JonBenet Suspect's Lurid E-Mail Trail

Correspondence Between Karr And Professor Reveal JonBenet Obsession

(CBS/AP)  Hours after Karr told reporters in Thailand he was with JonBenet when she died, questions arose about his claims.

Suwat changed some details Friday of the account he had given of what Karr told investigators. In a telephone interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Suwat quoted Karr as saying he had sexually assaulted the girl and given her drugs. He also told reporters before a news conference Thursday that Karr had claimed to have picked up JonBenet at her school.

On Friday, Suwat confirmed to the AP his account of the sexual assault. But asked Friday if Karr gave the girl drugs, Suwat said the suspect described the encounter with JonBenet Ramsey as "a blur."

"It may have been drugs, or it may have been something else because (Karr said) it was a blur, blur," Suwat said.

Suwat also said Friday his statement about the girl being picked up from school was based on a documentary he had seen and not the interrogation.

Among the possible discrepancies between his confession and earlier established facts were these: An autopsy was inconclusive about sexual assault, and few experts believe that a girl who was slowly strangled with a garrote was killed by accident. There are even questions whether Karr was in Colorado at the time of the slaying.

In Franklin County, Ala., school officials told the New York Times that records showed Karr had been at work there until the end of the term on Dec. 19, 1996, a week before the murder.

Lara Karr said she was with her former husband in Alabama at the time of JonBenet's killing and she does not believe he was involved in the homicide. Attorney Michael Raines said he has instructed Karr's ex-wife to go through photographs of the family back in 1996 at Christmas time, when she claims they spent the holiday together.

"I do feel that, based on the fact that warrants have been issued, that (the district attorney) obviously has a sufficient amount of evidence," Ollie Gray, a private investigator, told CBS News' The Early Show.

Moriarty reported that investigators may have arrested Karr this week not because they had definitive evidence linking him to the Ramsey murder, but because they feared he might hurt a child in Thailand.

Trip DeMuth, a former Boulder district attorney who investigated the Ramsey case, told Moriarty he has serious doubts about any confession because of the amount of public information surrounding the case. "I am very concerned about the viability of this case today. It does not sound to me like they've done their homework sufficiently to have arrested him at this time," DeMuth says.

It's difficult to know how much to believe of the life Karr says he has led since JonBenet was found strangled and beaten a decade ago in the basement of her family's home.

But in his own words, it all seems quite real.

"I awoke the children in the morning and gave them breakfast," Karr wrote in one online resume, recounting life as a private teacher and caregiver of three girls in Germany, aged 7, 11 and 12. "At day's end, I made sure the children had their evening bath, then put them to bed and read to them before they went to sleep."

Karr claims to have spent years skipping from job to job, country to country, nearly all the time working with children. Karr taught for two months in early 2002 at I&S Language School in Seoul, South Korea, said Kim Sun-tae, an official at the Seoul Dongbu District Office of Education. The National Police Administration in Taiwan said Friday that Karr entered the country in August 2005 and left two months later.

School officials in Alabama and California have confirmed that he worked in both states as a substitute teacher in the latter half of the 1990s and in 2001.

"He just seemed like somebody who thought he wanted to be a teacher," said Bob Raines, superintendent and principal at Wilson Elementary School, in one of the four districts near Petaluma, Calif. where Karr worked. "After a few days, I could tell it just wasn't for him."

Lara Karr told KGO-TV in California that her ex-husband spent a lot of time studying the cases of Ramsey and Polly Klaas, who was abducted from her Petaluma home and slain in 1993.

As an adult, Karr wrote in one online resume that he worked for years in real estate and restored old homes. His work in schools appears to have begun in 1996 — the year of the Ramsey murder. According to the resume, that was the start of a five-year stint teaching in "some of the most prestigious schools in the United States, working with children from high profile families."

[violetta2]

John Karr no more killed JonBenet than Mickey Mouse. It is a false confession by a delusional mentally disturbed person.

The person who should be charged is Michael Tracey, the professor. This goes on for 4 years and he only contacts the authorities in May?

While corresponding with Karr, Tracey produced a documentary which falsely pointed to a suicide victim and his friend as suspects. The friend was supposedily on the run and was "wanted." Noone would buy the documentary except a station in the UK and someone there was able to screen capture this guy's name from his record, they did a Google search and found that he had a website and was selling jewelry in another state and did not even live in CO at the time of the murder. After being exposed, Tracey completely edited this out of his fictional documentary.

Mr. Tracey has a long time history with Lou Smit and the ramsey detectives, they worked on the documentaries together. Lou Smit has the entire files, he won the right to retain them in court. Who is to say that they did not share some information with Karr? There also is a nut job housewife in North Carolina who professes to be a case historian and also has access to everything, she even sold the Ramsey's interrogations to the National Enquirer for $40,000!! So to arrest someone on NO physical evidence and just because he knew "elements" of the crime only known to authorities is very WRONG, I think the Boulder D.A. is stupider than the Boulder police at this point.

[opinionated2]

This guy is a freak! Definately guilty of something, but not this murder. He's obsessed with the stories. Why would his ex-wife lie? She has no reason to.

[sunnysmile58]

I will reserve judgement as to the nature of his 'confessions'. The one good thing about this is that another child predator is off the streets! I do pray that her murderer WILL found, and dealt with acordingly...whether it be this sick man or no.

[gaiakin]

I want to know what tied karr to the Boulder DA? Did they have any thing that they knew for sure? Or, were they just nabbing a nasty man.

I think that this is something that has to be looked at deeply and we should not cater to his sick story.

What prompted the Bolder Police to think that they had enough evidance. What is it?

[CoffinNails]

Well he is getting out of Thailand safely and getting the notoriety he so desperately seeks.

[igitit]

If Karr did kill Polly Klaas, why wasn't that brought up at Davis's Trail? Would Davis would protect a twinky like Karr?

What evidence is yet to be revealed that would make a DA with a good reputation think that Karr should be arrested. All the public evidence so far indicates that the Confession is bogus.

Perverts are (I hope)are a small community they probably exchange fanatasies, does Karr know who did commit the murder?

[jurasc109]

There are (4) seperate cases that he is being sought for questioning for and that's why he can never return to the US. The children he claims in his online resume that he "cared for" and "taught" were children ages 7, 11 and 12. I can't help but think that he fanasizes about "caring for" his victims even though they are dead. I think that he paid Richard Davis to steal Polly Klaas from her home and that he is the real killer. She would be the 12 yr. old that he fantasizes about caring for and teaching. Who is the 11 yr. old? The 7 yr. old could be JonBenet or possibly the 4th victim. His mother tried to raise him as a little girl, his father was not around much and he was always around girls as a peer group. Could he have seen his own self in JonBenet? I even see a resemblence to her. Polly Klaas seems to have been a slightly troubled girl who may have had some kind of "friendship" with Karr and perhaps was involved in her own kidnapping initially. He may have built expectations of how an encounter (to come and be with him) might go, but it all went awry when the children protested so he "accidentally" killed them. After reading exerpts of a book called "The Story of Polly Klaas" I think he is her real killer. He was obsessed with her case and has worked in Petaluma. Isn't it true that killers will often return to the scene of the crime? Look at Scott Peterson, for example. I bet there is a murder in Alabama that he can be tied to as well.

[highlife0713]

I dunno , i think this guy is a total *** and he is full of it , i dont think he has the brains nor the strength , mentally or physically to do it .