Political Crossfire Forums

David · Joined: 29 Dec 2003 Posts: 11902 Location: Louisiana

Aug 17, 4:34 AM (ET)

By Nopporn Wong-Anan

BANGKOK (Reuters) - An American primary school teacher accused of the grisly Christmas 1996 murder of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey said on Thursday he loved the child beauty queen and her death was an accident.

John Mark Karr, 41, arrested in Thailand on Wednesday in a dramatic twist in the case that has gripped the U.S. media, was charged with murder, kidnapping and sexual abuse of a child.

"I loved JonBenet," Karr told reporters Bangkok in his first public comment since his arrest. "She died accidentally." When asked if he had killed the girl, he appeared to shake his head.

Karr, slender, sandy haired and dressed in a blue polo shirt and beige corduroy trousers, was impassive earlier as he was presented briefly at a news conference, encircled by police.

He was arrested on a U.S. Federal warrant in the presence of FBI officers after being followed for three weeks as he sought a job teaching English and Mathematics in Bangkok.

"We arrested him yesterday at an apartment not far from my office after having followed him for 21 days," Immigration Police chief Lieutenant-General Suwat Tumroungsiskul told Reuters. "During the arrest, we were accompanied by American officers. He has been in and out of Thailand a couple of times and the arrest warrant was issued just a couple of days ago," Suwat told reporters.

Police said Karr had applied for jobs at Bangkok's dozens of international schools. They had said earlier one had hired him.

"People like him are dangerous. We have criminals from all over the world running away from their home countries to look for teaching jobs in Thailand," Suwat said.

SWIFT EXTRADITION

U.S. media said Karr had been living in JonBenet's hometown of Boulder, Colorado at the time of the murder. The child was found beaten and strangled in the basement of her home on December 26 1996.

Bangkok-based U.S. Homeland Security official Ann Hurst told the news conference Karr would be extradited quickly from a country where the process can take weeks.

"He will be removed to the United States within a week," she said. She said Karr had been very cooperative with police and had displayed "a variety of emotions" since his arrest.

The case grabbed big headlines from the start and Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy said the arrest followed "several months of a focused and complex investigation."

At the time of JonBenet's murder, a note was left on a staircase of the family home saying she had been kidnapped by a "small foreign faction" who wanted $118,000 in ransom.

JonBenet's parents, John and Patsy, came under suspicion during the initial investigation and in 2002 they reached an out-of-court cash settlement with a former detective who wrote a book accusing them of murdering their own daughter.

Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer in June. The couple had been informed of the progress of the investigation that led to Karr's arrest.

"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 10 years after our daughter's murder," John Ramsey said.

Ramsey told KUSA-TV in Denver that, to the best of his knowledge, he was not acquainted with Karr.

No charges were ever filed in the decade since JonBenet was killed, but the murder generated intense media coverage drawn by JonBenet's success in youth beauty pageants, the family's wealth and mysterious elements of the case, including the note.

(Additional reporting by Rosalind Russell and Tanny Chia in Bangkok, Keith Coffman in Boulder, Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles and Deborah Charles in Washington)

http://reuters.excite.com/article/20060817/2006-08-17T083453Z_01_N16192785_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-CRIME-JONBENET-DC.html

TheGirlNextDoor · Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 22608

Well I'll be damned.

The Central Scrutinizer · Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2006 10:21 am Post subject:

TheGirlNextDoor wrote: Well I'll be damned.

Yeah, I'm sure someone owes someone else some money on this one.

Shady · Joined: 13 Oct 2005 Posts: 7413 Location: VA

As someone who studied this case in College it's been pretty well known by serious investigators that the parents weren't behind this for years. The evidence never really pointed particulary solidly that way.

superchick · Joined: 30 Sep 2004 Posts: 6549 Location: US

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060817/ap_on_re_as/jonbenet_ramsey_57

How crazy is this? His ex-wife says he was with her in Alabama at the time of the murder. Very weird.
"No evidence against Karr has been made public beyond his own admission. U.S. and Thai officials did not directly answer a question at the news conference Thursday about whether there was DNA evidence connecting him to the crime.

Karr's ex-wife, Lara Karr, told KGO-TV in California that she was with her former husband in Alabama at the time of JonBenet's killing and she does not believe her former husband was involved in the homicide.

She said her ex-husband spent a lot of time studying the cases of Ramsey and Polly Klaas, who was abducted from her Petaluma, Calif., home and slain in 1993."

metalan1 · Joined: 19 Dec 2005 Posts: 318

Yea, what prrof did they relase ? did they release any ?

Revenant · Joined: 16 Apr 2006 Posts: 15962 Location: Bliss

Now the million dollar question is.....who killed OJ's wife?

The Central Scrutinizer · Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2006 1:03 pm Post subject:

Revenant wrote: Now the million dollar question is.....who killed OJ's wife?

O.J.

Give me my money, Rush!

The Central Scrutinizer · Posted: Thu Aug 17, 2006 1:44 pm Post subject:

I dunno. I hate making pronouncements like this when I really have very limited knowledge of the factual details of the case, but something's just not adding up in my mind here. I'm not so sure this guy isn't just some sicko looking for attention.

TheGirlNextDoor · Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 22608

The Central Scrutinizer wrote: I dunno. I hate making pronouncements like this when I really have very limited knowledge of the factual details of the case, but something's just not adding up in my mind here. I'm not so sure this guy isn't just some sicko looking for attention.

I was wondering the same thing.

As far as the parents being under suspicion.. I never really thought that they did it. I was commenting more on the fact that this case is very old by the standards of a homicide case, and for this to come up like this? Just strikes me as very odd indeed.

DavidXV · Joined: 01 Oct 2004 Posts: 9828

Shady wrote: As someone who studied this case in College it's been pretty well known by serious investigators that the parents weren't behind this for years. The evidence never really pointed particularly solidly that way. I somewhat agree, except that there was never even the slightest spec of any evidence that even vaguely suggested that the Ramsey's were guilty. It was just a media circus where hillbilly cops on the case heard the media say that usually it's the parents, as if they would know, and so they went after the parents with no reason to suspect them and ignored all the evidence, very similar to the Darla Routier case except in that one they also used a hillbilly jury and convicted with zero evidence plus zero reason to suspect the parents. It's brain-dead retarded people letting the warped media and the television tell them what to think, tell them who's guilty or not, and never using their own brain, that was intended for thinking, to sort reality from the insane and senseless bilge that the media spews. IMHO the police in that town will always be under a cloud of umbrellas of suspicion, that they are just a bunch of retards and dumbasses.

sublime · Joined: 14 Feb 2005 Posts: 7249 Location: USA

Heard interesting speculation on the radio today and some questions to ponder.

1. Did this guy get in trouble in that country and decide that the best way to avoid going to a scary foreign prison was to claim he knew something of interest to American authorities.

2. That he knew the family and had lived in the same city with them a few years ago.

3. Reminders that Mr. Ramsey had behaved strangely. Had picked up his daughter and carried her upstairs, thereby destroying evidence.

4. There was something strange about the ransom note.........two copies maybe?

It was a media circus.......the media fed like vultures off this family for years.

I hope they are innocent. And if this guy is "only" a pedophile (as early reports claim) and not a murderer, I still hope he gets maximum penalty.

But they should never have turned this child into an "object" with the beauty pageants............

Harbinger · Joined: 23 Apr 2006 Posts: 617 Location: California

He might be the guy for all I know, however...

A CNN anchor said he appeared to be "shaken" by all the media attention. Maybe it's just me but... this guy wasn't just "shaken", we was shaking. People don't just wiggle like that from fear. He looks to me like he suffers from cancer, HIV or other terminal disease. Maybe this is all part of a plan to get the government to euthanize him or something.

thompaine · Joined: 11 Aug 2006 Posts: 7 Location: Idaho

Well, I hope it is him, because otherwise, some other sick bastard is getting away with murder.

mrling · Joined: 07 Aug 2006 Posts: 11

Harbinger wrote: He might be the guy for all I know, however...

A CNN anchor said he appeared to be "shaken" by all the media attention. Maybe it's just me but... this guy wasn't just "shaken", we was shaking. People don't just wiggle like that from fear.

Yes, they do.

TheGirlNextDoor · Joined: 08 Jul 2004 Posts: 22608

sublime wrote:
1. Did this guy get in trouble in that country and decide that the best way to avoid going to a scary foreign prison was to claim he knew something of interest to American authorities.

I wondered the exact same thing. It's just strange that he didn't feel compelled to confess until now when he's had plenty of time and plenty of opportunities in which to do so.

If I had to speculate on his reasons for the sudden confession, I would pick that one.

00timh · Joined: 08 Nov 2004 Posts: 12729 Location: upstate NY

TheGirlNextDoor wrote: sublime wrote:
1. Did this guy get in trouble in that country and decide that the best way to avoid going to a scary foreign prison was to claim he knew something of interest to American authorities.

I wondered the exact same thing. It's just strange that he didn't feel compelled to confess until now when he's had plenty of time and plenty of opportunities in which to do so.

If I had to speculate on his reasons for the sudden confession, I would pick that one. I am suspicous of this whole thing. His sudden confession, the fact that his ex wife is saying he wasn't even there at the time...

An interesting angle about escaping a foreign prison. Let's face it, as far as prison goes, there no better prison than a U.S. prison.

General George S.Patton · Joined: 18 Aug 2006 Posts: 4 Location: Connecticut

Don't be so quick to believe this loser is the true perp.
DNA results should be forthcoming which will help clear things up.

Harbinger · Joined: 23 Apr 2006 Posts: 617 Location: California

mrling wrote:
Harbinger wrote:
He might be the guy for all I know, however...

A CNN anchor said he appeared to be "shaken" by all the media attention. Maybe it's just me but... this guy wasn't just "shaken", we was shaking. People don't just wiggle like that from fear.

Yes, they do.

Naa, I no what fear shakes look like. He wiggles as if he's got MS.