BOULDER, Colo. - Nearly four months have passed since the body of JonBenet Ramsey was discovered in the basement of her family's expensive house in this university community, but time has only deepened the mystery of the 6-year-old beauty queen's strangulation last Christmas night.
Boulder police have thrown an extraordinary array of resources into the high-profile case that has drawn worldwide media attention.
They have enlisted the help of prosecutors from across metropolitan Denver. They have traveled to Georgia and North Carolina to interview witnesses and combed the Ramseys' Michigan vacation house for evidence. They are using a highly regarded Maryland laboratory to provide DNA analysis of the bodily evidence, such as hair or fluids, collected at the crime scene. They have consulted a former beauty queen who was an incest victim in her childhood. They have assigned a tenth of the police force to the case, spent more than $120,000 in overtime, travel and other expenses and conducted more than 200 interviews.
Despite these efforts, the police have failed to arrest or even name a suspect. But Boulder District Attorney Alex Hunter confirmed Friday night what long has been obvious to observers, that the girl's parents, John and Patricia Ramsey, are the "focus" of the investigation.
"This is the family in the house where the baby is found, and where there is no sign of an intruder, so obviously attention has to be directed inside," Hunter said. "That is not to say that's the only thing that's being looked at."
But police have been unable to breach the cordon of lawyers and advisers surrounding JonBenet's wealthy and prominent parents, or even to secure a formal interview.
A family spokesperson, Rachelle Zimmer, would neither comment on whether negotiations over an interview are still under way nor confirm reports that the family is preparing to move to Atlanta, where John Ramsey lived when he was married to his first wife. The couple is "enormously frustrated" that the case has not been solved, Zimmer said.
Authorities have cleared JonBenet's half-brother and half-sister of any suspicion, as well as two close friends of the family. Beyond that, the investigation seems stalled. Colorado legal experts, who have followed the case with the same mixture of fascination and repulsion as the general public, are starting to wonder openly if the case will collapse.
The legal community is awash in reports that the evidence now undergoing DNA analysis may be so skimpy and inconclusive that authorities may not find probable cause to arrest anyone in the killing of the former Little Miss Colorado, whose pirouetting, primping pictures are now so familiar to tabloid readers.
"It's reasonably clear to me that the police do not have anything resembling definitive laboratory results that point to a perpetrator," said Christopher Mueller, an evidence expert who teaches at the University of Colorado School of Law. "If they did, they would have made an arrest."
In their infrequent public statements, Boulder police, city officials and prosecutors have expressed confidence they eventually will solve the slaying. They have urged the public and the press to have patience as they await the results of DNA testing.
"We know this case is going to be solved," Hunter said during a rare news conference in February.
But some recent developments tend to belie the public expressions of confidence. Just last week, Boulder authorities said they are seeking yet another handwriting sample from Patricia Ramsey, a former Miss West Virginia, whose husband heads a computer-graphics company. This would be the fifth sample they have obtained to compare to the writing on a 2 1/2-page ransom note.
The family said they found the note on the morning of Dec. 26, some eight hours before JonBenet's bruised body was discovered in the house, her mouth gagged with duct tape. The note demanded payment of $118,000, which was the precise amount of John Ramsey's company bonus last year.
Patricia Ramsey submitted a fourth handwriting sample a week earlier, this one left-handed, after Boulder authorities said previous samples were unusable, because she had been on medication.
If the killer is, as many people suspect, a family member or close friend, police and prosecutors face a number of impediments to making that case.
Foremost among them is a crime scene that may have been seriously compromised. In the hours that elapsed as a suspected kidnapping turned deadly, potential evidence may have been disturbed or erased as a crowd of people - the parents, clergy and various family friends - tramped through the house.
"A lot of people were around, there are indications the body was moved and it also sounds like the person who did this was sophisticated and may have cleaned up the scene," said William Pizzi, a criminal-law professor at the University of Colorado. "Proving a criminal case beyond a reasonable doubt is not easy, as we've learned from Rodney King, or O.J., or other cases. When you don't have an eyewitness or overwhelming physical evidence, proving beyond a reasonable doubt that it was A and not B, or B and not A, is very difficult."
Since JonBenet was murdered at home, it may be particularly difficult to link her murder to a family member or someone who frequented the house. "Of course you are going to find the family's fingerprints, skin flakes and other things all over the crime scene that might be extremely significant at other kinds of crime scenes but not necessarily this one," said Mimi Wesson, a former federal prosecutor.