Posted on 08/17/2006 1:51:06 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
BOULDER, Colo. (Reuters) - An American schoolteacher said he was with 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey when she died, but questions surfaced over his story a day after his arrest in Thailand.
A Colorado prosecutor cautioned that more work remained in the case.
John Mark Karr, 41, who was arrested in a dramatic breakthrough in the sensational 1996 murder, spoke to reporters on Thursday while being escorted by authorities in Bangkok. Asked if he was innocent, Karr shook his head and said, "No."
JonBenet was found beaten and strangled in the basement of her Boulder, Colorado, home on December 26, 1996 -- hours after her mother found a bizarre, three-page letter claiming the girl had been kidnapped -- and the unsolved case has since fueled countless theories.
Karr was detained in Bangkok on a U.S. warrant seeking his arrest for murder, kidnapping and sexual assault.
"I was with JonBenet when she died," Karr said. "The death was an accident."
Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy said Karr had started teaching second grade in a Bangkok school on Tuesday. She said investigators would have preferred more time to develop evidence but public safety worries and the possibility of flight sometimes prompts an arrest in criminal cases.
"There is much more work to be done now that the suspect is in custody," she said. "John Karr is presumed innocent."
Lacy would not say what evidence her office had against Karr, who came to the attention of authorities by writing a series of e-mails to a Colorado journalism professor who made three documentaries about the murder.
It was not yet clear if Karr's DNA had been tested to compare with fluids found in Ramsey's underwear, or whether other evidence tied him to the crime scene. An unidentified footprint and a handprint were found near the girl's body, which was discovered by her father, her mouth duct-taped and neck tightly garroted.
'I LOVED JONBENET'
Lacy would not comment when asked whether Karr, who once lived near JonBenet's hometown of Atlanta, could have made a false confession. Karr fled Northern California after being charged with possession of child pornography.
Questions arose about Karr's story when his ex-wife, Lara, told KGO-TV in San Francisco that he was with her in Alabama the entire Christmas season when JonBenet was killed.
His father, Wexford Karr, told the Denver Post that his son had been deeply interested in the JonBenet Ramsey case and had researched a book on the subject. KGO said Lara Karr told it her ex-husband had also been fascinated by the case of another murdered girl, Polly Klaas, which had attracted wide publicity.
Educators in Alabama, where Karr had studied education and served a teaching internship, said his interaction with children had raised concerns and he told many contradictory stories about himself.
"I did not think he could interact with children or adults .... You never knew what was true and what wasn't," Janice Myhan, a professor of education at the University of North Alabama, told Reuters.
Lacy's chief investigator, Tom Bennett, said talks were under way with Thai authorities to have Karr returned to the United States. Officials in Washington said Karr would not require extradition from Bangkok and could simply be deported.
Slender, sandy haired and dressed in a blue polo shirt and beige trousers, Karr looked pale and dazed as he appeared briefly at a Bangkok news conference, surrounded by police.
"I loved JonBenet," Karr said in a quiet voice. Asked if he had killed the girl, he appeared to shake his head, but said again: "She died accidentally.
University of Colorado journalism professor Michael Tracey, whose correspondence with Karr attracted the interest of authorities, told Reuters that he began getting the e-mails after the broadcast of his documentary "Who Killed the Pageant Queen."
He said he turned the e-mails, which did not use Karr's real name, over to authorities, who used them to track the suspect to Thailand.
"I am convinced an intruder killed JonBenet," Tracey said. "This guy has the right to be presumed not guilty. Let him have his day in court. The Ramseys were never given the right to be presumed innocent.
(Additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles, Rosalind Russell and Tanny Chia in Bangkok and Deborah Charles in Washington)
I just heard on the radio that JMK also says he picked JonBenet up at school, drugged her, and raped her (though I doubt he used the word "rape"). Needless to say, school was not in session due to the holiday, and it's implausible that no one in the family would have noticed her missing between the end of "school" and bedtime. The guy is either totally out of touch with reality or doing a heck of good job of faking same. I'm increasingly inclined to think thatJMK was arrested not because authorities think he did the deed, but because his knowledge of specific information that was never made public makes them want to know where he got it -- either from the actual killer (directly or indirectly), or from a LEO involved in the original investigation who leaked the info at some point for some reason.
Sicko, yes. But IMO just wanting an out of Thai jail free card and 15+ minutes of notoriety.
When they conclude he had nothing to do with the Jon Benet case, they should throw him back to the Thai authorities.
The other reason they decided to grab him now was the obvious one. It had come to their attention some time ago (via the professor reporting the e-mail correspondence to authorities) that he was a US citizen living in a foreign country, with an outstanding warrant for failing to appear in court for something related to a prior child porn conviction he had. That plus his JonBenet-obsessed e-mail correspondence with the professor was enough to send some US investigators over to Bangkok to put him under surveillance, to see if perhaps any of his babblings about JonBenet had anything to do with real involvement in the murder, but with the guarantee that they'd at least bring home a child porn convict who had an outstanding warrant here. Then he started a new job as a second grade teacher, just one day before he was arrested. That was the trigger; no more surveillance. Neither the US nor Thai authorities wanted to responsible for any molestation incident that they could have prevented. And the Thai government certainly knew that US investigators were over there watching this guy, and whether or not they knew it had anything to do with JonBenet, they almost certainly knew it it was related to child sexual abuse and/or porn trafficking.
To be blunt, the US authorities announced their intention to bring him back to the US to face various charges here, barely ahead of an obviously forthcoming announcement from the Thai government that THEY were booting the guy out of Thailand and deporting him to the US. It wouldn't have looked good for the US to be the second announcer in this situation, when they'd obviously been aware of it due to their surveillance operation. Picture this sequence playing out in the news media -- Announcement #1, by Thai authorities: "We are booting out this weirdo American who has a prior child porn conviction, an outstanding warrant for same, who has just started a new job teaching young children here in Bangkok, and who US authorities have had under surveillance here for several weeks while he sought and obtained his latest job"; Announcement #2, by US authorities: "Uh, yes, okay, good idea, we were going to ask you to send him back anyway".
The next question is why they didn't bring him back quietly, without babbling to the press about any possible connection to the JonBenet case. That was probably considered, but even apart from the obvious propensity of the Thai authorities to babble to the media without restraint, they wouldn't have been able to keep JMK quiet for more than a few days tops, before his court-appointed lawyer would have insisted that he be allowed to speak to journalists, or to somebody else through whom word would quickly leak out. As obviously nuts as JMK is, any attorney would be doing his case a favor by making sure he advertised his nuttiness as widely as possible. In addition, the professor, and probably other known and/or unknown parties with whom JMK has been corresponding (the prof was probably not JMK's only e-mail pal, though he may have been the only sane and stable one) would likely have spilled the beans, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Either of those scenarios would have left the US authorities as second announcer again, looking as if they have no control over the investigation or indictment process.
I'll be way surprised if the DNA test turns up a solid match. It's not impossible, but I'll definitely be surprised.
P.S. Can you point me to the Iowa story you mentioned? I have family roots in Iowa, and am just curious.
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