BOULDER, Colo. (AP) - Prosecutors abruptly dropped their case Monday against John Mark Karr in the slaying of JonBenet Ramsey, saying DNA tests failed to put him at the scene despite his repeated insistence he killed the 6-year-old beauty queen. The move came just a week and a half after the 41-year-old schoolteacher was arrested in Thailand and put on a plane to the U.S. in what was regarded as a remarkable break in the decade-old murder mystery that had cast suspicion on JonBenet's parents.
District Attorney Mary Lacy said Karr emerged as a suspect in April after he began exchanging e-mails with a Colorado professor in which he admitted responsibility for the slaying.
According to court papers, Karr told the professor he accidentally killed JonBenet during sex and that he tasted her blood after he injured her vaginally. But officials at the Denver crime lab conducted DNA tests last Friday and failed to connect Karr to the crime.
"This information is critical because ... if Mr. Karr's account of his sexual involvement with the victim were accurate, it would have been highly likely that his saliva would have been mixed with the blood in the underwear," Lacy said in court papers.
Defense attorney Seth Temin expressed outrage that Karr was even arrested.
"We're deeply distressed by the fact that they took this man and dragged him here from Bangkok, Thailand, with no forensic evidence confirming the allegations against him and no independent factors leading to a presumption he did anything wrong," Temin said.
