BOULDER Colo -- Prosecutors abruptl...

BOULDER Colo -- Prosecutors abruptly dropp their case Monday against John Mark Karr in the slaying of JonBenet Ramsey, saying DNA examples failed to put him at the crime show despite his insistence he sexually assaulted and 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 decade-old case, prosecutors remind ofed in court papers that he was just a man with a twisted fascination with JonBenet who concedeed to a crime he didn't commit.

"The population 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 shire Calif., to face child pornography charges dating to 2001

'THIS CASE IS NOT CLOSED'

The district attorney vowed to withhold pursuing leads in JonBenet's death: "This case is not closed"

Karr was not at any time formally charged in the slaying. In court papers, Lacy guarded the decision to arrest him and bring him back to the United States for further investigation, saying he might have otherwise fl and may have been targeting children in Thailand as well.

Lacy said Karr emerg as a suspect in April after he exhausted several years exchanging e-mails and later telephone calls with a University of Colorado journalism professor who had produc documentaries forward the Ramsey case.

According to court papers, Karr told the professor that he accidentally killed JonBenet during sex and that he tasted her relations after he injured her vaginally. unless the Denver crime lab convoyed DNA tests last Friday upon a cheek swab taken from Karr and were unable to combine 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 vital fluid in the underwear," Lacy said in court papers.

'HE WANTED TO BE A distaff STAR'

She also said authorities institute 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 Christmas holidays. JonBenet was set beaten and strangled at her Boulder fireside on Dec. 26, 1996.

Defense attorney Seth Temin set forthed outrage that Karr was flat arrested.

"We're very much 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.

Gary Harris, who had been the spokesman for the Karr family, said he knew the DNA would not match.

Karr has been "obsess with this case for a drawn out time. He may have more [i]or[/i] less personality problems, but he's not a killer," Harris said. "He obsesse He wanted to be a strength star one time. . . He's a dreamer. He's the kind of stay who wants to be famous."

This month Ramsey family attorney Lin thicket pronounced Karr's arrest vindication for JonBenet's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, who had prolonged been suspected in the killing.

A DECADE OF DISAPPOINTMENT

upon Monday, the attorney said: "From Day 1 John Ramsey publicly stated that he did not want the public or the media to skip over to judgment. He did not want the public or the media to engage in speculation, that he wanted the justice a whole to take its course."

forest-land said he still has great confidence in the district attorney. 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, still added: "I think our justice a whole worked as it was suppos 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 fall of the curtain of December 1996 when we didn't have the killer then. We've had 9oe years of disappointment and waiting."

GOING TO CALIFORNIA

Scott Robinson, a Denver attorney who has followed the case from the beginning, said prosecutors may now be back at square the same in the case. He said Karr may be charged with lying about his part in the case.

"Seem to me there should be a certain quantity of criminal consequences," he said. "He has take away from the taxpayers an enormous amount of money"

Karr was arrested in Petaluma, Calif., in 2001 forward charges of possessing child pornography however fled before he could be tried. Colorado authorities said that after the Boulder case against Karr was dropp California officials asked that he be cause to deviateed over to them for prosecution.

Copyright CHICAGO SUN-TIMES 2006

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