Did this man really kill Jonbennet?
By topi lyambila + agencies
Aug 19, 2006, 05:59
Mark Karr - Some believe he is just a fantasist other think he is deranged.
After more than three years of correspondence with the man who confessed this week to killing six-year-old Colorado "beauty queen" JonBenet Ramsey, University of Colorado journalism professor Michael Tracey received an email with a bizarre request.
On the day before Christmas Eve last year, teacher John Mark Karr asked his confidant to read aloud an ode he called JonBenet, My Love at Ramsey's old house on Christmas Day in Boulder, Colorado, where she was sexually assaulted and strangled nine years earlier.
"JonBenet, my love, my life. I love you and shall forever love you. I pray that you can hear my voice calling out to you from my darkness - this darkness that now separates us," it read, in part.
The email, one of many between Tracey and a man believed to be Karr obtained by the Rocky Mountain News, sheds light on a quirky, frail-looking man who the world now believes is responsible for the grisly slaying of the little girl in the basement of her home on Boxing Day in 1996.
Karr, in a startling confession, told the world he was with the girl he loved when she died.
"Her death was an accident," he said in Bangkok, where he had been trying to build a new life before being arrested this week following a request from US authorities.
"I am so very sorry for what happened to JonBenet. It's very important for me that everyone knows that I love her very much, that her death was unintentional, that it was an accident."
At first glance, it was case closed after all those years, solving one of America's most enduring murder mysteries and finally putting to rest those vicious rumours that JonBenet's parents had something to do with her death.
But as the confession was placed under the microscope in the US yesterday, it became apparent that Karr, 41, had posed more questions than he had answered.
At a press conference, Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy confirmed Karr had been arrested for Ramsey's murder and had been under investigation for "months".
But she would not discuss the evidence her office had gathered or say what charges would be brought. "We should all heed the poignant advice (JonBenet's father) John Ramsey gave," Lacy said. "Do not jump to judgment. Do not speculate."
Dr Michael Bader, a forensic scientist with a long involvement in the case, said yesterday: "As every hour passes it is looking more and more like a false statement."
This does not suggest Karr is squeaky clean.
Some dark episodes in his life were exposed yesterday, including the allegation that as an 18-year-old he married a 12-year-old Alabama girl after getting her to change her age and took her across state lines. "He was abusing her every way there was," her mother said.
Karr, who has three sons, lost his job in Petaluma, California - scene of the infamous 1993 child murder of Polly Klaas - and was divorced after being charged with possession of child pornography in 2001. He fled the US with a warrant being issued for his arrest.
The single most important piece of evidence in the murder was always the three-page ransom note found on the stairs by JonBenet's mother, Patsy, that Boxing Day morning.
Written on paper from a notepad kept in the home, it claimed JonBenet had been kidnapped by a foreign gang, demanded a ransom of $US118,000, and ordered the Ramseys to wait for a phone call the next day.
Instead, the Ramseys called the police. An initial search of the house failed to find the body. It was hours later, when John Ramsey made another search of the basement, that the corpse was discovered.
The police quickly came to regard the $118,000 ransom demand as hugely significant because it was exactly the amount that John Ramsey, head of a software company, had paid himself as an annual bonus weeks earlier.
That led the police to discount the intruder theory and narrow the list of suspects to JonBenet's parents and those close enough to know their personal financial details.
When a forensic handwriting analysis cleared John Ramsey of writing the ransom note but left open the possibility that his wife had written it, the police thought they had their killer. But with the unidentified male DNA in the mix and two unidentified footprints in the basement, there was never enough evidence to lay charges.
If Karr's confession is fiction, the huge international media juggernaut now resurrecting every gruesome detail of the case may soon switch its attention back to JonBenet's family, and to Boulder DA Mary Lacy, who took over control of the Ramsey murder investigation in 2003.
Lacy has sealed the arrest warrant affidavit, so the details of any evidence against Karr that can corroborate his confession - if any exists - remains unknown. She's also been remarkably reluctant to explain the circumstances of the arrest, saying only that a warrant can be issued prior to an investigation being completed and that urgent circumstances could "drive the timing of an arrest". Even so, Karr's confession is full of holes.
Karr says he drugged JonBenet before killing her, but toxicology tests found no drugs in her body. Her says he had sex with JonBenet, but while there was evidence of vaginal abrasion, no semen was found.
After 48 hours there's also no evidence that Karr was ever in Colorado and his ex-wife, Lara Knutson, has insisted that he spent the Christmas of 1996 with his family in Alabama.
Asked what happened when JonBenet died, Karr said: "It would take several hours to describe that. It's a very involved series of events that would involve a lot of time. It's very painful for me to talk about."
What is known is that Karr was obsessed with child-killers. According to his brother Nate he was researching a book about them and had contacted people like Polly Klaas's killer, Richard Allen Davis.
He had also been in email contact with Tracey, a passionate believer in the innocence of the Ramseys who has produced several TV documentaries on the case.
According to some reports, Karr revealed something about JonBenet's murder in his communications with Tracey - which were often lurid and disturbing - only the killer could have known.
Emails published yesterday do not back up Karr's claim that he had a role in Ramsey's death, but they do raise doubts about the itinerant schoolteacher's grasp on reality.
In one email, Karr brings up pop singer Michael Jackson, whose close relationships with young boys landed him in court.
"I will tell you that I can understand people like Michael Jackson and feel sympathy when he suffers as he has," Karr wrote. He added that he, himself, "is trapped in a world that does not understand".
Karr's empathy for Jackson extended to writing to Tracey about Finding Neverland, a movie about the author of Peter Pan. "I can only say," he wrote, "that I can relate very well to children and the way they think and feel. I think you are asking if I am much a 'Peter Pan'. In many ways, the answer is yes."
The conclusive test of Karr's role in Ramsey's death will be matching his DNA - he provided a mouth swab in Thailand - with the unidentified male DNA obtained from blood in JonBenet's underwear and in scrapings from her fingernails.
But these tests may prove inconclusive, which means his handwriting will be crucial.
"It's clear to me that he's somewhat interested or maybe even obsessed by the case and the real question is whether he's inserting himself into it for some obscure psychological reason," said Carlton Smith, who wrote 1997's Death of a Little Princess: The Tragic Story of the Murder of JonBenet Ramsey
