BANGKOK – John Mark Karr, who was arrested in Bangkok yesterday for questioning about the murder of six-year-old American beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, told police he was with Ms. Ramsey when she died nearly ten years ago, but her death was a suicide.
Mr. Karr, 41, a former substitute teacher in California, had been under suspicion in the Ramsey case for at least three years, said an official with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. He is also a suspect in a string of sex crimes near his former homes in Alabama and Georgia.
Mr. Karr, who is believed to have fled to Bangkok after Sonoma County, California, authorities had charged him with five counts of possession of child pornography in April 2001, told investigators yesterday that he had gone to Ms. Ramsey’s house the day after Christmas in 1996 because he was in love with JonBenet.
“I had hoped she would give me a souvenir, perhaps her Calamity Jane costume,” he told Bangkok police.
When Mr. Karr let himself into the Ramsey house through a basement window, he found JonBenet in the wine cellar. A white rope, coiled around her neck and one wrist, was tied to a stick; a heart was drawn in red ink on her left palm.
“I tried to get her to sign an autograph,” said Mr. Karr, “but I could see it was too late. After giving her a good-bye kiss, I left.”
Mr. Karr’s claim that JonBenet committed suicide is supported by a letter written by JonBenet’s mother, Patsy, shortly before she died of ovarian cancer on June 24 this year. As reported exclusively on this website, Mrs. Ramsey had mailed the letter to her attorney with instructions that it not be opened until after her death.
“As long as I was alive, I was determined to protect my daughter’s name,” wrote Mrs. Ramsey, “even if that meant being a suspect in her ‘murder.’ I always knew, however, that JonBenet would not have wanted the fear of being ‘murdered’ to prevent other little girls from entering beauty pageants. That is why I have decided to reveal the true cause of her death at this time. Besides, if I had come forward with the details of her suicide earlier, I might have had to return the trophies she had won, and that would have broken my heart.”
According to Mrs. Ramsey, her daughter was distraught about gaining five pounds during the Thanksgiving-
Christmas holidays, and she feared she would not be able to wear her Sally Starr costume in an upcoming pageant.
The body of JonBenet Ramsey was discovered by her father, John Ramsey. Eight hours earlier his wife had found a ransom note on a staircase leading to the basement. The long, rambling note, which has been called the War and Peace of ransom notes, demanded $118,000 for the safe return of JonBenet.
Although Patsy Ramsey told CNN on January 1, 1997, “There is a killer on the loose,” police eventually came to suspect that she, her husband, and/or their son, Burke, then nine, was that killer.
Among the chief reasons for their suspicions were these: the ransom note was written on paper obtained from a tablet in the Ramsey house; the amount of the ransom demand, $118,000, equaled a Christmas bonus Mr. Ramsey had received recently; the handwriting on the ransom note was similar to Mrs. Ramsey’s; there were no signs of forced entry to the house, nor were there footprints in the snow around the house.
For almost a decade a nation turned its lonely eyes to the JonBenet Ramsey “murder” case, yet after thousands of hours and millions of dollars and untold speculation, no indictments were ever handed down.
Detectives appeared no closer to solving the case when Patsy Ramsey died than they had been when it happened. Will the arrest of John Mark Karr, who stands accused of first degree murder, kidnapping, child sexual assault, and abusing a corpse in Colorado, put paid to the matter or throw another spanner into these already baffling works?
Spanner theorists point to the testimony of Mr. Karr’s former wife, Laura Karr, who told KGO-TV in San Francisco yesterday that during their marriage her husband had spent considerable time researching the Ramsey case. She also said that she and Mr. Karr were together in Alabama when JonBenet was murdered.
(Editor’s note: for the latest information on this case, read JonBenet Ramsey Suspect Confesses to Natalee Holloway Murder.)
In related news, CNN television personality Nancy Grace told reporters, ” john karr should be tortured and rectally violated the way he tortured and rectally violated that poor
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