BOULDER, Colo. — Boulder County prosecutors yesterday dropped the case against murder suspect John Mark Karr amid reports that his DNA failed to match samples found at the JonBenet Ramsey murder scene.
Karr, a 41-year-old schoolteacher who was the first suspect named or detained in the 10-year-old case, now awaits extradition to Sonoma County, Calif., where he is wanted on a fugitive warrant for five misdemeanor counts of child pornography.
“The warrant on Mr. Karr has been dropped by the district attorney,” public defender Seth Temin said outside the Boulder jail. “They are not proceeding with this case.”
Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy said in court papers that, other than Karr’s confession, the case against him was too weak.
“The people would not be able to establish that Mr. Karr committed this crime, despite his repeated insistence that he did,” Mrs. Lacy said in court papers.
Authorities collected a DNA sample from Karr when he arrived in Colorado on Thursday and had it tested over the weekend. Samples of an unknown man’s DNA were found under JonBenet’s fingernails and in her underpants.
“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,” she said.
Mrs. Lacy immediately came under fire for bringing Karr back from Bangkok, Thailand, without first doing the legwork to build a case against him.
Colorado Gov. Bill Owens criticized Mrs. Lacy for wasting taxpayers’ money and distracting law enforcement from pursuing the real killer.
“Unfortunately, the hysterics surrounding John Mark Karr served only to distract Boulder officials from doing their job, which should be solving the murder of JonBenet Ramsey,” Mr. Owens said in a statement.
“I find it incredible that Boulder authorities wasted thousands of taxpayer dollars to bring Karr to Colorado given such a lack of evidence. Mary Lacy should be held accountable for the most extravagant and expensive DNA test in Colorado history.”
Calls for her resignation immediately sprang up on talk radio, with former Denver assistant prosecutor Craig Silverman criticizing her “ineptitude.”
“I can’t believe a Colorado prosecutor could be so dumb in such a big case,” Mr. Silverman said. “I think she handled this unprofessionally, and I believe her day of reckoning will soon be upon us.”
Her announcement was stunning, but doubts had been cropping up about Karr’s guilt since his arrest Aug. 16 in Bangkok. The most glaring hole was his family’s insistence that he had spent Christmas 1996 with them, not in Boulder.
Gary Harris, who had been spokesman for the Karr family, said his former client was simply a misguided fame-seeker who has been “obsessed with this case for a long time. He may have some personality problems, but he’s not a killer.”
“He’s a dreamer,” he said. “He’s the kind of guy who wants to be famous.”
Six-year-old JonBenet was found strangled and beaten Dec. 26, 1996, in her family’s Boulder home. Karr, who had lived in Alabama, California and Georgia, was apparently obsessed with the case, writing a paper about it in college and discussing it extensively with acquaintances.
After his arrest, Thai authorities said he confessed to the crime. At a press conference the next day, he said he “was with JonBenet when she died” and that her death was “accidental,” but refused to provide further details.
Mrs. Lacy herself stressed at a press conference then that the investigation was in its early stages and more work needed to be done. She also hinted that “exigent circumstances,” perhaps news leaks, led to her decision to make the arrest when she did. Mrs. Lacy said in court papers that an unarrested Karr might have fled, as he had in the past, or targeted children in Thailand as well.
Karr is expected to be transferred to California within the next 10 days to face trial on the child-porn counts. An extradition hearing was scheduled for today.
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