The prosecutor in the 10-year-old murder case of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey admitted on Tuesday night that she should be held accountable for mistakes made in the botched investigation after the prime suspect was exonerated by DNA evidence.
John Mark Karr, who was brought back to the United States to face a murder charge after an emotional ”confession” in Thailand, was freed after examination showed his DNA did not match samples taken from the six-year-old’s underwear after her killing on Boxing Day 1996.
Mary Lacy, the district attorney for Colorado’s Boulder County, admitted that there was no evidence suggesting Karr’s guilt other than his claims about the crime in a series of bizarre e-mails. But she insisted her office had done ”a good job” and that the graphic communications had given her probable cause to have him arrested.
”You do your best with what you have at the moment,” she said at an emotional press conference on Tuesday.
”After the game is over it’s easy to criticise. I understand that people are angry and we owe an accounting to citizens. I do know that intelligent and educated people were consulted on a daily basis and we didn’t go into any of this without talking and thinking about it.
”The decisions were mine, the responsibility was mine and I should be held accountable for all decisions in this case.”
The murder of the beauty pageant queen shocked the nation and at one stage led to suspicion falling on her parents, John and Patricia Ramsey. Ramsey died of ovarian cancer in June.
The case had gone cold until Karr, a 41-year-old teacher, emerged in Bangkok 13 days ago and claimed he was with JonBenet when she died, calling her death ”an accident”.
Michael Tracey, a journalism professor at the University of Colorado with whom Karr had been exchanging e-mails for several years, alerted authorities to his possible involvement.
Some of the correspondence contained graphic claims about the state of JonBenet’s body and an admission that he had accidentally suffocated her while engaged in sexual activity.
But Karr’s ex-wife countered the claims, insisting that he was with her and their three children in Michigan at the time of the murder.
Tracey said he did not regret what he did.
”From what I was reading, it was very troubling, and it became increasingly troubling,” he said of Karr’s e-mails.
Lacy said that DNA was surreptitiously taken from Karr in Thailand but it was impossible to compare that with a ”mixed sample” from the girl’s underwear, and that he had to be brought back to the US to be forced to give a ”pristine” sample.
Karr was due in court on Tuesday to face an extradition hearing to California, where he faces child pornography charges from a 2001 incident.
Meanwhile, Lacy promised that the search for JonBenet’s killer would go on. ”This case is not closed,” she said. – Guardian Unlimited Â