Nearly three decades after JonBenét Ramsey’s shocking murder, a new AI system could be the breakthrough investigators have been waiting for. The child beauty queen, just 6 years old when she was found dead in her family’s Colorado home on December 26, 1996, has remained at the center of one of America’s most infamous unsolved crimes—but technology may finally change that.
The Crime Owl AI, developed by marketing expert Ash Ghaemi, is designed to sift through mountains of unorganized files, interviews, and evidence to detect hidden patterns that human investigators might miss. “All it does is take unstructured data and organize it into an easy-to-use format,” Ghaemi said. “In theory, AI could comb through thousands of pages, link related evidence, or highlight similarities to crimes across the country—something that would have been nearly impossible manually.”
JonBenét’s half-brother, John Andrew Ramsey, is hopeful about the technology. After years of untouched files, Boulder investigators began digitizing JonBenét’s extensive case files in 2023, making them searchable for the first time. John Andrew sees AI as a tool that could finally identify the killer. “Technology will win, and when it does, we will finally catch this animal,” he said.
Crime Owl AI isn’t just a theory—it’s already being used in active investigations. Ghaemi said the system is helping West Valley, Utah, police work on the disappearance of Susan Powell, missing since 2009. Veteran private investigator Jason Jensen praised the technology, calling it “the ultimate investigator’s assistant,” able to organize data, cross-reference names, and make connections that humans could overlook.
John Ramsey has been vocal about his frustration with the Boulder Police Department over the years. He has even appealed to former President Trump to help spur action. “I need to get someone to shake things up,” he told Fox News Digital. “This is a whole lot bigger than anything else. Help us.”
The Ramsey family has also offered to fund investigative tools like genealogy databases, which have helped solve cold cases such as the Golden State Killer. Now, with AI in the mix, the hope is that JonBenét’s case could finally be brought to a close—almost 30 years after tragedy struck.
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For 27 years before the investigators started digitizing the information regarding this case, forensics experts went over all the data multiple times. This article mentions that Crime Owl is “helping” with police work, but has not said that it has solved any cases. While AI can “read” the data faster, I doubt very much that it will do any better than the forensics specialists who have already examined it in solving the case.