Nearly 30 Years After Jonbenet Ramsey Died in Her Own Basement, Her Father Is Still Fighting to Get Her DNA Tested with Modern Tools
Yvonne “Missy” Woods, 65, a former Colorado Bureau of Investigation analyst, pleaded guilty Tuesday to four felonies: cybercrime, perjury, attempt to influence a public servant, and forgery. The deal dismissed roughly 100 other charges. A CBI internal review found she omitted facts, tampered with results, retested samples until she got the outcome she wanted, and falsified or deleted data across 1,045 cases.
Her documented misconduct runs from 2008 to 2023. She started at CBI in 1994, which means she was on staff when six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was found dead in her family’s Boulder basement on December 26, 1996, but authorities have not said she ever handled evidence from that case.
John Ramsey told NewsNation the family looked into it about a year ago when rumors first surfaced. “It appeared that Ms. Woods was not involved in our case, so we kind of just dropped it,” he said. The central DNA evidence in JonBenet’s case, he noted, was never at CBI in the first place. It went to Bode Technology, a private lab, which in 2008 ran touch-DNA testing on the waistband and sides of her long johns and matched it to an earlier profile from her underwear. That unidentified male DNA, known as “Unknown Male No. 1,” does not match any Ramsey and has never hit in CODIS.
What still bothers him is everything else from the scene. “I mean, items that should have been sampled, but they weren’t, I don’t know whether it was a cost issue or they already found unidentified male DNA, so why go any further,” he said.
For nearly a year he’s pushed investigators to use forensic genetic genealogy, the technique that identified the Golden State Killer by comparing crime-scene DNA against consumer genealogy databases. He calls it “the gold standard today” and says it has to be done at a specialized outside lab, not CBI. He’s appealed to Colorado Gov. Jared Polis to help get the remaining evidence released.
Boulder Police Chief Stephen Redfearn told Ramsey last fall that more items would be sent for testing, and that work was supposed to happen around December. Ramsey says no one has told him what was tested or what came back. “They won’t tell us what the results, if any, were of the latest testing done by somebody,” he said. “And it’s not using the latest technology.”
Woods faces 8 to 16 years when she’s sentenced in September. No one has ever been charged in JonBenet’s death. Ramsey, now 82, has met with five Boulder police chiefs across the case.
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