It is unknown who killed JonBenét Ramsey. In December 1996 the six-year-old girl was found strangled in the basement of her family’s Boulder, Colorado, home. Suspicion fell on her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, and later on her 9-year-old brother, Burke. However, their DNA did not match a sample recovered from JonBenét’s underwear. In 2008 Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy said that the family members were no longer considered suspects. She stated that new testing had found DNA on JonBenét’s long johns and that it was consistent with the DNA recovered earlier. She concluded that this DNA came from the killer.
Other suspects have been investigated. In 2006 John Mark Karr, a teacher who had been charged with child pornography in California, was arrested. In a series of emails with a journalism professor, he claimed that he had accidentally killed JonBenét. However, Karr was released after his DNA did not match samples taken at the crime scene.