Case against JonBenet suspect dropped, case remains open

BOULDER, Colorado – The sudden decision to drop the case against John Mark Karr in the slaying of JonBenet Ramsey snuffed out yet another lead in the enduring mystery of who killed the six-year-old beauty queen, but prosecutors vowed that the investigation would go on.

“This case is not closed,” said District Attorney Mary Lacy. The case has never been closed, not since JonBenet’s father found her body in the basement of their Boulder home on the day after Christmas 1996.For years, suspicion has focused on either an intruder or the girl’s parents, John and Patsy Ramsey.Karr, a 41-year-old schoolteacher fascinated with JonBenet and Polly Klaas, a murdered California girl, said after his arrest in Thailand earlier this month that he was with JonBenet at the time of her slaying, which he called an accident.In a July 19 e-mail, Karr described feeling excited because two five-year-olds were “flashing their hot little bellybuttons at me” and later said a “naked little foot felt so sexy in my hand,” prosecutors said.Karr’s arrest was less than a month later.But Lacy said DNA tests and investigators did not put Karr at the crime scene.Prosecutors suggested in court papers that he was just a man with a twisted obsession who confessed to a crime he didn’t commit.Karr was being held at the Boulder jail until he can be sent to Sonoma County, California, to face misdemeanour child pornography charges dating to 2001.An extradition hearing was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.Karr was never formally charged in the slaying.In court papers, Lacy defended the decision to arrest him and bring him back to the United States for further investigation, saying he might have otherwise fled and may have been targeting children in Thailand.Lacy said Karr emerged as a suspect in April after he spent several years exchanging e-mails and 11 telephone calls with a University of Colorado journalism professor who had produced documentaries on the case.The District Attorney’s office provided explicit details of Karr’s statements to professor Michael Tracey, who alerted authorities.Karr told the professor he accidentally killed JonBenet during sex and tasted her blood after he injured her, prosecutors said.”Are you asking me why I killed JonBenet? I don’t see it that way,” Karr wrote in a May 22 e-mail.”Her and I were engaging in a romantic and very sexual interaction.It went bad and it was my fault.”But the claims were lies, prosecutors said.The Denver crime lab conducted DNA tests Friday on a cheek swab taken from Karr and were unable 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.She said Karr’s family provided “strong circumstantial support” for their belief that he was with them in Georgia, celebrating the holidays.When Karr was arrested in Thailand, Ramsey family attorney Lin Wood pronounced it a vindication for JonBenet’s parents.Patsy Ramsey died of cancer in June.Nampa-APThe case has never been closed, not since JonBenet’s father found her body in the basement of their Boulder home on the day after Christmas 1996.For years, suspicion has focused on either an intruder or the girl’s parents, John and Patsy Ramsey.Karr, a 41-year-old schoolteacher fascinated with JonBenet and Polly Klaas, a murdered California girl, said after his arrest in Thailand earlier this month that he was with JonBenet at the time of her slaying, which he called an accident.In a July 19 e-mail, Karr described feeling excited because two five-year-olds were “flashing their hot little bellybuttons at me” and later said a “naked little foot felt so sexy in my hand,” prosecutors said.Karr’s arrest was less than a month later.But Lacy said DNA tests and investigators did not put Karr at the crime scene.Prosecutors suggested in court papers that he was just a man with a twisted obsession who confessed to a crime he didn’t commit.Karr was being held at the Boulder jail until he can be sent to Sonoma County, California, to face misdemeanour child pornography charges dating to 2001.An extradition hearing was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon.Karr was never formally charged in the slaying.In court papers, Lacy defended the decision to arrest him and bring him back to the United States for further investigation, saying he might have otherwise fled and may have been targeting children in Thailand.Lacy said Karr emerged as a suspect in April after he spent several years exchanging e-mails and 11 telephone calls with a University of Colorado journalism professor who had produced documentaries on the case.The District Attorney’s office provided explicit details of Karr’s statements to professor Michael Tracey, who alerted authorities.Karr told the professor he accidentally killed JonBenet during sex and tasted her blood after he injured her, prosecutors said.”Are you asking me why I killed JonBenet? I don’t see it that way,” Karr wrote in a May 22 e-mail.”Her and I were engaging in a romantic and very sexual interaction.It went bad and it was my fault.”But the claims were lies, prosecutors said.The Denver crime lab conducted DNA tests Friday on a cheek swab taken from Karr and were unable 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.She said Karr’s family provided “strong circumstantial support” for their belief that he was with them in Georgia, celebrating the holidays.When Karr was arrested in Thailand, Ramsey family attorney Lin Wood pronounced it a vindication for JonBenet’s parents.Patsy Ramsey died of cancer in June.Nampa-AP