DENVER (AP) -- JonBenet Ramsey's parents lashed out at a former police detective who investigated their daughter's slaying, saying his theory that the mother killed the girl in a fit of rage is "a disgrace."
John and Patsy Ramsey called former investigator Steve Thomas "an inexperienced moron" in a Denver Post interview published Tuesday. It was the Ramseys' first public response to Thomas' book, "JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation."Thomas is the first person officially connected to the case to write about it in detail, and the first to name a suspect.
According to published summaries of the book, Thomas theorizes that Patsy Ramsey accidentally killed JonBenet because of bed-wetting and then wrote a ransom note to make the death look like a botched kidnapping.
Thomas claims John Ramsey knew his wife was involved when he read the note but immediately began covering for her.
"It's so insane it would be laughable if it weren't so tragic," John Ramsey said during an interview at his suburban Atlanta home.
He said he would not have covered up for his wife. "Your love for your child is unconditional. Your love for your spouse is conditional; you murder my child, I don't love you anymore," he said.
The couple said if Thomas had children of his own, he would not have found it so odd. "I don't ever really want to know those details," Patsy Ramsey said.
John Ramsey was less charitable. "That's the word of an inexperienced moron without children," he said.
Thomas has accused prosecutors and police of bungling the investigation.