American ex-teacher held in Thailand over 1996 slaying of 6-year-old
BREAKING NEWS
Updated: 11 minutes ago

BOULDER, Colo. - A former schoolteacher was arrested Wednesday in Thailand in the slaying of 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey — a surprise breakthrough in a lurid, decade-old murder mystery that had cast a cloud of suspicion over her parents.

Ramsey family attorney Lin Wood identified the suspect as John Mark Karr, 41. Federal officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the name, and one law enforcement official told The Associated Press that Boulder police had tracked him down online.

The head of Thailand immigration police said Thursday that Karr admitted to the killing after he was arrested at his downtown Bangkok apartment Wednesday night. Karr arrived in Bangkok on June 6 from Malaysia to look for a teaching job, Lt. Gen. Suwat Tumrongsiskul told The Associated Press.

Wood said the arrest vindicated JonBenet’s parents, John and Patsy Ramsey. Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer on June 24.

“John and Patsy lived their lives knowing they were innocent, trying to raise a son despite the furor around them,” Wood said. “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.”

The attorney said the Ramseys learned about the suspect at least a month before Patsy Ramsey’s death. “It’s been a very long 10 years, and I’m just sorry Patsy isn’t here for me to hug her neck,” Wood said.

Suspect once lived Georgia
Karr was a teacher who once lived in Conyers, Ga., according to Wood. The attorney said the Ramseys gave police information about Karr before he was identified as a suspect.

Wood would not say how the Ramseys knew Karr. But JonBenet was born in Atlanta in 1990, and the Ramseys lived in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody, about 30 miles northeast of Conyers, for several years before moving to Colorado in 1991.

http://www.netscape.com/viewstory/2006/08/16/nbc-arrest-in-jonbenet-case/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.msnbc.msn.com%2Fid%2F1437956 6%2F&frame=true

hehe, he said bang kok

come on acs33... i gota look at that face at the top of every page... now i gota look at it in avatars that could scroll down the page... man, i wish they'd change that ad...... other than that...you're right, wish people would quit complaining.. this is the nature of the game... you don't want to play, don't play.. no one is making you...i bought captiveworks and fortec... don't have fix for either one... but i might get one later... that was the gamble i was taking and now i have to live with it... i don't like missing all the channels but you know what... i'm the one who made the decision to buy what i bought. now i'm supposed to complain about not being able to steal tv... wish some of these people would find something else to do.. it's summer for christ sake...people have been known to go all weekend without turning the tv on.... not me personally but i've heard stories about it.....good luck, God Bless...

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) - Prosecutors abruptly dropped their case Monday against John Mark Karr in the slaying of JonBenet Ramsey, saying DNA tests failed to put him at the crime scene despite his insistence he strangled the six-year-old beauty queen.

Just a week and a half after Karr's arrest in Thailand was seen as a remarkable break in the sensational, decade-old case, prosecutors suggested in court papers that he was just a man with a twisted fascination with JonBenet who confessed to a crime he didn't commit.

"Because his DNA does not match that found in the victim's blood in her underwear, the people would not be able to establish that Mr. Karr committed this crime despite his repeated insistence that he did," District Attorney Mary Lacy said in court papers.

The 41-year-old schoolteacher will be kept in jail in Boulder until he can be sent to Sonoma County, Calif., to face child pornography charges dating to 2001, authorities said. Earlier in the day, the sheriff's department announced Karr had been released.

Lacy said Karr emerged as a suspect in April after he spent several years exchanging e-mails and later telephone calls with a Colorado professor in which he admitted responsibility for the slaying.

According to court papers, Karr told the professor he accidentally killed JonBenet during sex. But officials at the Denver crime lab conducted DNA tests last Friday on a cheek swab taken from Karr and failed to connect him to the crime.

Lacy said authorities found no evidence Karr was in Boulder at the time of the slaying. In addition, she said Karr's family provided "strong circumstantial support" for their belief that he was with them in Georgia, celebrating the Christmas holidays, as the time of the crime.

Defence lawyer Seth Temin expressed outrage that Karr was even arrested.

"We're deeply distressed by the fact that they took this man and dragged him here from Bangkok, Thailand, with no forensic evidence confirming the allegations against him and no independent factors leading to a presumption he did anything wrong," Temin said.

The district attorney defended the decision to arrest Karr. She said there was no way to take a cheek swab from him without alerting him that he was under investigation, and that would have created an "unacceptable risk that he would flee."

Also, prosecutors suggested that they were afraid Karr might harm another girl. Karr had landed a teaching job in Thailand, and in his correspondence began to describe an interest in several girls "in much the same terms that he had described his interest in JonBenet," Lacy said in court papers. Shortly before he was arrested, authorities confirmed he was involved with at least one of the girls, Lacy said.

In an interview with the media in Thailand after his arrest, Karr said that he was with JonBenet when she died and that her death was an accident. Asked if he was innocent, he said no.

But Karr's bizarre account - and his apparent fascination with the little girl's death - immediately raised suspicions that he might be an obsessed follower of the case who confessed to a crime he didn't commit.

Among other things, Karr's relatives insisted that if Karr had not been with his family at Christmas, they would have certainly remembered it. JonBenet was found beaten and strangled at her Boulder home on Dec. 26, 1996.

In an interview Monday with MSNBC, Gary Harris, who had been spokesman for the Karr family, said of the DNA: "I knew it wouldn't match."

Karr has been "obsessed with this case for a long time. He may have some personality problems, but he's not a killer," Harris said. "He obsesses. He wanted to be a rock star one time. . . . He's a dreamer. He's the kind of guy who wants to be famous.

Ramsey family lawyer Lin Wood - who earlier this month pronounced the arrest vindication for JonBenet's parents, who had long been suspected in the killing - had no immediate comment.

John and Patsy Ramsey had known as recently as May that authorities were focusing on Karr because of his e-mails with professor Michael Tracey. Patsy Ramsey died of cancer in June.

JonBenet Ramsey's aunt, Pamela Paugh, said she was disappointed there won't be a prosecution of someone in the case, but added: "I think our justice system worked as it was supposed to."

"We asked the DA to do her thing. She did it," said Paugh, who is Patsy Ramsey's sister. "My disappointment came about the end of December 1996 when we didn't have the killer then. We've had 9 1/2 years of disappointment and waiting."

Karr was arrested in Petaluma, Calif., in 2001 on charges of possessing child pornography but fled before he could be tried. Colorado authorities said that after the Boulder case against Karr was dropped, California officials asked that he be turned over to them for prosecution.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/28082006/2/world-prosecutors-say-won-t-charge-karr-jonbenet-ramsey-slaying.html