Less than two weeks after Karr was arrested in Thailand and flown to the United States amid a hurricane of media hype, Lacy said Monday that Karr's DNA failed to match DNA from the crime scene, and that witnesses put him elsewhere at the time of the murder.

 In a lengthy press conference Tuesday Lacy acknowledged that she has received several angry phone messages criticising her work. One message was: "you should be tarred and feathered and run out of town," she said. "That's pretty harsh. It's not just one. There were lots of calls like that."

 Lacy was especially criticised for failing to ask Thai police to conduct the DNA test. Even Colorado Governor Bill Owens demanded that she be held accountable "for the most extravagant and expensive DNA test in Colorado history."

 But contrary to public knowledge, police did surreptitiously take DNA samples from Karr -- several times, Lacy said.

 However the prosecutor's DNA expert in Colorado said the crime scene DNA sample was mixed, so they absolutely needed a clean DNA sample from Karr.

 "We needed a pristine sample. That means a buccal swab (from inside Karr's mouth). That can only be taken by consent or by court proceeding or court order. We couldn't get his consent because we didn't know he was under investigation, and we couldn't alert him at that time."

 Lacy said the investigation took some 90 days, and "we were successful 99 per cent of that time, keeping it away from the media attention."

 But she couldn't prevent Thai authorities from speaking to reporters.

 "We didn't have ... any control when dealing with a foreign government half way around the world. They were helping us in every way possible. We thank them from the bottom of our heart. They have a different process for the media than we do. We couldn't prevent them from talking to the press."

 Lacy, who released hundreds of pages of e-mail correspondence over four years between Karr and University of Colorado journalism professor Michael Tracey on the case, said that nearly 10 years after the murder all of the evidence in the case was in the public domain.

 Lacy said she had no sympathy toward Karr, whom she believes is convinced that he killed JonBenet.

 Prosecutors did a financial check and were not able to conclusively say whether Karr had been in Boulder on the day of the murder.

 The case remains unsolved after a media circus covering Karr's extradition from Thailand, featuring the suspect in Thai Airways business class reportedly drinking champagne, eating pate and king prawns next to a US Homeland Security agent.

 Ramsey's parents found their daughter's mutilated body in their wine cellar the day after Christmas in 1996 in a case that drew national media coverage.

 The hype has revived huge interest in the unsolved murder -- in which, at one point, JonBenet's parents were investigated as possible suspects.

 Boulder Sheriff Joe Pelle said he will extradite Karr to Sonoma County, California, where he faces child pornography charges from 2001.

 Thai police, who arrested Karr on August 16 on the outstanding child pornography charges, said Karr had confessed to killing Ramsey unintentionally. They said Karr told them he was "in love" with JonBenet, who wore makeup and glamorous outfits and struck precocious poses in her appearances at child beauty pageants

Agence France Presse