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BOULDER, Colorado (CNN) -- Investigators have learned the identity of the America Online subscriber who posted a message on an Internet bulletin board saying he witnessed the 1996 slaying of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey.

Boulder, Colorado, police identified the person after getting information from AOL about the subscriber, said city spokeswoman Jana Petersen.

The Colorado authorities had asked police in Loudoun County, Virginia, where the company bases its Internet service, to file a search warrant asking AOL for information on the subscriber, such as name, e-mail files, buddy lists and aliases, Petersen added.

She would not reveal anything about the person. "If it ends up nothing, we'll probably put a statement out," she said. "If it's the answer to this puzzle, then we will not be talking about it publicly at all. But I don't think the hopes are high, so I'll probably be getting back to you."

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Asked how urgently the police were pursuing the lead, she said, "We're not spending overtime on this one. We're just looking at it as we've looked at a whole lot of other tips over the past few years."

According to an affidavit for the warrant, Boulder Police Chief Mark Beckner received an e-mail August 8 from an AOL user who said a confession was posted on a site devoted to JonBenet.

Petersen confirmed details of the story, which was quoted in Saturday editions of the Washington Post, but said she had not seen the warrant itself.

"The only thing making this newsworthy is the fact that a public document is involved, a search warrant," Petersen told CNN. "There's not anything more significant than a lot of other stuff we've pursued. I'm trying not to set up false hopes that don't lead anywhere. It might, but I don't think it's any more promising than a lot of other leads that have not panned out."

America Online spokesman Nicholas Graham said Saturday that the search warrant was served August 31 and that the company complied with it within a few days.

Though he would not divulge the contents of the warrant, Graham said AOL "has a long history of cooperating" with criminal investigations by providing names, addresses, phone numbers and e-mails to law enforcement officials.

AOL's policy also allows subscriber information to be revealed in situations involving violent or suicidal threats, Graham said.

The beauty queen's bludgeoned body was found dead December 26, 1996 in the basement of her parents' Boulder home. No one has been identified as a suspect in the slaying.