A Boulder judge set the stage for releasing the 1999 indictment of murdered 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey’s parents, ordering the district attorney to either show cause as to why it should remain sealed or to make it public.
John and Patsy Ramsey long maintained their innocence in the 1996 unsolved murder of their daughter, but it was revealed earlier this year that a grand jury voted to indict them on charges of child abuse resulting in death.
But then-Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter refused to sign the indictment and charges were never brought against the parents. Patsy Ramsey died in 2006; John Ramsey lives in Georgia.
Stan Garnett, the current DA, said in a statement that his office is reviewing the court order and will decide how to proceed next week.
“This is a complicated legal issue,” Garnett said in a statement emailed to The Daily Caller News Foundation. “My office is reviewing the court’s ruling very carefully and will make a determination how to respond by middle of next week.”
“In most instances, release of grand jury documentation is a criminal act,” he said. “The district attorney’s top priority is assuring that this office complies with the law.”
JonBenet Ramsey was found murdered in the basement of her home the day after Christmas 1996. She had been strangled with a garrote, her skull had been smashed and there was possible evidence of sexual assault.
While many investigators believed an intruder murdered her, many others believed a family member was responsible for her death. In addition to her parents, her then-9-year-old brother Burke was also home when JonBenet was killed.
No one has ever been charged in her murder.
In previous reports, Hunter is quoted as saying he didn’t have the evidence to arrest John or Patsy Ramsey, despite the grand jury indictment.
In an article earlier this year, the Daily Camera quoted an unnamed grand juror saying that the so-called “true bill” names both parents as responsible for JonBenet’s death.
“We didn’t know who did what,” the juror told the Camera, “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.”
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