U.S. & World

BOULDER, Colo. (CBS News) ― Prosecutors abruptly dropped their case against John Mark Karr in the slaying of JonBenet Ramsey, saying DNA tests failed to put him at the crime scene despite his repeated insistence he killed the 6-year-old beauty queen.

In court papers, prosecutors suggested he had a twisted fascination with the little girl and confessed to a crime he didn't commit.

Karr, 41, will be kept in jail in Boulder until he can be sent to Sonoma County, Calif., to face child pornography charges dating to 2001, authorities said. Earlier in the day, the sheriff's department announced Karr had been released.

The move came just a week and a half after the schoolteacher was arrested in Thailand and put on a plane to the U.S. in what was regarded as a remarkable break in the decade-old murder mystery that had cast suspicion on JonBenet's parents.

"The warrant on Mr. Karr has been dropped by the district attorney," public defender Seth Temin said outside the jail where Karr is being held. "They are not proceeding with the case."

Prosecutors have confirmed that they will not bring charges against Karr.

KCNC's Rick Sallinger reports that hair and saliva taken from Karr in Boulder after his arrival last week were tested over the weekend at the Denver police crime lab and that he was ruled out as the source of the DNA taken from the crime scene.

Karr was scheduled to be in court Monday afternoon for a hearing expected to last only a few minutes — long enough for the judge to advise him of his rights and charges against him.

Sallinger reports that Karr was given a mouth-swab test while in Thailand. That and possible other samples were tested over the weekend inside the Denver Police Department's Crime lab.

Karr was scheduled to make his first Colorado court appearance late Monday afternoon.

The schoolteacher's arrest in Thailand a week and a half ago was seen as a surprise break in the decade-old murder mystery that had cast suspicion over JonBenet's parents. But inconsistencies in Karr's account immediately raised suspicions that he might be an obsessed follower of the case who confessed to a crime he didn't commit.

Among other things, Karr's relatives insisted that he was with them, celebrating Christmas in Georgia and Alabama, around the time the child beauty queen was found strangled and beaten at her Boulder home on Dec. 26, 1996. They said that if Karr had not been with his family at Christmas, they would have certainly remembered it.

In an interview with the media in Thailand, Karr said that he was with JonBenet when she died and that her death was an accident. Asked if he was innocent, he said no.

In an interview Monday, Gary Harris, who had been spokesman for the Karr family, did not directly confirm the KUSA report. But he said: "I knew it wouldn't match."

Karr has been "obsessed with this case for a long time. He may have some personality problems, but he's not a killer," Harris said. "He obsesses. He wanted to be a rock star one time. ... He's a dreamer. He's the kind of guy who wants to be famous.

Earlier Monday, an attorney for Karr demanded that the state turn over all evidence related to DNA in the 1996 case Monday, just a few hours ahead of Karr first Colorado court appearance.

Among other things, Seth Temin's court filing asked for a clear description of any biological evidence, including how much is left and how it is being stored.

"Eventually in this case, a court will have to analyze the admissibility of DNA evidence and its alleged statistical results," the public defender wrote. "It appears that more than one laboratory handled or had custody of samples subjected to testing in this case and more than one expert has evaluated the samples and testing results."

Temin has already challenged the results of any DNA testing involving his client, saying it was illegally obtained. Prosecutors have not confirmed if they performed DNA testing on Karr.

Temin and Steve Jacobson, a retired public defender, spent about three hours at the jail Sunday and declined to answer questions as they left. Temin has been aggressive in his short time on the case, winning approval of a gag order and making sure prosecutors and anyone else comes through him before talking with Karr.

He also joined prosecutors in opposing media requests to unseal the arrest affidavit, using capital letters to spell out his contention that releasing the details would violate Karr's right to a fair trial.

Jacobson is considered a DNA specialist, and DNA was thought to have been slated as one of the major issues should Karr have gone to trial. Jacobson's name wasn't listed on Monday's court filing, but it focused on the rules and procedures of DNA testing, right down to definitions of false positives and "multi-probe genotypes."

The best-case scenario for prosecutors would have been slam-dunk DNA evidence linking Karr to the Ramsey's former home, where JonBenet's beaten and strangled body was found by her father on Dec. 26, 1996.

Without it, experts say, it's much more difficult to build a strong murder case against the 41-year-old Karr, who has said he was there when the girl died but stopped short of an outright confession.

"In this day and age of shows like 'CSI' jurors not only want forensic evidence before they will convict a person, they demand it," said Robert Hirschhorn, a jury consultant based in Dallas.

Investigators have said DNA was found in blood spots on JonBenet's underwear, but a Ramsey family attorney said two years ago it didn't match any of the 1.5 million samples in an FBI database at the time. Other DNA recovered under the girl's fingernails is degraded, Grant said.

Other physical evidence includes a ransom note, the garrote used to strangle the girl, a boot print found outside the Ramsey house and some indications an intruder could have entered through a basement window.

JonBenet's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, were initial targets of a grand jury investigation that ended with no indictments. Patsy Ramsey died in June after learning authorities had turned their attention to Karr, who was living in Thailand when he was detained earlier this month.

(© 2006 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)