(Web Desk) - The 6-year-old girl's body was found in the basement of her Boulder home with a garrote around her neck and a fracture in her skull
For 27 years, the mystery of JonBenét Ramsey's murder has lingered in the American consciousnesses.
But there are new reasons to believe that the case — which has frustrated investigators and the child beauty queen's family for decades — could one day be closed.
"There's a lot of hope. This is one cold case that could still be solved," an investigator tells The Messenger.
"This is not a lost cause. Far from it," adds the source. "We're all hoping that we can finally bring closure to this case."
Early on the morning of Dec. 26, 1996, JonBenét's mother Patsy Ramsey called police to report her 6-year-old daughter missing.
Hours later, her father John Ramsey found the little girl's body in the basement of the family's sprawling Boulder. Colo., home.
She had a garrote around her neck and her skull was broken from an apparent blow to the back of her head.
An autopsy would state JonBenét's official cause of death was "asphyxia by strangulation."
A handwritten ransom note, written in marker on a notepad from the house, was also found at the scene.
The case quickly became international news, with the media hanging on every development in the murder of a pageant princess.
DNA quickly excluded the Ramsey family as suspects — although the Boulder Police Department did not formally clear her mother, father or her older brother Burke until 2008 — too late for Patsy, who died of ovarian cancer in 2006.
But now, on the 27th anniversary of JonBenét's death, authorities may be getting closer to a break in the case.
Following a shakeup within the Boulder Police Department, a multi-agency team in now investigating the murder — and they're working together like never before.
The task force is comprised of the FBI, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, the Boulder Police Department, the District Attorney's Office, the Colorado Department of Public Safety and Colorado's Bureau of Investigation, The Messenger has learned.
"We are sharing files," the investigator said last month. "There is constant communication going on. We have to work together on this one."
Authorities sent off several pieces of evidence to a lab for DNA testing — and The Messenger reported last month that the results have been returned to investigators.
It's encouraging news for the Ramsey family.
"We know there's evidence that was taken from the crime scene that was never tested for DNA," John Ramsey told NewsNation in October.
"There are a few cutting edge labs that have the latest technology. That's where this testing ought to be done."
"And then," he continued, "use the public genealogy database with whatever information we get to research and basically do a backwards family tree, which has been wildly successful in solving some very old cases."
Authorities tell The Messenger that they are doing exactly that.
"We are using everything at our disposal," the investigator says.