Fingerprints/Footprints

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By mid-February the FBI and the CBI forensics technicians had concluded part of their fingerprint typing and fiber analysis. CBI told the Boulder police that no prints had been found on the black duct tape that John Ramsey said he removed from his daughter’s mouth and none were found on the broken artist’s paintbrush used to make the “garrote” found around JonBenét’s neck. The CBI had been able to identify two fingerprints found on a white bowl on the dining room table that contained uneaten pineapple. One print belonged to Burke and the other to Patsy.

A palm print on the wine cellar door was identified as belonging to Patsy, and another of Patsy’s prints was found on the door to Burke’s train room, the room with the bro-ken window. A print on the west patio door on the main floor belonged to John. The location of the prints meant very little, since Patsy and John, living in the house, often visited these rooms and fingerprints are almost impossible to date. Another fingerprint on the west patio door was later identified as belonging to Barbara Fernie. Eventually the CBI told the police that they had been able to match almost all the fingerprints the detectives had collected to 240 people from whom the police had collected physical evidence.

Another palm print found on the wine cellar was matched to Melinda in 2002.

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Fingerprints
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Palm Prints
Several palm prints were found on the wine cellar door. Two were matched to Patsy Ramsey and one was initially unidentified, but was later matched to Melinda Ramsey in 2002.

Some members of the Ramsey defense team continue to claim that a palm print remains unidentified, but it appears they based this claim on a police report written in 1998.

>A palm print on the wine cellar door was identified as belonging to Patsy, and another of Patsy's prints was found on the door to Burke's train room, the room with the broken window. [...] However, another palm print found on the wine cellar door still remained unidentified. (Schiller, Perfect Murder, Perfect Town, p. 239-240, published 2000)

>There were actually three palm prints on that door, which the killer had to close in order to lock. We had already determined that two of those prints belonged to Patsy Ramsey. Arguing that the third could only be that of an intruder was a stretch. (Thomas, *Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation*, p. 237, published 2000).

Two years later...

>Investigators have answered two vexing questions in the JonBenet Ramsey case [...] A palm print on the door leading to that same wine cellar, long unidentified, is that of Melinda Ramsey, JonBenet's adult half-sister. She was in Georgia at the time of the murder. "They were certainly some things that had to be answered, one way or the other, and we feel satisfied that they are both answered," said a source close to the case, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. L. Lin Wood, the attorney representing the Ramseys, who now live in Atlanta, doesn't debate the palm print findings. (*Rocky Mountain News*, August 23, 2002)

The Hi-Tec Footprint
The partial imprint of the sole of a "Hi-Tec" brand shoe was found in the wine cellar. The only part was the poon, which meant that the size of the shoe could not definitively determined.

In 2000, private investigators working for the Ramsey defense team gave police a pair of Hi-Tec shoes belonging to Michael Helgoth. The CBI and the FBI compared Helgoth's boots with the print found in the Ramsey wine cellar and determined they were not a match.

Later in 2000, it was revealed that Burke Ramsey and Burke's friend Fleet White Jr had both testified that Burke Ramsey owned Hi-Tec boots. Burke had even told the Grand Jury where Patsy had bought the boots for him (Atlanta) and had described the compass on the shoelaces - a distinctive feature of the Hi-Tec brand. Patsy suggested the boys may have been referring to "high tech boots" rather than the brand name, but prosecutor Bruce Levin clarified the boys referred specifically to the brand name Hi-Tec.

When asked about this subject again in 2016 on Dr Phil, Burke again stated that he had owned boots with compasses on the shoelaces. He acknowledged the high likelihood of his footprints being in the basement, saying, "I went and played in the basement all the time, with the train set, so, if they, they, determine that to be my footprint, that doesn’t really prove anything."

Speaking to the Daily Camera in 2002, a police source identified the Hi-Tec print as Burke's and said police were "satisfied" the question had been answered.

John Ramsey claimed in 2000 that Burke might have owned Hi-Tec "tennis shoes". Today, John Ramsey flatly denies that Burke ever owned Hi-Tec shoes, and continues to appear in documentaries which claim Helgoth could have made the footprint.