Posted on 08/25/2006 5:52:05 AM PDT by Mr. Brightside
Brother: Karr didn't kill JonBenet
By JON SARCHE and CHASE SQUIRES, Associated Press Writers
39 minutes ago
BOULDER, Colo. - John Mark Karr's brother insisted Friday that Karr did not kill JonBenet Ramsey. "Absolutely not. Emphatically. Without a doubt," Nate Karr said in a television interview.
Karr told ABC's "Good Morning America" he was certain his brother spent Christmas 1996, when JonBenet was slain, with his family.
"Well I can say almost without question that from the time that John had children he has never missed a Christmas with his family, and that's any Christmas," said Karr, who appeared on the show with his father, Wexford Karr.
"If he was away from his family during Christmas it would have been a family scandal," Nate Karr said.
The brother said he was uncertain where the family spent the holiday when the 6-year-old child beauty queen was slain in her Boulder, Colo., home.
"To the best of our recollection, he was either with us in Atlanta or with (his ex-wife) Lara," Nate Karr said. "It's not as easy as you might think to remember 10 years ago."
Addressing his brother, Nate Karr said: "We love you and we support you 100 percent. ... Help's on the way."
John Mark Karr, meanwhile, spent his first night in an 8-by-10-foot jail cell in Colorado, away from other inmates for his own safety.
Nine days after his arrest in Thailand, the 41-year-old former schoolteacher now awaits a court appearance that could come as early as next week.
Karr arrived in Colorado Thursday, flying in from Los Angeles on a state police plane to face charges in a homicide case prosecutors acknowledged is in its infancy.
Formal charges were pending and the date of Karr's first court appearance could be announced Friday, the district attorney's office said.
His first few hours at the jail were to include physical and mental evaluations, and he was isolated from the other 480 inmates, Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said.
"Anybody that's in jail in our population that faces these kinds of charges, charges against children, faces some danger," Pelle said.
Questions about Karr's involvement in the case have arisen since he told reporters following his arrest in Thailand that he was with JonBenet at the time of her death but that it was an accident.
Boulder County prosecutors have refused to detail any evidence they might have, but in a court filing this week said investigators didn't learn of Karr's name until Aug. 11, five days before his arrest. They said he was arrested in part because they feared he might get tipped off and vanish.
The court filing conflicts with the Sonoma County, Calif., sheriff, who said his office alerted Boulder authorities about Karr in 2001 after he was arrested on child pornography charges. The sheriff and Boulder prosecutors declined to comment on the apparent discrepancy.
Karr has professed love for JonBenet in e-mails with a Colorado professor, and told a California woman he believes the girl was tortured before she was strangled.
Sonoma County sheriff's Lt. Dave Edmonds said Karr expressed an "apparent fascination" with 1993 murder victim Polly Klaas and JonBenet, and "presented ideas about what the murderers of Polly Klaas and JonBenet Ramsey must have thought and felt."
But there was no confession, Edmonds said, or anything else to suggest Karr played a role in JonBenet's slaying.
The Boulder arrest warrant and supporting affidavit remain sealed and the district attorney is fighting media requests to open them. Prosecutors said in the court filing Wednesday the affidavit contains evidence never before disclosed publicly.
Former Denver prosecutor Craig Silverman speculated that investigators may already have DNA evidence that they believe links Karr to JonBenet's death.
He said prosecutors may have obtained and tested DNA from a letter Karr reportedly sent through the mail, and that may have persuaded Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy to send an investigator to Thailand to surreptitiously collect more samples.
Nate Karr told ABC his brother may have become obsessed with the case because he wanted to write a book about it. Because he lost the ability to see his sons and wife five years ago, "maybe he felt lost," the brother said. "And maybe that was the only reality he had left."
After JonBenet's father, John Ramsey, found her body in the family's basement on Dec. 26, 1996, police collected DNA from blood spots in her underwear and from under her fingernails.
Investigators have said some of the DNA was too degraded to use as evidence, but some was of sufficient quality to submit to the FBI in 2003. The sample did not match any of the 1.5 million samples in the agency's database, according to the Ramsey family attorney.
Other evidence includes a ransom note, a mysterious boot print found outside the house, marks on JonBenet's body that some say could have been made by a stun gun; and signs that someone may have entered the house through a basement window.
Dozens of attorneys have come forward offering to represent Karr. The county public defenders' office has asked to meet with Karr, the sheriff said. It was not known whether such a meeting had taken place Thursday.
As opposed to taking a 13 y.o. girl across state lines to marry her, or getting fired from a teaching job for inappropriate conduct? This family is full of nuts, top to bottom.
I have my doubts he did it, but with his history, I'm glad he's off the street so that he can't molest anymore children.
After seeing the Mullet Carr from the 80's and seeing him now that he's here, my gut tells me he's an attention whore seeing his life dwindle into nothingness. This was his big shot at getting attention. He was doing his best Hannibal Lecter over in Thailand but now he just seems bemused that his plan is working so well. It helps that there are more "journalist" than people and events to cover.
Bring back the car chases, I promise never to complain about them again.
Creepy family too.
Struck me the same way.
Help's on the way.
Karr family: "Uncle John is having another one of those 'attacks'".
The way people doubt Karr's confession on grounds that he is a limelight-seeking wacko, you'd think he had hired a publicist and sent out one news release after another.
The fact is this is a guy who had been *running* from the law, not running to it. He confessed to the murder only after he began to be questioned about it. The "it was an accident" bit is easily understood as his spin to lessen the contempt that people feel for him for the murder. I think what he means is that he did not go there intending to murder her, but to kidnap her. In his mind it was an "accident" because he ended up murdering her instead.
If you look at his yearbook handwriting sample and the ransom note you see that both have a characteristic that is very difficult to believe is coincidental. It is that the writer of both sometimes makes a "tail" before the downstroke at the top of letters such as t and d--not all the time but some of the time. Add to this that both authors write the letetr a as in the times roman font, and both overuse exclamation points, and it seems to me that the handwriting people who say the authors are one and the same are not practicing voodoo.
Either the DNA matches or it doesn't. If it does, he doesn't need an attorney other than to go through the motions (pun intended). If it doesn't match, he won't need an attorney so much as an agent to field media appearances after he's booted out of county jail. (Or sent back to Calif on other outstanding warrants.)
>>>My brother was diagnosed as a sociopath at 13. The psychs just told us something we already knew. My brother is a compulsive liar. He will tell a lie, even when the truth would be of more benefit to him. If he tells you the sky is blue, you better go check...........>>>
That is my ex-husband. He can't seem to help himself when lying. Sad it took me five years to figure it out because my head starting warping with all the lies and trying to make sense of it all. It would be tiny little things that didn't matter, but I had to try and make sense of it and it got too exhausting. Sadly, sociopaths have no remorse either. Oh, except when it benefits them to SHOW remorse.
>>>As opposed to taking a 13 y.o. girl across state lines to marry her, or getting fired from a teaching job for inappropriate conduct? This family is full of nuts, top to bottom.>>>
Not all.
Oh, that's different. My brother is just a 42-year-old teenager.
Mine is 50...........and still as he was when a teen.........
I'm sorry. That must be very difficult for everyone who knows him.
Karr is a sick criminal who stalked children in any case, whether he is this girl's murderer or not.
So my point is that this family has nothing to protect here regarding the brother anyway.
Most of the handwriting experts are saying this is inconclusive. The one guy who claimed a "99%" match turns out to have been recently disqualified as a handwriting expert in court because of a lack of credentials.
We may never know if this guy did it.
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