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 crime scene despite his insistence he strangled the 6-year-old beauty queen. Just a week and a half after Karr's arrest in Thailand was seen as a remarkable break in the sensational, decade-old case, prosecutors suggested in court papers that he was just a man with a twisted fascination with JonBenet who confessed to a crime he didn't commit.
"Because his DNA does not match that found in the victim's blood in her underwear, the people would not be able to establish that Mr. Karr committed this crime despite his repeated insistence that he did," District Attorney Mary Lacy said in court papers.
The 41-year-old schoolteacher will be kept in jail in Boulder until he can be sent to Sonoma County, Calif., to face child pornography charges dating to 2001, authorities said. Earlier in the day, the sheriff's department announced Karr had been released.
Lacy said Karr emerged as a suspect in April after he spent several years exchanging e-mails and later telephone calls 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 on a cheek swab taken from Karr and failed to connect him 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.
She also said authorities found no evidence Karr was in Boulder at the time of the slaying. In addition, she said Karr's family provided "strong circumstantial support" for their belief that he was with them in Georgia, celebrating the Christmas holidays, as the time of the crime.
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.
The district attorney defended the decision to arrest Karr. She said there was no way to take a cheek swab from him without alerting him that he was under investigation, and that would have created an "unacceptable risk that he would flee."
Also, prosecutors suggested that they were afraid Karr might harm another girl. Karr had landed a teaching job in Thailand, and in his correspondence began to describe an interest in several girls "in much the same terms that he had described his interest in JonBenet," Lacy said in court papers. Shortly before he was arrested, authorities confirmed he was involved with at least one of the girls, Lacy said.
In an interview with the media in Thailand after his arrest, Karr said that he was with JonBenet when she died and that her death was an accident. Asked if he was innocent, he said no.
But Karr's bizarre account—and his apparent fascination with the little girl's death—immediately raised suspicions that he might be an obsessed follower of the case who confessed to a crime he didn't commit.
Among other things, Karr's relatives insisted that if Karr had not been with his family at Christmas, they would have certainly remembered it. JonBenet was found beaten and strangled at her Boulder home on Dec. 26, 1996.
In an interview Monday with MSNBC, Gary Harris, who had been spokesman for the Karr family, said of the DNA: "I knew it wouldn't match."
Karr has been "obsessed with this case for a long time. He may have some personality problems, but he's not a killer," Harris said. "He obsesses. He wanted to be a rock star one time. ... He's a dreamer. He's the kind of guy who wants to be famous.
Ramsey family attorney Lin Wood—who earlier this month pronounced the arrest vindication for JonBenet's parents, who had long been suspected in the killing—had no immediate comment.
John and Patsy Ramsey had known as recently as May that authorities were focusing on Karr because of his e-mails with professor Michael Tracey. Patsy Ramsey died of cancer in June.
JonBenet Ramsey's aunt, Pamela Paugh, said she was disappointed there won't be a prosecution of someone in the case, but added: "I think our justice system worked as it was supposed to."
"We asked the DA to do her thing. She did it," said Paugh, who is Patsy Ramsey's sister. "My disappointment came about the end of December 1996 when we didn't have the killer then. We've had 9 1/2 years of disappointment and waiting."
Scott Robinson, a Denver attorney who has followed the case from the beginning, said prosecutors may now be back at square one in the JonBenet case.
"At this point, if they really do get a good lead on the case then it may be very difficult to convict," Robinson said. "It was never going to be easy without a confession and DNA confirmation."
As for Lacy's decision to bring Karr back from Asia, Robinson said she had no choice but to pursue the lead. He said Karr may be charged with lying about his role in the case.
"Seems to me there should be some criminal consequences," he said. "He has cost the taxpayers an enormous amount of money."
Karr was arrested in Petaluma, Calif., in 2001 on charges of possessing child pornography but fled before he could be tried. Colorado authorities said that after the Boulder case against Karr was dropped, California officials asked that he be turned over to them for prosecution.
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Associated Press writers Chase Squires in Boulder, Sandy Shore in Denver, Harry R. Weber in Atlanta and Scott Lindlaw in San Francisco contributed to this report.
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On the Net:
D.A. filing: http://www.courts.state.co.us/docs/06CR1244MQUASH1.pdf
