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<div><font color="#000000">The New York Times</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
August 29, 2006<br>
Dropped Charges Setback for Ramsey Case<br>
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS<br>
<br>
Filed at 9:18 a.m. ET<br>
<br>
BOULDER, Colo. (AP) -- The lack of a DNA match between John Mark Karr
and evidence from the killing of JonBenet Ramsey set prosecutors back
nearly 10 years, but they promised to continue searching for the
6-year-old beauty queen's killer.<br>
<br>
''This case is not closed,'' said District Attorney Mary Lacy, who
planned to further explain her decision at a news conference
Tuesday.<br>
<br>
JonBenet's aunt, Pamela Paugh, said Tuesday that she wasn't terribly
shocked to learn that Karr's public confession to being with JonBenet
when she died didn't hold up.<br>
<br>
''I think one of two things is going on: Either he is quite disturbed,
and in that respect needs a lot of help and care, or he has
perpetrated quite the fraud on the American public and the victims'
families, and he needs help and a lot of care,'' Paugh told CBS' ''The
Early Show.''<br>
<br>
''For us, this isn't a story that ebbs and flows -- this is real life.
So we have to maintain a certain amount of calmness through anything
that happens. Otherwise you can be on a rollercoaster every week of
your life.''<br>
<br>
JonBenet's father found the little girl's 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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
But Lacy said DNA tests did not put Karr at the crime scene.<br>
<br>
Prosecutors suggested in court papers that Karr was just a man with a
twisted obsession who confessed to a crime he didn't commit. Karr had
made graphic claims in a series of e-mails about JonBenet's killing,
describing sexual acts with her, her death and writing at one point
that he envisioned Johnny Depp playing him in a movie about how he
killed JonBenet. He wrote that the movie would make $1 billion.<br>
<br>
Karr was being held at the Boulder jail until he can be sent to Sonoma
County, Calif., to face misdemeanor child pornography charges dating
to 2001. An extradition hearing was scheduled for Tuesday
afternoon.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
The District Attorney's office released explicit details of statements
Karr had made in those exchanges with professor Michael Tracey, who
had alerted authorities. Karr told the professor he accidentally
killed JonBenet during sex and tasted her blood after he injured her,
prosecutors said.<br>
<br>
''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.''<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
''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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
Defense attorney Seth Temin said Karr never should have been
arrested.</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br>
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.<br>
<br>
On Monday, the attorney said: ''From day one, John Ramsey publicly
stated that he did not want the public or the media to jump to
judgment. He did not want the public or the media to engage in
speculation, that he wanted the justice system to take its
course.''<br>
<br>
Nate Karr, John Karr's brother, said he was elated his brother would
not be charged. ''We're just going to be celebrating with family,'' he
said.<br>
<br>
But Scott Robinson, a Denver attorney who has followed the case from
the beginning, said Karr may be charged with lying about his role.<br>
<br>
''Seems to me there should be some criminal consequences,'' he said.
''He has cost the taxpayers an enormous amount of money.''<br>
<br>
The district attorney defended the handling of the case, saying there
was no way to take a cheek swab from Karr without alerting him that he
was under investigation.<br>
<br>
Also, Karr was about to start 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.<br>
<br>
In a July 19 e-mail, Karr described feeling excited because two
5-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.<br>
<br>
------<br>
<br>
Associated Press writers Jon Sarche in Boulder, Dan Elliott, P.
Solomon Banda and Sandy Shore in Denver, Harry R. Weber in Atlanta and
Scott Lindlaw in San Francisco contributed to this report.<br>
<br>
------<br>
<br>
On the Net:</font><br>
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<div><font color="#000000">D.A. filing:
http://www.courts.state.co.us/docs/06CR1244MQUASH1.pdf</font><br>
<font color="#000000"></font></div>
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