Mark Beckner, the retired Boulder, Colorado police chief who investigated the 1996 slaying of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, revealed on a Reddit "Ask Me Anything" session, or "AMA," on Sunday that officers had fumbled their initial response to the case.

Beckner was apparently unaware that the Reddit forum dedicated to "Unresolved Mysteries" could be read by the public.

"I didn't know it was an open-architecture type thing, or I wouldn't have done it," he told Boulder newspaper DailyCamera.

Beckner's comments about the JonBenet case have since been removed from the online question-and-answer session.

In 1996, 6-year-old JonBenet was found dead in the basement of her parents' home the day after Christmas. Her body was bruised and swollen from an alleged sexual assault. Duct tape covered her mouth. A cord was tangled around her neck.

Her mother Patsy had called the police hours earlier, saying that her daughter was missing and that she had found a ransom note demanding $180,000 in exchange for the girl -- the same amount that JonBenet's father, John Ramsey, had received as a bonus in his job as chief executive of a Lockheed Martin subsidiary.

The nation became obsessed with the Ramsey case. Beckner, who took the position of police chief in 1998, said that police were botching their investigation during his Reddit interview.

"I wish we would have done a much better job of securing and controlling the crime scene on day one," Beckner wrote in the AMA.

The former police chief also revealed that police failed to get separate statements from John and Patsy Ramsey the day of the crime. The couple was not interviewed by police until five months after JonBenet's death.

"Letting them go was a big mistake, as they soon lawyered up," he wrote.

While Beckner acknowledged that the Ramseys' stature in Boulder high society might have influenced the investigation, he said the short-staffed police department and their handling of the unfamiliar crime was more to blame.

The Ramseys' behavior struck him as odd.

"They rarely interacted and this did not seem normal given the circumstances. Lots of speculation as to why," Beckner wrote on Reddit.

A grand jury heard evidence on the case between 1998 and 1999. Court documents show that the jury had voted to indict the Ramseys, but District Attorney Alex Hunter refused to sign it, citing insufficient evidence.

Patsy died of ovarian cancer in 2006. She and John were officially cleared of suspicion in 2008 based on crime scene DNA evidence.

John Mark Karr, a former schoolteacher, was arrested in 2006, but the charges were dropped days later because his confession to JonBenet's murder was filled with inconsistencies.

Investigators reopened the case in 2010, but, despite new interviews about the murder, no progress has been made.

Beckner told the DailyCamera on Tuesday that DNA evidence used to clear the Ramseys will be the key to finding JonBenet's killer, but he expressed doubt of that happening in his Reddit comments.

"Do not believe anyone will ever be convicted in the Ramsey case," he wrote.