Investigators Turn To Elgin Lab In Ramsey Murder

Lab Has Assisted In Many High-Profile Cases

Katie McCall
Reporting
(Original Web Link w/ Video)

(CBS) CHICAGO Forensic scientist Skip Palenik is used to getting calls from police. But two weeks ago, he got a call from a detective that stopped him cold.

It came from a Boulder police detective in the murder investigation of JonBenet Ramsey.

“I've had the evidence back here at my laboratory,” Palenik said. “He called and said he was coming to pick it up, so I wondered what was going on.”

Days later, the arrest of John Mark Karr, who confessed to killing Ramsey, hit the news, and Palenik knew why police wanted what had sat in his lab for a decade.

“We were examining the microscopic evidence from her body that was collected right after the murder,” he said.

Investigators had removed some particles collected from the 6-year-old's body and clothing by hand and some with tape. When it came to examining them, they turned to this tiny lab in Elgin – more than 1,000 miles away – where the best investigators in the world come for answers.

In addition to the Ramsey murder, Palenik has worked on the Oklahoma City and Unabomber cases, the Green River murders, and the local murder of Jaclyn Dowaliby. His clients include the FBI.

But despite Palenik’s success, the JonBenet case has always bothered him.

“To us it represents a failure in the end to be unsolved,” he said.

Now he hopes maybe a tiny particle he found could help close one of the biggest murder cases in America.