Ramsey's late mother last spoke in Hawaii

Patsy Ramsey was interviewed by an isle pastor before her death

In apparently her last public interview before her death, the mother of slaying victim JonBenet Ramsey told a Honolulu church audience that she prays for the man who killed her daughter and would forgive him.

"I have prayed for this person to come to salvation and to come forward, and I believe God is a god of justness," Patsy Ramsey said during a taping of the "Connecting Point" television show with the Rev. Wayne Cordeiro, a few days after her husband, John, spoke at New Hope Christian Fellowship's Easter Sunday service on April 16.

"Connecting Point" video online: » www.enewhope.org/video

"Even if this person is already dead and is never caught in my lifetime, I know and I believe and I have peace in the fact that God will take care of that. He is the ultimate judge," she said.

Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer on June 24, but in a statement on Wednesday, John Ramsey said she had been told about the possible breakthrough in the case.

John M. Karr was arrested Wednesday in Thailand and confessed to police that he had killed 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey in Boulder, Colo., in 1996.

The Ramseys wore leis and aloha attire during the interview, which aired as two shows, and talked about their faith, forgiveness, the death penalty and the investigation into their daughter's death.

John Ramsey said the appointment of a new prosecutor -- Mary Keenan, who now goes by her married name of Mary Lacy -- was the answer to the couple's prayers for justice.

Lacy hired experienced investigators to work on the case and take a second look at the evidence, John Ramsey said.

"They were able to go back and extract DNA evidence. ... They believe now they have the killer's DNA without a doubt, they've told me," he continued. "With that DNA they've told me we will get our guy."

Patsy Ramsey said she "absolutely" wants her daughter's killer to be caught. "I don't want this horrible thing that happened to us to happen to another child."

But she said she cannot support the death penalty.

"This killing another person is stooping to the level that person did to JonBenet," Patsy Ramsey said.

"There was a time I would have welcomed death, the pain was so great. So death isn't really the ultimate penalty, I believe," John Ramsey said.

Ramsey said he has forgiven the Boulder police and people in the news media for the suspicion that was cast upon them after his daughter's killing. But it is not up to him to forgive whomever killed his daughter. "Only my daughter and God can forgive that," he said.

The church invited the Ramseys to Honolulu in April to talk about what faith has meant in their lives, said "Connecting Point" producer Sherrie Au, who arranged the week-long visit.

"Few people have had to go through the kind of tragedy they went through," Au said.

Au, who still keeps in touch with John Ramsey, said the decision to invite the Ramseys to Hawaii was controversial.

"A lot of people still believed they killed their daughter," she said, "but you couldn't be with them for 10 minutes and still believe they killed their daughter."

After the visit, Au said the Ramseys told her that their time in Hawaii was "one of the most precious times in their lives."