DENVER (AP) -- A former lead detective in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case says he believes the murdered girl's mother wrote the ransom note that was in the family home the day her body was found.
In an interview airing Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Steve Thomas, who resigned in protest of what he called the lack of aggressive prosecution of the case, said Patsy Ramsey wrote the note.Of 73 suspects whose writing samples were analyzed by experts, only Patsy Ramsey could not be excluded as the note's author, ABC quotes Thomas as saying.
The body of 6-year-old JonBenet was found beaten and strangled in the basement of the Ramsey home in Boulder on Dec. 26, 1996, about seven hours after the rambling three-page note was found.
Thomas interrogated the Ramseys four months after the slaying and was a lead detective until he resigned in August 1998, saying Boulder County District Attorney Alex Hunter sacrificed procedure for politics.
Thomas has written a book called "JonBenet: Inside the Ramsey Murder Investigation." He is scheduled to appear on ABC programs this week to promote it.
He said Patsy Ramsey changed her handwriting after the slaying.
"In the ransom note, almost exclusively the lowercase manuscript 'a' was used I think 98 percent of the time," ABC quotes Thomas as saying. "But what was telling was that after the Ramseys were given a copy of the ransom note, the lowercase manuscript 'a' almost disappeared entirely from Patsy's post-homicide writing."
Samples of Patsy Ramsey's writings before the murder contain a lowercase, printed style of 'a's, Thomas said. He said she switched to a cursive style 'a' after JonBenet's slaying.
The former detective also said the tear pattern of the ransom-note paper matched Patsy Ramsey's personal notepad and the felt-tip pen used to write the note matched a pen found in a cup in the Ramseys' kitchen.
A call to Ramsey attorney Hal Haddon was not returned Saturday.
Boulder officials have described the Ramseys as being under an umbrella of suspicion in their daughter's death, but nobody has been charged and a grand jury ended a 13-month investigation last fall without an indictment.
Last month on CNN's "Larry King Live," Hunter said the ransom note remains a key piece of evidence and that new analysis of the note could benefit the ongoing investigation.
The Ramseys, who now live in Atlanta, have consistently denied any involvement in their daughter's death. They have written their own book and have appeared on television programs recently to discuss aspects of it, including their theory that an intruder killed JonBenet.