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John Mark Karr told police in Bangkok he accidentally killed JonBenet Ramsey. But relatives said he was with them at the time of the girl's murder.
Prosecutors abruptly dropped their case against John Mark Karr in the slaying of JonBenet Ramsey and released him Monday, saying DNA tests failed to put him at the crime scene despite his repeated insistence he killed the 6-year-old beauty queen.
"The warrant on Mr. Karr has been dropped by the district attorney," public defender Seth Temin said outside the jail. "They are not proceeding with the case."
Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy's office did not return repeated calls from The Associated Press.
"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 that he did anything wrong," Temin said.
Earlier in the day, Denver's KUSA, citing two sources close to the investigation, said that hair and saliva taken from Karr in Boulder after his arrival last week were tested over the weekend at the Denver police crime lab and that he was ruled out as the source of the DNA taken from the crime scene.
The schoolteacher's arrest in Thailand a week and a half ago was seen a surprise break in the decade-old murder mystery that had cast suspicion over JonBenet's parents. But inconsistencies in Karr's account 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 he was with them, celebrating Christmas in Georgia and Alabama, around the time the child beauty queen was found strangled and beaten at her Boulder home on Dec. 26, 1996. They said that if Karr had not been with his family at Christmas, they would have certainly remembered it.
In an interview with the media in Thailand, 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.
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 had no immediate comment.
Source: AP
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