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JonBenet Suspect 'So Very Sorry'
John Mark Karr admitted to killing JonBenet Ramsey after he was arrested in Bangkok, police said.
In a brief news conference attended by dozens of reporters eager for details, Boulder County DA Mary Lacy said she could not discuss the case involving former schoolteacher John Mark Karr, 41, who was arrested a day earlier at a Bangkok apartment. In an interview with the Associated Press, Karr said he killed the girl by accident.
Lacy suggested the arrest may have been forced by other circumstances, including the need for public safety and fear the suspect might flee.
"There are circumstances that exist in any case that mandate an arrest before an investigation is complete," Lacy said.
She refused to say whether authorities were worried Karr was lying about killing the little girl. Lacy said Karr has not been formally charged, and declined to speculate what counts he might face.
"I'm asking you this morning, let us do our job thoroughly and carefully. The analysis of the evidence in this case continues on a day-by-day, on an hour-by-hour basis as we speak," she said, adding that "there is much more work to be done now that the suspect is in custody."
"We should all heed the poignant advice of John Ramsey yesterday," she said, referring to JonBenet's father. "He said do not jump to conclusions, do not rush to judgment, do not speculate, let the justice system take its course."
Lacy said Colorado investigators were in Thailand, but refused to provide a timeline of when Karr might be returned to America. She said he just started work as a second-grade teacher in a Bangkok international school on Tuesday and had traveled extensively since leaving the United States several years ago.
The 1996 murder of JonBenet, a 6-year-old beauty queen, had cast a cloud of suspicion over her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey.
Karr told The Associated Press he was with JonBenet when she died.
"I am so very sorry for what happened to JonBenet," he told the AP in Bangkok. "Her death was an accident." Asked if he was innocent, Karr said: "No."
A senior Thai police officer said Karr also told investigators he drugged and had sex with the 6-year-old beauty queen before accidentally killing her.
An autopsy done a day after her body was found on Dec. 26, 1996, said a blood screening showed no drugs or alcohol in her body but said she had vaginal abrasions.
Karr was given a mouth-swab DNA test in Bangkok, according to a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation. The results of that test were not immediately known.
Karr will be given another DNA test when he returns to the United States, the official said.
Denver attorney Scott Robinson, who has followed the case from the beginning, said Lacy was being "appropriately cautious about the quality of the evidence available."
"The bottom line is that they now have a confession and until and unless they can corroborate that confession with either physical evidence or strong circumstantial evidence, that's all they have," Robinson said.
"The fact he e-mailed (University of Colorado journalism professor Michael) Tracey repeatedly and transformed himself from a case zealot into a suspect and also e-mailed Patsy Ramsey, those are consistent with attention seeking, but they're also consistent with a perpetrator so proud of his handiwork that he wants attention," Robinson said.
Tracey, who produced a documentary on the case, said the e-mail correspondence with the suspect dates back four years and began when Karr contacted him after learning of the documentary. He didn't say how many e-mails there were, but there were "a lot."
He contacted the DA about the e-mails in May and said he didn't know Karr's name until Wednesday.
"This guy has the right to be presumed innocent," Tracey said. "I don't know that he's guilty. Obviously, I went to the district attorney for a reason, but let him have his day in court and let JonBenet have her day in court and let's see how it plays out."
A California woman who said she was Karr's ex-wife told San Francisco television station KGO that she was with him in Alabama at the time of the homicide. She said she does not believe her former husband was involved in JonBenet's killing.
JonBenet was found beaten and strangled in the basement of the family's home, above, in Boulder, Colo., on the day after Christmas in 1996.
Henry Lee, a crime scene analyst who was part of the "dream team" task force assembled by prosecutors after the JonBenet murder, said DNA evidence will confirm whether Karr's confession is true. DNA was found inside the girl's underwear, but investigators were unable to match it to anyone in an FBI database.
Lee said detectives found DNA evidence in three out of six more pairs of the same brand of underwear at the department store that carried them, leading to possibility that the DNA was not left on the scene.
"We'll wait and see," Lee said at a conference in Nashville. "He's coming back, so obviously I hope he's the true suspect."
Source: AP