr, 41, is held by U.S and Thai authorities at an immigration office on August 17, 2006 in Bangkok, Thailand. Karr has confessed to being present at the death of JonBenet Ramsey.Aug. 15
- John Mark Karr, a 41-year-old elementary school teacher, is arrested in Thailand after confessing he accidentally killed JonBenét while attempting to sexually assault her. The case against Karr collapses later in August. , despite his public statements that he’d been present during her death. Those results, coupled with a lack of evidence placing Karr in Boulder at the time of the murder, lead Boulder County DA Mary Lacy to drop the case.
2008
July 9
- Armed with new DNA evidence that points to an unknown male as JonBenétap killer, and immediate family. In a letter hand-delivered to John Ramsey, Lacy says she is confident that a “touch DNA” analysis done by a private lab has determined that genetic material left on the waistband of long johns JonBenét was wearing when her body was found matches the DNA left in her underwear.
2016
September
- TV programs from A&E, Doctor Phil, Dateline NBC and CBS News air in advance of the .
- says in a Sept. 1 videotaped statement that he wouldn’t do interviews about the case to maintain the investigation’s integrity. He points out that the department has processed 1,500 pieces of evidence, took 200 DNA samples, interviewed more than 1,000 people in eight states and investigated more than 20,000 tips, letters and e-mails.
October
- Forensic experts who examined the results of DNA tests obtained exclusively by The Daily Camera and 9News that a DNA profile found in one place on JonBenétap underpants and two locations on her long johns was necessarily the killer’s. The experts say the evidence showed that the DNA samples came from at least two people in addition to JonBenét — something Lacy’s office was told, but that she did not mention in clearing the Ramseys.
Dec. 13
- Boulder police and prosecutors in the unsolved 1996 murder of 6-year-old JonBenét Ramsey, the Daily Camera and 9NEWS report. Boulder County DA Stan Garnett and Testa confirm that they and members of their staffs discussed the issue with Colorado Bureau of Investigation administrators, who are on the verge of unveiling new, more sophisticated DNA tests than their lab has ever used before.
