http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/08/16/national/main1901342.shtml
JonBenet Suspect Has Confessed American Teacher Arrested In Bangkok Says Death
Was An Accident
(Page 1 of 3)
BOULDER, Colo., Aug. 17, 2006
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American teacher John Mark Karr, left, at a news conference in Bangkok,
Thailand, Aug. 17, 2006, where he told reporters that he was there when JonBenet
Ramsey died but didn't mean to kill her. (AP)

Fast Facts

Nate Karr, brother of the suspect, says the arrest is a mistake, the accusations
are "ridiculous, without a doubt," and the e-mail authorities found suspicious
is related to a book his brother has been writing.

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(CBS/AP) A man suspected in the 1996 slaying of 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet
Ramsey was arrested Wednesday in Bangkok - a breakthrough in a case some feared
would never be solved.

JonBenet was found beaten and strangled in the basement of the family's home in
Boulder, Colo., on Dec. 26, 1996. Patsy Ramsey reported finding a ransom note
demanding $118,000 for her daughter.

At a Thursday morning news conference, a top Thai police official said John Mark
Karr - a 41-year-old American teacher - has confessed to the Ramsey killing.

Lt. Gen. Suwat Tumrongsiskul, who heads Thailand's immigration police, says Karr
insists that his crime was not first-degree murder. "He said it was
second-degree murder. He said it was unintentional. He said he was in love with
the child. She was a pageant queen."

The Thai officer quoted the suspect as saying he tried to kidnap JonBenet for
ransom but his plan went awry and he killed her instead.

Karr himself spoke to reporters after the news conference, saying he was with
the little girl when she died - but didn't mean to kill her.

CBS News correspondent Erin Moriarty, who covered the case for years and
interviewed the Ramseys two years ago, says investigators were led to this
suspect because of statements he allegedly made about the case.

An FBI source tells CBS News the leads in this case originated in the United
States and went to the FBI in Bangkok, where the suspect's e-mail and phone
conversations have been monitored since earlier this summer.

Investigators describe what the suspect talked about in his messages as
"hair-raising - to see what he'd done, or contemplated doing, to children.."

The source calls those accounts "deadly frightening."

Wednesday, in Boulder, District Attorney Mary Lacy said the arrest follows
several months of work. A Ramsey family attorney says Karr, who teaches second
grade, once lived in nearby Conyers, Ga., not far from one of the towns the
Ramseys have called home.

A law enforcement source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the AP that
Karr had been communicating periodically with somebody in Boulder who had been
following the case and cooperating with law enforcement officials.

A University of Colorado spokesman, Barrie Hartman, said journalism professor
Michael Tracey communicated with Karr over several months and contacted police.
The CU spokesman said he didn't know what prompted Tracey to become suspicious
of Karr.

Tracey produced a documentary in 2004 called "Who Killed JonBenet?"

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Read a statement from John Ramsey,
JonBenet Ramsey's father.
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Ramsey family attorney Lin Wood says the arrest is vindication for JonBenet's
parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, who had come under suspicion in the slaying. The
attorney said the Ramseys learned about the suspect a least a month before Patsy
Ramsey's death on June 24 after a long battle with ovarian cancer.

"John and Patsy lived their lives knowing they were innocent, trying to raise a
son despite the furor around them," said Wood. "The story of this family is a
story of courage, and story of an American injustice and tragedy that ultimately
people will have to look back on and hopefully learn from."

"It's been a very long 10 years, and I'm just sorry Patsy isn't here for me to
hug her," Wood added.

Karr will be taken to Boulder, Colo., within the next week, where he has been
charged with murder, kidnapping and child sexual assault, according to Ann
Hurst, Department of Homeland Security attache at the American Embassy in
Bangkok.

Hurst also said Karr has been charged in the state of Colorado with murder,
kidnapping and sexual assault of a child.

Thai police say Karr's visa has now been revoked because, as a person accused of
a crime in the U.S., he is an "undesirable person."

Authorities say Karr arrived at Bangkok's Don Muang International Airport on
June 6 from Penang, Malaysia, and was looking for a teaching job during what was
his fourth visit to the country in the space of two years.

An FBI source tells CBS News that investigators knew the suspect was teaching at
an international school somewhere in Thailand and that he had a lot of specific
knowledge about the Jon Benet Ramsey crime scene.

This evolved into a joint investigation: the FBI, the Royal Thai police, the
U.S. Embassy, and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency of the
Department of Homeland Security.

According to the source, the content of the suspect's communications – that is,
his e-mail and phone conversations concerning children - were very disturbing
and led them to believe that children in Thailand were in imminent danger.

Investigators, said the source, felt their suspect was a sick guy and whether or
not he was JonBenet Ramsey's killer, they were "really worried that we would end
up with another dead child, or at least somebody badly sexually abused."

Nate Karr, brother of the suspect, says the arrest is a mistake, the accusations
are "ridiculous, without a doubt," and the e-mail authorities found suspicious
is related to a book his brother has been writing.

Authorities haven't yet disclosed what evidence allegedly ties Karr to the
crime.

"A conviction isn't necessarily going to be a slam-dunk here," says CBS News
legal analyst Andrew Cohen. "All of the problems that plagued investigators and
police for all these years — the contamination of the crime scene and all that —
doesn't just go away now... If you are a prosecutor or an investigator, you are
looking for a confession that is going to stand up in court, or some sort of DNA
or other physical link between the suspect and the crime scene: something that
cannot be explained away by a good defense attorney, who is going to focus upon
the contamination of the crime scene right after the murder."

Images of JonBenet performing in a cowgirl costume and other beauty pageant
outfits turned up on TV and in the papers soon after her body was discovered,
and over the years, have sparked many theories about her killing.

Investigators said at one point that JonBenet's parents were under an "umbrella
of suspicion." They insisted that an intruder had killed their daughter, and
warned other parents in Boulder to be aware that a killer was out there
somewhere, unrestrained and unpunished.

Patsy Ramsey also chastised the media and blasting local law enforcement as
incompetent.

In a statement Wednesday, John Ramsey said: "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 ten
years after our daughter's murder."

Lib Waters of Marietta, Ga., visited the gravesites of Patsy and JonBenet Ramsey
in the Atlanta suburb immediately after hearing news reports about the arrest.

Waters, who described herself as a longtime friend of the Ramsey family, taped a
piece of notebook paper to JonBenet Ramsey's headstone that read: "Dearest
Patsy, Justice has come for you and Jon. Rest in peace."
In 2003, a federal judge in Atlanta concluded that the evidence she reviewed
suggested an intruder killed JonBenet. That opinion came with the judge's
decision to dismiss a libel and slander lawsuit against the Ramseys by a
freelance journalist, whom the Ramseys had named as a suspect in their
daughter's murder. The Boulder district attorney at the time said she agreed
with the judge's declaration.

KUSA-TV of Denver, citing no sources, reported that the suspect has confessed to
certain elements of the crime.

Bob Grant, a former Adams County district attorney who worked on the case, said
there was never enough evidence to convince him that any potential suspect could
be successfully prosecuted.

"I wasn't convinced it was an inside job, nor was I convinced it was an outside
job," he said. "All the outside suspects were cleared after exhaustive
investigation, and there were a whole lot of outside suspects."

Patsy Ramsey made the 911 call on Dec. 26, 1996, telling police that her
daughter was missing. "There's a note left and our daughter's gone," she said
breathlessly.

Boulder police responded immediately to Ramsey's call for help, and what first
looked like a kidnapping quickly became a murder investigation, when JonBenet's
body was found by her father in a small storage room in the basement of her
house.

Because of the bizarre ransom note, and the fact that JonBenet was killed in her
own home, detectives focused on her parents, John and Patsy, as their prime
suspects.

Boulder police brushed aside many of the leads that came in, and dismissed the
possibility that an intruder had somehow slipped inside the house and committed
the murder.

Throughout lengthy and sometimes hostile police interrogations, both in 1998 and
2000, the Ramseys maintained their innocence. A 2005 48 Hours report found that
DNA evidence ruled out the parents as suspects and investigators were no longer
focusing on the Ramsey family.

The couple wrote a book, "The Death of Innocence," which was published in 2000.



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