D.A.: Karr believes he killed JonBenet

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BOULDER, Colorado (CNN) -- John Mark Karr believes he killed JonBenet Ramsey even though "he is not the killer," Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy said Tuesday.

In a news conference in Boulder, Lacy and staff members from the Boulder County district attorney's office addressed how DNA evidence released Monday showed Karr could not have committed the killing he confessed to when he was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, earlier this month.

Karr will remain in a Colorado jail pending extradition to California on child pornography charges, a Colorado judge ruled Tuesday.

In California, Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Cerena Wong sealed documents, including the arrest warrant, in the child pornography case.

Wong acknowledged that Karr is "newsworthy" but said sealing the documents protects his right to a fair trial. The privacy rights of minors involved in the case also need to be protected, she said.

At a hearing in Colorado, Boulder District Judge Roxanne Bailin ordered Karr returned to California because he agreed to extradition as a condition for being granted bail in 2001. He never showed up for court.

Bailin gave California authorities until September 13 to pick up Karr from the Boulder County Jail.

Shackled at the wrists and ankles, Karr appeared in a blue jail uniform with a white undershirt. He appeared calm during most of the hearing but grew agitated when prosecutors refused to return a photo to him -- a copy of the last known photograph of JonBenet Ramsey and her mother, Patsy.

The district attorney's office in Boulder is closing its case against Karr.

"John Karr sincerely believes he killed JonBenet Ramsey, there's no question in his mind about that," Lacy said.

She said Karr still believes, even now, that he killed the young girl even though evidence points to someone else.

"The way he told the story (of how JonBenet died), the DNA would have been his and it was not," Lacy said. "He is not the killer."

Lacy said she has little sympathy for Karr because he "inserted himself" into the case.

Lacy said that investigators took surreptitious DNA samples in Bangkok from Karr, who said he was present in JonBenet's Boulder home when she died in December 1996. He called her death an accident.

DNA samples were taken from items that Karr touched as investigators kept him under surveillance in Bangkok, Lacy said, including from his bicycle, a cup he drank from and a tissue with which he wiped his hands.

However, she explained, experts in the case said that the sample found in the young girl's underwear was a mixed sample, as were the samples taken from Karr without his knowledge.

The experts wanted a clean sample from Karr and didn't want to compare a mixed sample with a mixed sample, she told reporters in a news conference about the case.

To get such a sample, they would have needed Karr's permission, and they didn't want to tip him off that he was under investigation, she said.

Karr claimed in e-mails to a journalism professor at the University of Colorado that he was involved in JonBenet's death.

Lacy has been sharply criticized for detaining and arresting Karr.

"The decisions were mine," Lacy said Tuesday. "The responsibility is mine and I should be held accountable for all decisions in this case."

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