From Reuters:
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – An arrest has been made in Thailand in the 10-year-old murder of JonBenet Ramsey, a child beauty queen whose grisly death triggered a U.S. media frenzy, a U.S. law enforcement official said on Wednesday.
The official, in Washington, said the U.S. government “facilitated a request” for the arrest of the unidentified suspect who was detained in Bangkok. The suspect faces charges in the western state of Colorado, where the girl had lived.
KUSA-TV in Denver, Colorado, said the suspect confessed to elements of the crime that were unknown to the general public.
Representatives of the Boulder, Colorado, Police Department and Boulder District Attorney’s Office declined to comment.
More at link above. Developing story.
More HERE:
Federal officials familiar with the case, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the man was being held in Bangkok on unrelated sex charges.
The girl was found beaten and strangled in the basement of the family’s home in Boulder, Colo., on Dec. 26, 1996.
Law enforcement officials from Boulder were flying to Bangkok to present Thai authorities with documents in the slaying of the 6-year-old beauty pageant contestant, officials in Washington said. They asked to remain anonymous pending an announcement in Colorado.
Update – Kim: From Carol McKinley at Fox, the suspect’s name is John Karr. He’s in his forties, a schoolteacher, and may have lived in Conyers, Georgia. He has been in Thailand for about 2 years or so and was sending very bizarre and disturbing emails about JonBenet to Patsy for a while before she died.
Update – Lorie: A few thoughts…One of the strangest things in the entire case, in my opinion, was that extremely long ransom note. It will be interesting to see if Karr has anything to say about that note, including whether or not he had any access to knowledge of the $118,000 Ramsey bonus.
Something I heard on one of the cable shows tonight, which I did not know, or did not recall, was that JonBenet was strangled slowly, causing no bruising, and that the blow to the head came after the strangulation. If that is correct, then that information surely must have been learned at the time of the autopsy. Since that piece of information completely destroys speculation that JonBenet was hit by her mother or father or brother, either in anger or by accident, and then had the strangulation staged, I wonder why so many people kept that theory alive for so many years.
What comes out in the details of this new development will be extremely instructive. If the man now arrested did murder JonBenet, and did so alone, I just wonder if he might have been found earlier had the Boulder police not focused so intently on the Ramseys for so long. Did he harm, or even murder, any other children over the past decade? If, as it appears, the Ramseys had no involvement, how on earth did so many authorities and media display such incredibly bad judgment, to the point of accusing a grieving mother of not only murdering her child, but of staging a bizarre gruesome strangulation? The Ramseys were criticized for not cooperating with police early on, and I thought they should have been more forthcoming to police, but now I wonder if they got the impression from police in those first hours that they were going to be the focus no matter what and were reacting to that. Hopefully some of those questions will be answered over the coming days.
Hot Air and La Shawn Barber have more.
Don’t get me wrong..I hope this ? person is the one…however..living in Denver..her parents were rich and she was a white child…how about the focus be on the children of Katrina…you remember Katrina?…that place in our country that is still in so many places uninhabital? But hey it is a diversion that the media can attempt to “hey look at this not that”
Hmmm.
@ Drew
What the hell are you talking about?
“…the six-year old beauty pageant contestant.”
Six years old, a first grader, she had more important things to do with her life than enter idiotic child “beauty pageants”, just pathetic.
Bangkok is a center for child-sex rings, I wonder if the suspect was exercising his predilections when he was arrested?
Drew,
Ohmigod! You’re right! It’s a Faux News plot.
Ed, you took the words out of my mouth. What in the heck is Drew talking about????
Oops! Drew distracted me so much, I forgot to make my original comment.
I’m very skeptical about this. I’ll wait to make a judgment until I get MUCH more info.
Drew:
Please let me know when we get to 100 billion dollars on the Ramsey case. It is your precious MSM that went with this, probably for the money and ratings. Why aren’t you upset about the Boulder police trying to destroy a family that had just lost their daughter, instead of insinuating that somehow the American public doesn’t care about Katrina victims, when that has nothing to do with the subject at hand.
Bangkok??
It’ll be interesting to see how the pieces of this puzzle fit together.
Drew, dude… I live on the coast.
We can focus on more than one tragedy at a time. Because, y’know, Katrina doesn’t have to dominate everyone’s thoughts 24/7, just like 9/11 doesn’t, just like…
Just because we’re discussing this, doesn’t mean we’ve forgotten Katrina.
Sheesh…
Sick of Katrina stories. drew must be drunk. there have been more hurricanes hit florida in any given year.
Well, I’ve forgotten Katrina. I think it’s time to move on. Time for the good folks of New Orleans to tend to their own affairs, and us to ours. There is no good to come from those of us in other parts of the country endlessly wringing our hands. Not being a citizen of New Orleans I have no useful advice to give them, and if I were a citizen of New Orleans, I would not WANT the interference of non-residents.
As for the Ramsey murder arrest, I hope all those slime sheets on display in grocery store checkout stands have the good graces to appologize to the Ramseys.
How long will it take to extradite him here how long will it take to try him and if he gets the death sentence how long will it take to hang him?
Thailand is essentially a dictatorship. When they decide to “extradite,” they don’t need no stinkin’ badges.
Immediately after the murder, I suspected the parents, like many others. But shortly thereafter, it became clear that this didn’t match the profile of parents who kill.
The crime might have been solved early, except for the complete incompetence of the Boulder police who failed to secure the crime scene, and the idiotic District Attorney Hunter, who insisted all investigative resources be trained upon the Ramseys.
John Ramsey might well echo Ray Donovan’s famous words upon eventual vindication: “Where do I go to get my reputation back?”
RIP, Jon Benet and Patsy.
Agreed, Jim. I, too, initially though her parents had a hand in it somehow. After a while, though, things just didn’t seem to mesh with that scenario enough for them to be guilty.
Glad to finally hear someone out there was still working this one. I was starting to wonder if they’d just shoved it in the “cold case” file out of sheer embarassment, just to be done with it.
He has confessed.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,208858,00.html
Responding to Lorie’s update: I think those details were among those kept from the public, things only the killer would know.
It wasn’t so much the focus on the Ramseys that prevented solving the case as the initial screwups. The police failed to treat the home as a crime scene, and in fact traipsed around the new-fallen snow surrounding the house and destroyed any evidence that was there. Meanwhile, they let people wander about the house unescorted, and enter and leave at will, so there was little chance of recovering any evidence which was there, much less getting it admitted in court.
People who were used to dealing with nothing more serious than a burglary suddenly had to deal with a child abduction/murder. They were over their heads from the beginning – all of them, from the responding cops to the DA – and failed to recognize and acknowledge that fact.
If they had merely secured the crime scene and cried out to the FBI for help, they might well have caught the bastard in short order.
They put their own egos above the requirements of the situation, and nearly let a murderer run free. As it is, he had an extra ten years to defile and possibly kill more girls, and the parents were subjected to an indescribable hell amidst their own grief.
They were the official protectors of Boulder, and behaved as if they were stoned.
It will be interesting to see if Karr has anything to say about that note, including whether or not he had any access to knowledge of the $118,000 Ramsey bonus.
Not really. The bonus is fairly common knowledge among anyone with even a passing familiarity with the case (ie people like me).
Re Drew: Can there ever be any topic on this site that won’t bring a goofball lefty in to redirect the original point?