Mary Lacy's exoneration letter missed opportunity butt print and petition

abc news wrote:
The family has always maintained they had nothing to do with JonBenet’s killing. Her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, and their son Burke Ramsey, who was 9 years old at the time of JonBenet’s death, were exonerated in 2008 by then-Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy. Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer in 2006.

Lacy claimed at the time that touch DNA testing done on the waistband of the child's long johns when compared with unknown male DNA found in her panties, proved the suspect was an unidentified male. Unlike more traditional forms of DNA found in blood or saliva, touch DNA comes from skin cells.

But her exoneration letter, which was made public July 9, 2008, recently came under scrutiny after a joint investigation by The Boulder Daily Camera and Denver's KUSA-TV/9News said it found the DNA results were not as clear cut as Lacy concluded they were.

ABC News “20/20” last month obtained the test results and laboratory notes regarding the 2008 DNA testing Lacy ordered in the Ramsey case, which was conducted by a private Virginia-based forensic laboratory called Bode Technology.

In the notes, the lab concluded that a “partial DNA profile” obtained from samples taken from JonBenet’s underwear and long johns “contains a mixture” of DNA -- JonBenet, an unknown male and, in one sample, a third unidentified person. Therefore, the lab said, these DNA sample results “should not be considered a single source profile,” according to the documents obtained by “20/20.” The Bode reports never use the word “match.”

But Lacy doesn’t mention those details in her 2008 letter to the Ramseys. Instead, Lacy wrote, “The match of male DNA on two separate items of clothing worn by the victim at the time of the murder makes it clear to us that an unknown male handled these items.”

When Lacy spoke to ABC News in October ahead of the Daily Camera’s publication, she said she did not believe she misrepresented the report and explained her reasoning behind the exoneration letter.

"Here’s what I was doing with the exoneration letter," Lacy said at the time. "I was trying to prevent a horrible travesty of justice. I was scared to death that despite the fact that there was no evidence, no psychopathy and no motive, the case was a train going down the track and the Ramseys were tied to that track."

Lacy said she has taken criticism for her decision to write the exoneration letter in the past. "I've withstood worse than this," she said. "And it's nothing compared to what the Ramsey family has gone through targeted as suspects in their own daughter's murder."

Lacy also told ABC News that during a walk-through of the Ramsey home in the days after the murder, an indentation in the carpet was spotted just around the corner from JonBenet's room on the second floor.

"It was a butt print. We all saw it. The entire area was undisturbed except for that place in the rug," said Lacy, who was then the chief deputy district attorney heading up the Sexual Assault Unit under then-Boulder County DA Alex Hunter. "Whoever did this sat outside of her room and waited until everyone was asleep to kill her."

Garnett said he anticipates the same articles of clothing that were sent to Bode for testing in 2008 would be retested again, but he added, “I don’t anticipate that there’s going to be any dramatic developments from this next round of testing.”

ABC News' Tom Berman and Gail Deutsch contributed to this report.