Former Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy told ABC News in an interview this week that a detail critical to her belief that an intruder had killed JonBenet Ramsey was a “butt print” she spotted in carpeting outside the child’s bedroom days after the murder.

Lacy made those remarks, according to ABC News, in the days prior to the publication of a joint investigation by the Daily Camera and 9NEWS that revealed for the first time that, according to independent experts, DNA that Lacy cited in a 2008 exoneration of the Ramseys actually showed the presence of a third individual in samples taken from the child’s clothing.

Those experts also contended that a sample developed from the child’s underwear could be a composite, and not a profile of a single individual.

The network noted in its report Friday that Lacy had not responded to ABC’s request for an interview since the Daily Camera/9NEWS report was published Thursday night.

No one was at Lacy’s Boulder home Friday, and she did not reply to requests by the Camera and 9NEWS for comment during their joint investigation.

Lacy said the telltale butt-print came to her attention when inspecting the Ramsey house with three other investigators several days after Dec. 26, 1996, when JonBenet, 6, was found murdered in her family’s basement, killed by a blow to her skull and asphyxiation caused by a garotte buried deep in her neck.

She told the network that when she saw an indentation in the carpet around the corner from JonBenet’s bedroom on the second floor, chills ran up and down her spine.

“It was a butt print. We all saw it. The entire area was undisturbed except for that place in the rug,” Lacy said. “Whoever did this sat outside of her room and waited until everyone was asleep to kill her.”

A ‘train’ going down the tracks

Lacy made no mention of a butt print in the carpet in a July 9, 2008, letter to John Ramsey, in which she reported that fresh scientific evidence had “vindicated” his family.

In that letter, she said newly developed “touch” DNA testing had found a match between samples located in two spots on the exterior of JonBenet’s long johns and a profile of an unknown male that previously had been developed from the child’s underwear.

The profile derived from JonBenet’s underwear was entered into the national CODIS database in December 2003, but has never been linked to any of the 12.5 million other profiles currently in the system.

The Daily Camera and 9NEWS exclusively obtained the laboratory results and reports generated by Bode Technology — now known as Bode Cellmark Forensics — and asked several independent experts to review that material.

Their conclusion was that the evidence did not support Lacy’s letter.

The Bode reports never employ the word “match,” and, in fact, reveal that Lacy’s office was told that the samples from JonBenet’s long johns actually appeared to show the genetic markers of at least three people — JonBenet, the profile from her underwear of what has become known as “Unknown Male 1,” plus at least one more individual.

Lacy’s letter to John Ramsey — which she also made public — made no mention of a third individual’s presence in the mixed samples.

Additionally, the experts consulted in the Daily Camera/9NEWS investigation said, based on the same results provided by Bode to Lacy’s office, that the sample from JonBenet’s panties may not even represent the profile of a single individual, but could in fact be a composite of two or more contributors.

Lacy, a respected chief deputy specializing in sexual assault cases prior to becoming elected as Boulder County district attorney in November 2000, did not publicly discuss her exoneration letter at the time it was issued. Her remarks this week to ABC News are her first public comments about her decision-making process.

“Here’s what I was doing with the exoneration letter,” Lacy explained. “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.”

The train envisioned by Lacy was little noticed by other case observers in the summer of 2008, with scant activity in the investigation having been reported in quite some time. Lacy at that point was just six months from the end of her tenure in office, term-limited from running again.

‘Nothing to do with emotion’

Lacy’s successor, Boulder County District Attorney Stan Garnett, expressed surprise Friday over her remarks.

“The ‘train rushing down the tracks’ quote is concerning because the decision to file charges is never an emotional decision by a lawyer or by a prosecutor,” Garnett said. ” It’s a deliberate, cautious decision based only on the facts and the evidence. And the reason no charges have been filed in the case is because the facts and the evidence in the case do not support charges, based on the ethical standards that apply to prosecutors in Colorado.”

Garnett added, “It has nothing to do with emotion, with exoneration letters, with all the different passions that have whirled around this case. And if charges ever are filed, it’s going to be for one reason -— that we have sufficient evidence to prove a criminal charge beyond a reasonable doubt — not because of an emotion, not because of an opinion, not because of trains hurtling down the tracks, but because of evidence.”

Also, Garnett said, “Nothing of what I said changes the fact that the Ramseys are presumed innocent and should be treated as such by anyone who pays attention to the case.”

John and Patsy Ramsey were indicted in their daughter’s death by a grand jury in October 1999, but then-District Attorney Alex Hunter declined to prosecute the case, believing there was insufficient evidence to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Charlie Brennan: 303-473-1327, brennanc@dailycamera.com or twitter.com/chasbrennan