Posted on 08/19/2006 5:16:19 PM PDT by Shermy
BOULDER - As a running columnist for the Boulder Daily Camera, Mike Sandrock had little interest in the JonBenet Ramsey investigation until he saw a photo in his paper's newsroom.
The picture staring back at him, Sandrock remembered the summer of 2002 in Paris like it was last week.
Sandrock travels the world covering running events, but this trip was used for research on an Ernest Hemmingway book he's preparing.
Beneath his Paris loft, Sandrock looked for motivation in a bookstore named Shakespeare and Company, a hangout of Hemmingway's in the 1920's where his thoughts and career once started to blossom.
Sandrock met many tourists in the historic shop, and shared several conversations, including many talks with a John Mark Karr.
"He was just a regular guy, clean cut, very pleasant in fact," said Sandrock.
The topics quickly focused on JonBenet Ramsey and Boulder, Colorado after Sandrock's occupation came up.
"He said what do you do? I told him I'm a columnist with the Daily Camera in Boulder, and he got so excited," said Sandrock.
Maybe excited was an understatement, as every word thereafter, was about the town and the story.
"He knew everything about it, everything," said Sandrock.
Karr recited many facts about Boulder, from landmarks to the location of the Daily Camera.
"I got the impression he had been in Boulder, then I thought he just saw the documentaries," said Sandrock.
Documentaries produced by CU Professor Michael Tracy, whom Sandrock knew, and someone Karr wanted to know.
After talking with Karr on several occasions that summer, Sandrock was no longer interested in the subject, but later agreed to put Karr in touch with Professor Tracy through e-mail.
"I got the impression he wanted to talk more, but I stopped the conversations when he got into how the girl died, I just was not interested in that," said Sandrock.
Sandrock said Karr never discussed having visited Colorado, and never got the impression that Karr was a murderer, only extremely consumed with JonBenet Ramsey and her death.
"That's the thing, he wasn't that different, just obsessive, even in Boulder you meet a lot of people that are obsessive," said Sandrock.
Burke has always been a problem in my thinking too. Possibly he had something to do with letting the perp into the house. I'm almost convinced that he did.
Burke has always been a problem in my thinking too. Possibly he had something to do with letting the perp into the house. I'm almost convinced that he did.
Really?.....I betcha anything that they left a door unlocked while they were hurrying to get to the party....an easy little detail to over look.
It just could be that Karr was in Colorado as a babysitter for some southern business associate.
Ramsey BECAME his target. Perhaps something as little as "John's our babysitter" or "John's our "nanny" (with a chuckle) set him off. He certainly had no love for Jonbenet unless we find a cache of pre-murder notice of her or pictures of her. This "love" shows up nowhere except post-murder.
Could be that Karr wound up entertaining a lot of kids at the Ramsey house that day. What game do little kids like to play in the house that would let you discover the nooks and crannies??
The jury is still out. That's my version of patience. I'm not assuming AGAINST the Prosecutor; if anything, more that she's got
SOMETHING. But if not, I hate to even think about it...
What I saw her do is exactly what he does. We have "him" for this crime AND they put the picture out.....looking for additional stuff.
It was really, really important to get his picture out. People are coming out of the woodwork I'm sure. The good news is that they are going to the police and not the media.
I'm pretty sure Tara went to the cops first. The cops WANTED that yearbook writing posted.
FR are good sleuthers (Just ask Dan Rather) and I'm sure the cops come here to compare notes.
Yep. They can find out TONS and TONS about him now. One caveat...lots of people know stuff about him that are on the wrong side of the law. They aren't going to voluntarily call attention to themselves to the cops. But some might be bargained with to tell or show evidence of what they know...
How sad for those little boys. In the photo, they look like any children who love their daddies and want to be with them and look up to them.
Exactly. *Everything you said*
I wonder if the open house he is referring to was the same night as the crime.
I for years thought it was the same day, and that there was such an event as a Christmas open house at their home.
Now I'm told that they went out that evening to a party at their friends the Whites' house. Cannot believe they would have held an open house in the afternoon and gone to a party elsewhere that night, but who knows? Anyway, others seem to just KNOW that the only party in question was the one away from their house.
So I've decided I must have dreamed the whole thing or that I heard false media reports. Now this! Which means I have something in common with this freak, Karr, in regard to his saying he was at the Ramseys' open house. Color me confused and frustrated.
Now there's different info coming out about his mother regarding divorce from his father, her death, etc.
Getting dizzy here.
Look over here, esp. posts #247 and #276. See what I mean??
JonBenet Ramsey Murder Case SuspectFR Thread Roundup
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1686829/posts?page=271
His father said he thought he was dead. So did he die by accident?? with no body??? and someone collected an insurance policy??
We're looking for where he gets his money from.
I know......it's way out.......but so is he.
I found out something interesting. The Ramseys hosted a party three nights before the murder at their house. The night of the murder they were at the Whites.
That would have been the party that Karr told the CA woman about being at and gaining the trust of Jon Benet. And might explain why there is so much confusion about "Christmas Parties" in this case.
On the other thread, they are disputing that there was any open house in '96/saying instead that there was one in '95, not '96.
I just read it today, but I don't think it was on FR. I'll have to look for the link later.
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The JonBenet case: Is a man whose last name contains the word "hell" the actual killer of JonBenet Ramsey?
Let me digress: A leg injury has enabled Sneed to watch 'round-the-clock TV coverage of the unsolved murder of the young beauty queen until my eyes started confusing Wolf Blitzer with Catherine Crier. This media madhouse, fueled by a frenzy to feed first at the scoop trough, has yielded goofy interviews and confused facts since the arrest of John Mark Karr, who confessed to being involved in JonBenet's death.
Let me suggest: However, Sneed spotted a CourtTV documentary on the private detectives who worked on behalf of the Ramseys to find their daughter's killer. Their work centered on one strong possibility: a Boulder, Colo., man who committed "suicide" after JonBenet's death.
Their suspect liked young girls, had a stun gun, owned boots that left a similar footprint to the ones found at the scene, and reportedly said he wanted to know what it was like to "crack a head." (JonBenet's skull was fractured.) The private investigators felt the man, who shot cats and fired guns in proximity of his friends, may have been murdered. They believe his suicide looked more like a homicide. And after his death, a series of home invasions by a man who attempted to molest sleeping children in the area around the Ramseys' home stopped.
Will this case surface again?
Did two people abduct JonBenet?
Did Karr witness someone else cracking her skull?
Stay tuned.
August 22, 2006 - BY MICHAEL SNEED SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
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Hello,
I am the guy who posted a few days ago concerning my encounter with Karr in 2002. I found out the other day, thanks to a Colorado reporter, that I had indeed met the fellow who is now under arrest. I feel very ill at ease knowing that I came face to face with someone this sick.
As I wrote, I saw Karr at Shakespeare and Co. Bookshop in the autumn of 2002 and learned through a casual conversation that he had been employed as a nanny in the Netherlands and had briefly worked in South Korea. I ran into him a few weeks later when he told me that he had been in Istanbul to start a teaching job that didn't come through, and, thus he was back in Paris, unemployed, without a work visa, living off his savings and staying in a rather cramped attic above the bookshop. He appeared to be eccentric and down and out, but not the embodiment of evil, that I was to discover later on, he is.
Hi - so glad you came back and posted to us. Sorry I couldn't find your original post amongst the 1000s on this topic - I tried!
I bet you had a cow when you saw this Sandrock piece! Isn't that something? Such a small FReeper world. What are the odds?
I don't know if we'll ever figure this guy out, but I hope the DA can. Please continue to share any insights you have into this guy as we go along.
Here is a quick reference list of the FR threads so far. I update the lists each morning, if there have been enough threads started (I heard a groan in the background, lol):
JonBenet Ramsey Murder Case Suspect
FR Thread Roundup
Free Republic ^ | August 16-22, 2006
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1686829/posts?page=2#2
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1686829/posts?page=460#460
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/1686829/posts?page=648#648
Apparently the Open House for the Christmas Homes Tour was in 1994, instead of 1995, as I had thought.
I do know that several hundred flyers from that 1994 one, giving the home's background, history, owner info, were left over and had been stashed in the basement somewhere in all the mess and jumble outside the room where JBR's body was found.
That was touted by intruder theorists as a way to have known about the Ramseys. You know, the perp was sitting in the basement with nothing better to do than read old home tour flyers.
Since I'm not an intruder theorist, this will be my good deed for the day - to pass that tidbit along to those who are. *ducking*
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