Tonight or tomorrow morning marks the sixth anniversary of the death of JonBenet Ramsey in Boulder. Her murderer has never been found. Whoever it is, he/she/they are walking the streets somewhere, free to strike again.

The District Attorney in Boulder made the decision to take over the investigaton this week and put it back on active status. This is a political matter, as the DA is essentially cutting the Boulder Police Department out of the loop. This is not to say that there won't be in some communciation between the two, and relations between the two offices are reportedly much better now that DA Alex Hunter is out of office. But the Boulder Police have acknowledged they are no longer running the show.

The Ramseys are thrilled that DA Keenan is in charge of the new investigation and will be using experienced homicide investigators like Lou Smit, who resigned from the earlier investigation because he said the police were ignoring leads that led elsewhere than to the parents.

While the Ramseys have not been excluded as suspects in the new investigation, they also will not be the focus. And that is what is good about Mary Keenan's office taking over: those involved will start on a clean slate, rehash all the evidence and follow up on leads the police neglected. They will let the evidence lead them to suspects rather than the other way around.

Is it too late? We don't think so. There was DNA found in JonBenets underwear that doesn't match the parents. While the police tried to spin this into a "so what" kind of thing by sending the underpants for testing to Southeast Asia where they were manufactured to prove there could be an innocent explanation for the DNA--such as someone who packaged the underpants at the factory--it didn't work. First off, the DNA in the underwear was right next to a spot of blood. Did a factory worker leave that too? Why didn't they send the foreign DNA to the FBI's Databank? We hope that gets done now.

Also, while the DNA under JonBenet's fingernails has long been claimed by the police to be compromised and not valuable, there are reports that genetic markers from that DNA are similar to those in the underpants. Again, the parents have been excluded as being the source of this DNA.

This was the Boulder Police's first serious homicide investigation in years. The Police Chief, Tom Koby, had never worked on a homicide investigation. Commander Eller who was initially in charge of the investigation had no homicide investigation experience. Detective Steve Thomas, who consistently expressed his belief the Ramseys were guilty on television and in a book (and who later settled a libel suit brought by the Ramseys for an undisclosed sum to be paid the Ramseys by his publisher), had been a narcotics cop until the day before Jonbenet's funeral. In other words, the Boulder police department in December of 1996 simply did not have the necessary experience to conduct an intensive homicide investigation. Yet, instead of calling for help or accepting help from nearby Denver or from the FBI, the Boulder Police decided to go it alone.

The Boulder police botched the crime scene, and within days made up their minds that it had to be the parents. Then the law enforcement leaks began--most of them untrue--resulting in a mass barrage of media myths. We cannot recall a similar case in which parents of a murdered child have been so excoriated by the press based on rumor, speculation and innuendo.

We began the Jonbenet Ramsey Media Un-Lynch Mob Page on our sister site CrimeLynx i n 1999. We have more or less kept it updated since then, moving items into archives at the end of each year. We have chronicled the 2002 events in the case on another site of our's, Crimes'R Us - the Legal Side of Crimes in the News, in which we highlight a select group of cases that seem to catch the public's attention.

We have been highly critical of the Boulder police in the past--and generally had praise for the Boulder DA's office. We still feel the same way, and will continue to report on developments as they arise. We share the Ramseys' hope that this will be an open-minded and impartial investigation.

[edited to reflect that it was the Boulder Police Department's first serious homicide investigation in years, not the first homicide, as we initially said and as noted by Walter in the Comments section. Thanks, Walter. Our point is the same: The Boulder police should have allowed more experienced homicide investigators, such as those from Denver or the FBI to work with them from the very beginning.)