New DNA tests set in JonBenet Ramsey murder case: Colorado prosecutor

DENVER (Reuters) - Colorado investigators will conduct new tests of DNA evidence in the 20-year-old unsolved murder of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, the Boulder County district attorney said in a statement on Wednesday.

Additional testing, utilizing a new state crime lab and newly available forensic procedures, "might give us new information that could be helpful to the investigation," District Attorney Stan Garnett said.

But he added that authorities do not expect DNA test results alone to "definitively solve or prove the case."

The bludgeoned, strangled body of 6-year-old JonBenet was found by her father in the basement of the family's home in Boulder, Colorado, on Dec. 26, 1996, a day after her parents reported the child missing and a ransom note left in the house.

Videos that surfaced of the blond, blue-eyed youngster in full makeup performing in beauty pageants helped attract international attention to the case, which remains one of the most sensational unsolved murders in the annals of American crime.

(Reporting by Keith Coffman in Denver; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Sandra Maler)