Prosecutor defends Karr arrest

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) - Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy defended her decision to bring John Mark Karr back from Thailand to be investigated in the 1996 slaying of JonBenet Ramsey.

“The decisions were mine,” Lacy said, one day after she dropped the case against the 41-year-old schoolteacher. “I should be held accountable.”

Just as she began taking questions, a fire alarm disrupted the news conference, but it resumed a few minutes later.

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.

Karr, a 41-year-old schoolteacher fascinated with JonBenet and Polly Klaas, a murdered California girl, said after his arrest in Thailand this month that he was with JonBenet at the time of her slaying, which he called an accident.

But DNA tests did not match Karr to material found on the girl’s body. Prosecutors suggested in court papers that Karr was just a man with a twisted obsession who confessed to a crime he didn’t commit.