daaaaaaaaaaamn! so the parents didn’t know who killed her after all The jury’s still out

By T.R. Reid and Spencer S. Hsu
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, August 17, 2006; 5:10 AM

DENVER, Aug. 16 — An American man was arrested in Bangkok as a suspect in the 1996 death of JonBenet Ramsey, the 6-year-old girl from Boulder, Colo., whose unsolved killing became a media obsession, prosecutors said Wednesday.

[The man, John Mark Karr, 41, said publicly Thursday he was with the 6-year-old when she died and called her death “an accident,” the Associated Press reported from Bangkok. “I was with JonBenet when she died,” Karr, a former schoolteacher, told reporters in Bangkok, visibly nervous and stuttering as he spoke. “Her death was an accident.” Police said Karr admitted to the killing after he was arrested Wednesday at his downtown Bangkok apartment by Thai and American authorities.

Karr will be taken to Colorado within the next week where he will face charges of murder, kidnapping and child sexual assault, Ann Hurst, Department of Homeland Security attache at the American Embassy in Bangkok, said at a news conference in Bangkok.

Karr, speaking to reporters after the news conference, declined to say what his connection was to the Ramsey family or how long he had known JonBenet. Wearing a blue, short-sleeved shirt, he appeared ashen with an expressionless look on his face.]

Karr was arrested on sex charges unrelated to JonBenet’s slaying after several months of investigation, officials said. Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy said investigators from her office were heading to Thailand to question the suspect and bring him to Colorado.

Officials said that John and Patsy Ramsey, who were at one point suspected in their daughter’s death, had been consulted during the investigation. Patsy Ramsey died of cancer in June but was told before her death that an arrest might be imminent, her husband said.

“Patsy was aware that authorities were close to making an arrest in the case,” Ramsey said in a statement, “and had she lived to see this day, would no doubt have been as pleased as I am with today’s development almost 10 years after our daughter’s murder.”

Ramsey expressed the family’s “gratitude” to investigators who worked on the case for nearly a decade.

Lin Wood, the Ramseys’ lawyer, would not say whether any connection existed between Karr and the victim’s parents. He did note that Karr, like the Ramseys, had lived in suburban Atlanta.

Nathaniel Karr, 34, who lives in the Atlanta area, said he had been contacted by scores of news organizations and told that his brother had been arrested. In a telephone interview, he said his brother had lived in Alabama and California but “to my knowledge had never set foot in Colorado.” Public records indicate that John Karr had lived in Conyers and Petaluma, Calif. It is not clear when he went to Thailand.

Nathaniel Karr said the family had been close, getting together at Christmas, for example, but he has not been in contact with his brother in the past two or three years since he moved to the West Coast. He added that he knew of no prior legal or personal problems his brother had similar to those alleged in the Ramsey case. “I have no idea what his legal status is” or whether he has a lawyer, Karr said.

Officials declined to say how John Karr became a suspect in the case. One law enforcement official told the Associated Press that Karr had been communicating with somebody in Boulder who had been following the investigation and was cooperating with law enforcement officials there.

Lacy said in a statement that the arrest came “following several months of a focused and complex investigation,” and she said more information would be released Thursday.

The killing transfixed the media, producing years of splashy headlines in supermarket tabloids and endless replays of a brief video of JonBenet parading across a pageant stage in a lavish costume.

The case began in confusion in an upscale neighborhood of Boulder.

JonBenet, a regular participant in child beauty contests, was found beaten and strangled in the family home the day after Christmas in 1996. Male DNA residue was found in her underwear, but police never reported a match for the sample.

Police found no signs of forced entry into the house and no suspicious footprints outside. The girl’s father reportedly carried her body upstairs before police arrived, making initial investigation more difficult. The discovery of a ransom note, asking for $118,000 for the return of JonBenet, was another unexplained element in the case.

Police found that the Ramsey family had given more than a dozen keys to the house — to maids, workmen and others. Scores of neighbors and family friends were interviewed.

Investigators from the Boulder Police Department and the county prosecutor’s office argued bitterly about different theories in the case.

Police focused on the girl’s family, saying that the parents and JonBenet’s older brother, Burke, were all under an “umbrella of suspicion.” The county prosecutor openly rejected that idea, saying the killer was more likely not part of the family and charging that the police attention to the family had hampered a broader investigation.

The Ramseys left Boulder, but articles, television reports and books suggesting their involvement followed them. In one national TV interview, John Ramsey looked into the camera and said: “We’re not guilty. We’re innocent.”

In a 2003 libel case, U.S. District Judge Julie E. Carnes in Atlanta concluded that “the weight of the evidence is more consistent with a theory that an intruder killed JonBenet than it is with a theory that Mrs. Ramsey did so.” Lacy, the district attorney in Boulder, issued a statement saying she shared that view.

Wood, the Ramseys’ lawyer, said the arrest of Karr is potentially another milestone toward clearing the parents’ names. “I don’t think that I have characterized the arrest of Mr. Karr as vindication of the Ramseys,” he said in an interview. “More accurately, I would describe it as another step toward a complete vindication.”

In the statement he issued after the arrest, John Ramsey recalled the family’s ordeal.

“I want to have only very limited comment on today’s arrest because I feel it is extremely important to not only let the justice system operate to its conclusion in an orderly manner, but also to avoid feeding the type of media speculation that my wife and I were subjected to for so many years,” the statement said.

“Words cannot adequately express my gratitude for the efforts of Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy and the members of her investigative team.”