Fingerprints/Footprints

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.

...

>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)