Posted on 08/16/2006 6:37:04 PM PDT by PghBaldy
AN ARREST in Bangkok raised hopes last night of a breakthrough in the decade-old murder of JonBenet Ramsey, the American child beauty queen. An American primary schoolteacher was taken into custody in the Thai capital as a possible suspect in the strangling of the six-year-old girl at her home in Colorado on the night of Christmas Day 1996.
US reports said that John Karr, 41, had been in custody in Thailand on unrelated sex charges.
The case provoked a media frenzy in 1996 because of the spotlight it shone on the affluent parents and their daughter’s participation in child beauty pageants.
JonBenet followed in the footsteps of her mother, Patsy, who was crowned Miss West Virginia 1977, to win a host of child beauty titles such as Colorado’s Little Miss Christmas, Colorado State All-Star Kids Cover Girl, and National Tiny Miss Beauty.
America’s newly competitive cable television news networks aired around the clock home-video of the tiny blonde girl competing in the contests.
Patsy Ramsey summoned police to the family home in Boulder on Boxing Day, saying that she found a rambling three-page ransom note demanding $118,000 (£62,000) for her daughter.
Investigators, believing that the girl had been abducted, trampled through the crime scene before the girl’s body was found garrotted in the basement. The killing became America’s most notorious Whodunnit? JonBenet’s parents fell under an “umbrella of suspicion”, the local prosecutor said, and they were questioned by police. JonBenet’s brother, Burke, who was nine at the time of her death, was also interviewed.
But the family always protested their innocence. JonBenet’s parents eventually wrote a book called The Death of Innocence before Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer in June this year at the age of 49.
In 2003 a federal judge in Atlanta concluded that the weight of the evidence was more consistent with the intruder theory than with the theory that Mrs Ramsey killed her daughter. The following year a DNA test found traces of male genetic material on JonBenet’s underwear that did not match any suspects on an FBI list of violent offenders.
Mary Lacey, the Boulder District Attorney, said yesterday that the arrest came after several months of investigation.
John Ramsey, JonBenet’s father, said: “The investigation of the individual arrested in connection with JonBenet’s death was discussed with Patsy and me by the Boulder district attorney’s office prior to Patsy’s death in June.
“So Patsy was aware that authorities were close to making an arrest in the case and had she lived to see this day, would no doubt have been as pleased as I am with today’s development almost ten years after our daughter’s murder.”
In an interview with Colorado’s KUSA-TV, he said that he did not believe he knew the suspect in Bangkok. “To my knowledge, no, I didn’t,” he said.
The suspect, who had lived in Atlanta, was visiting Thailand. The Ramseys lived in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody before moving to Colorado in 1991, a year after JonBenet was born. The suspect is expected to be brought back to the United States by the weekend.
The Ramseys’ old Tudor-style house in Colorado recently came up for sale for the fourth time since the killing at a reduced price of $1.7 million. Similar homes sell for $2 million or more.
Fox radio news is reporting he has confessed to "elements of the crime"....
Why is it postal workers as a group lead the league in office shootings (going postal) and teachers seem to lead the league in child sexual abuse. Hope for his sake he's tenured so he can keep his NEA job....
Could we please try him over there and pay to have him housed in their prisons? There was a report that there's a DNA match as well - if that, and the confession to the elements of the crime are correct, then he'll do very well in Thailand's prions.
Then why the ransom letter written with Patsy's distintive "M" and a ransom amount for the exact odd dollar value of John's last bonus? Why lie about the timing of her last meal, which was timed by how much pineapple was in her stomach? Why all of a sudden did John know where to find her in the house?
I imagine that he ran afoul of some DNA database in the depths of the Internet.
The ransom note is still very troubling due to its undeniable strangeness. It has several unlikely details which remain unexplained and give reason for suspicion.
IB$T Thailand.
Questions that many here seem to forget.
And democRATS lead the league in treason, treachery, self-hatred, appeasement, anti-Americanism and ______(you fill in the blank).
He'll probably be the head of the Union with this on his CV.
Why all of a sudden did John know where to find her in the house?The police had searched the house, but sent John Ramsey and a neighbor down to look in the basement. The reporter said, this should never have been done, and it was never reported that that was why he found her.
Becky
Uh, no. There is a building in NY city where they wharehouse teachers that they can't fire, but who have been considered too dangerous to leave in the classroom. I am not making this up...saw on John Stossel's program.
I saw research that showed the postal thing is a myth. It's probably just that there are SO MANY of them. The schoolteacher thing is like why robbers robb banks...
The amount of the bonus is strange.
Wow, that is a scary thought. I bet there is an Old Teachers Home where all these old Gym teachers sit around all day talking about the good old days when you could play BOMBARDMENT!!!
Even if this turns out to be the murderer, I still think something is very fishy in this case. Something to do with the family -- not necessarily the parents.
Sadly, you don't have to go all the way there to see such assertions. Catholic bashing is a sport here as well :(
bookmarked
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