An expert hired by Boulder police to examine the ransom note in the JonBenet Ramsey case had offered his services to Patsy Ramsey, declaring she was innocent of her daughter's murder, a family attorney said Saturday. Donald Foster, a linguistic expert from Vassar College, was hired by police to examine the text and format of the ransom note and writing samples of Patsy Ramsey.

 ABC News will report on 20 / 20 tonight that Foster concluded that Ramsey wrote the 2 1/2-page ransom note found in the family's Boulder home the morning of Dec. 26, 1996. ABC attributes the information to unnamed law enforcement sources. But before he was hired by police, Foster offered his help to Patsy Ramsey, declaring he could prove that she did not write the ransom note, said Pat Furman, one of the Ramsey family's attorneys. He said lawyers for the family rejected the offer. ''I know you are innocent - know it absolutely and unequivocally. I will stake my professional reputation on it, indeed my faith in my humanity,'' Furman said, reading from a June 18, 1997, letter he said Foster wrote to Patsy Ramsey. Foster's three-page letter said that his analysis of it ''leads me to believe you did not write it and the police are wasting their time by trying to prove that you did.'' ....