The JonBenet Ramsey murder case, the tragic tale of the murder of a childhood beauty pageant queen that fueled reams of accusatory tabloid news stories and perhaps months of radio and television broadcast time, is now seemingly over.
The accused killer has confessed, said he loved the 6-year-old girl he admitted to killing and that her death was an accident:
An American man arrested in Bangkok in connection with the 1996 death of JonBenet Ramsey told reporters this morning that he was with the 6-year old when she died but that her death was “an accident.”
“I loved JonBenet. She died accidentally,” John Mark Karr, 41, told a scrum of reporters as he was led away by Thai law enforcement authorities in Bangkok. Asked if he was innocent, he replied “no.” He offered only “no comment” when asked for further details.
Karr, a slight, youthful-looking former school teacher, looked dazed but composed as he was pelted with questions.
Thai police chief Lt. Gen. Suwat Tumrongsiskul said Karr told investigators he committed “second-degree murder. . . . He said it was unintentional. He said he was in love with the child. She was a pageant queen.”
The CNN video of his confession to a sea of reporters is here.
Reuters offers this factbox on the case.
The BBC gives this account of the case that notes how public and media suspicions pointed to parents John and Patsy Ramsey.
From the beginning, police focused their investigation on John and Patsy. Boulder Police labelled them as being under an “umbrella of suspicion”.
The police detectives were led by Steve Thomas, who believed that Patsy had accidentally killed JonBenet in a bedwetting incident, and that the Ramseys had then staged it to look like a murder.
The District Attorney’s office called out of retirement a legendary investigator, Lou Smit, who had solved more than 200 murder cases:
Mr Smit believed the Ramseys were innocent, that an intruder had entered the house and lain in wait in a nearby bedroom….
…The sensational nature of the crime was amplified by pictures of JonBenet cavorting in full-make up and glamorous costumes at beauty pageants….
In a stroke, these unsettling pictures turned Patsy from public victim to villain.
Vindication for the parents? The timing was a bit off for one:
Thursday’s announcement of an arrest has come too late for Patsy Ramsey, who died of cancer in June.
However, a family spokesman said she was aware that the police were going to arrest someone soon for the murder of her daughter.
On Thursday morning, a note on her grave read: “Dearest Patsy, Justice has come for you and Jon. Rest in peace.”
John Ramsey, himself, once said in a TV interview that even if someone was arrested for the murder of his daughter, at least 20% of people would still believe that he and Patsy were responsible for JonBenet’s death.
The story is now getting huge play on news outlets all over the world.
The New York Daily News‘ headline screams “Sicko bagged in Bangkok” and the story begins this way:
It took 10 years, but police yesterday arrested a suspect in the strangulation murder of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey.
Suspect John Mark Karr, who was already wanted in California for possession of child pornography, was busted in Bangkok, where he was teaching in an international school, law enforcement sources said.
“This guy is a dirty, kiddie molesting, porn trafficking” expletive, said one law enforcement source.
The arrest lifted a decade-long cloud of suspicion from JonBenet’s much-maligned parents, John and Patsy, who died of ovarian cancer in June.
The parents have always stubbornly insisted that an intruder to their Boulder, Colo., home had beaten and strangled the tiny blond beauty pageant winner on Christmas night, but in the court of public opinion, they were considered prime suspects.
“I want to have only very limited comment on today’s arrest,” John Ramsey said, “to avoid feeding the type of media speculation that my wife and I were subjected to for so many years.”
In another story the Daily News confirms that Patsy Ramsey was told her name was on the verge of being cleared:
Patsy Ramsey went to her death in June under the unrelenting cloud of public suspicion that shadowed her for 10 years – but not before she was privately assured that her name would eventually be cleared.
That cops were closing in on a suspect “was discussed with Patsy and me by the Boulder district attorney’s office,” her husband, John Ramsey, said.
“Patsy was aware that authorities were close to making an arrest,” he said. “Had she lived to see this day, she would no doubt have been as pleased as I am.”
The sensational case – and the unanswered questions and oddities surrounding it – led a platoon of cable TV commentators to point accusing fingers.
John and Patsy Ramsey became cultural symbols of unconvicted guilt, dramatized on “Law and Order” and lampooned on “Mad TV.” On “South Park,” they were shown hanging around shiftily with O.J. Simpson and former Rep. Gary Condit.
The Ramsey family’s attorney, Lin Wood, said the Ramseys “were tried and found guilty in the court of public opinion.”
Meanwhile, the Denver Post reports that Karr’s father thought his son was dead:
John Mark Karr’s arrest in Thailand after he had vanished for several years was a mixed blessing for his 85-year-old father.
“I thought someone had killed him,” Wexford Karr said Wednesday afternoon while sobbing during a telephone interview from his home in Atlanta. “This is such a surprise that he is alive.”
But learning his son was alive came with the news that his son, who is 41, was arrested in the Dec. 26, 1996, slaying of JonBenét Ramsey, he said.
John Karr had disappeared after his release from jail in 2001. Karr, who relatives said had long spoken of a fascination with the Ramsey case, told his father at the time that he was being held for investigation of murdering the girl.
In truth, John Karr was being held while awaiting trial for five counts of child pornography, said Sgt. Rob Giordano, spokesman for the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department. When he finally was released on bond, he disappeared and was convicted in absentia.
Wexford Karr had never heard that his son had been arrested on any previous criminal charges. But a Colorado state official said John Karr has an extensive criminal record for sexual assaults across the South, including Tennessee.
Ramsey family attorney Lin Wood said the Ramseys gave police information about Karr before he was identified as a suspect.
He would not say how the Ramseys knew Karr, though JonBenet was born in Atlanta in 1990, and the Ramseys lived in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody for several years before moving to Colorado in 1991. Karr was a teacher who once lived in Conyers, Ga., another Atlanta suburb, according to Wood.
“John and Patsy lived their lives knowing they were innocent, trying to raise a son despite the furor around them,� Wood said. “It’s been a very long 10 years, and I’m just sorry Patsy isn’t here for me to hug her neck.�
In another article, the Denver Post provides details about how Karr worked in schools despite his background — an aspect that is going to likely lead to even tighter background checks on those who supervise or teach children on a regular basis:
Asked if he knew the suspect, Ramsey told Denver’s KUSA-9News that “to my knowledge, no, I didn’t.”
Karr got clearance to be a substitute teacher in the Sonoma Valley Schools in northern California in January of 2001, according to Superintendent Carl Wong. Over three months, he worked at a dozen elementary schools.
But in April of 2001, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department notified the district that Karr had been arrested on a “non-school-related incident.”
His teaching stint ended as the criminal case against Karr unfolded.
For two years, Dennis Riley rented a house in Petaluma, Calif., to Karr, his wife and their three sons.
“To me, he was a normal person,” Riley said.
But when Riley sold the house the Karrs were renting, police told Riley they’d been watching Karr for some time and wanted the landlord’s permission to look through Karr’s belongings before the family moved. Karr agreed, and said police confiscated a computer.
“They said he was out living another life,” Riley recalled.
Sonoma County authorities charged Karr with five counts of possession of child pornography in April of 2001. When he failed to appear for a court date the following December, a warrant was issued for his arrest.
“We have had no contact with him since,” said Sgt. Rob Giordano of the sheriff’s department.
Karr may then have moved to Thailand. Thai authorities said they arrested Karr at his Bangkok apartment at the request of U.S. authorities.
“When we informed him that he has been accused of committing a crime at home he denied all accusations,” said a senior Thai police officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Why will this story continue to get huge coverage (and most certainly be the subject of books and movies)?
Because of the haunting images of the little girl made up to look like an adult beauty queen. Because of the fact that the parents lived under a news media cloud for years. Due to the subject’s background which gave him easy access to children. And due to its ending which shows that a case may take a long time to solve — but authorities in several countries will work together relentlessly to pursue it and bring it to the end.
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Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.