Almost ten years after the body of 6-year-old beauty pageant star JonBenet Ramsey was found in the basement of her home, the unsolved case seems cursed. The decision by Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy to jettison her investigation of suspect John Mark Karr is another setback in a case that has repeatedly frustrated authorities. Karr's arrest in Thailand Aug. 16 looked like a major break in the case. It was followed by statements from Karr to reporters in which he said he was present when JonBenét died. On Monday, Lacy filed a motion to withdraw the arrest because she could not prove he did it after testing showed that the 41-year-old's DNA did not match that of DNA found at the crime scene. Critics in the legal community seized on the situation to lambaste Boulder law enforcement authorities for bungling a case they say has been rife with missteps throughout its history. "Prosecutorial ineptitude," Craig Silverman, a former Denver prosecutor, said of Lacy's very public pratfall. "With the possible exception of the O.J. Simpson case, I've never seen a prosecutor's office so badly bungle a big case." Lacy, said Silverman, could have quietly arranged Karr's deportation from Thailand to California — where he faced charges in 2001 of child pornography — and continued her investigation "in a discreet and professional manner" out of the limelight. There was no need, Silverman said, "for an international hubbub" that included a business-class flight back to the USA with reporters sitting nearby recording his lavish meal and champagne sipping. "This was another inept response in a case characterized by inept law enforcement conduct," said Larry Pozner, a Denver defense attorney who said Colorado once again had become a "circus." Criminal investigation "precedes arrest. It doesn't follow arrest." Lacy did not appear to answer questions from the army of media encamped in a parking lot near her office. She has scheduled a news conference for this morning. Lacy defended herself in her five-page motion filed in court. She wrote that Boulder authorities moved to have Karr arrested because he posed a threat to schoolchildren he was about to begin teaching at a school in Thailand and that there was a risk he would learn he was being investigated and would flee. In e-mails to a University of Colorado journalism professor, Karr "began to express sexual interest in specific young girls he said he had met in the new school at which he had recently been hired and at which he was to teach in August," Lacy said. That e-mail traffic with professor Michael Tracey, Lacy wrote, extended over four years but became more alarming after the June death of Patsy Ramsey, JonBenet's mother. "He began to describe his interest in several girls in much the same terms that he had described his interest in JonBenét Ramsey." For the cottage industry that has fed off the JonBenét murder for almost a decade, Lacy's explanations probably will fall short. Among the criticisms over the years: • Boulder police didn't properly secure the crime scene, allowing JonBenét's parents John and Patsy Ramsey to walk through the house, potentially contaminating evidence. • Police didn't separate the parents and question them individually, and prosecutors didn't quickly call for a grand jury to compel testimony. • Boulder police and the district attorney's office feuded and worked at cross-purposes. In 1998, a city detective in an eight-page resignation letter charged that then-district attorney Alex Hunter had "effectively crippled" the investigation. The two offices, Detective Steve Thomas wrote, "weren't even on speaking terms." Silverman said there may now be a renewed focus on JonBenét's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, who were placed under suspicion by Boulder's police chief in 1997. Tracey said Monday that he's not sure Karr is innocent: "I think the jury's still out." Karr wrote about JonBenét in his e-mails "almost straightaway," and during the four-year exchange with Tracey "became more explicit about what happened" when JonBenét was killed, Tracey said. He called Karr "dark ... complex, very smart.

KUSA