Suspect: JonBenet Ramsey’s death ‘an accident’

updated 8:14 p.m. ET Aug. 17, 2006

BOULDER, Colo. - The prosecutor in the JonBenet Ramsey slaying urged the public not to “jump to conclusions” Thursday, hours after an expatriate school teacher in custody in Thailand claimed he accidentally killed the girl a decade ago.

Mary Lacy, who has led the investigation for Boulder County, did not disclose details about evidence against John Mark Karr, 41, who was arrested on Wednesday, a day after he began teaching second grade in Bangkok.

Karr told investigators he drugged and sexually assaulted the child beauty queen before accidentally killing her, said a senior Thai police officer, who was briefed about the interview.

“I am so very sorry for what happened to JonBenet,” Karr told The Associated Press after he appeared at a news conference earlier Thursday.

He will be taken within the week to Colorado, where he will face charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and child sexual assault, Ann Hurst of the Department of Homeland Security told reporters in Bangkok.

“I was with JonBenet when she died,” Karr told reporters afterward, visibly nervous and stuttering. “Her death was an accident.”

Asked if he was innocent of the crime, Karr said: “No.”

No evidence against Karr has been made public beyond his own admission. U.S. and Thai officials did not directly answer a question at the news conference about whether there was DNA evidence connecting him to the crime.

Suspect just started teaching
Lacy suggested that the arrest may have been forced by other circumstances, including the need for public safety and fear the suspect might flee. She noted that he had started teaching in the Thai capital on Tuesday.

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“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 the United States.

JonBenet was found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family’s home in Boulder, Colo., on Dec. 26, 1996.

Lt. Gen. Suwat Tumrongsiskul, head of Thailand’s immigration police, said by telephone that he was told Karr claimed he had drugged the child and sexually assaulted her. Karr said he then realized he had “accidentally” killed her, according to the general. Suwat did not say who briefed him on the questioning conducted by U.S. law enforcement officials.

An autopsy done a day after her body was found showed no drugs or alcohol in her system but said she had vaginal abrasions.

Waiting on DNA test results
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.

Lin Wood, the Ramsey family’s longtime attorney in Atlanta, said Karr had sent numerous e-mails in recent months making statements about the murder to a professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder studying the case.

Wood said those e-mails were key in linking Karr to the slaying. When asked if authorities could tell whether Karr had firsthand knowledge of the murder or had just picked up information from news accounts, Wood said: “There is information about the murder that has never been publicly disclosed.”

Karr’s ex-wife, Lara Karr, was quoted by KGO-TV in California that 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.

Lara Karr, who lived with him in Northern California, said her ex-husband spent a lot of time studying the cases of Ramsey and Polly Klaas, who was abducted from her Petaluma, Calif., home and slain in 1993.

Wood said that Karr had tried to correspond with JonBenet’s mother, Patricia, in the months before her recent death from ovarian cancer. Wood said Ramsey did not reply, but handed that information over to investigators who used it to link Karr to the case.

Karr on Thursday refused to say what his connection was to the Ramsey family. An attorney for the Ramsey family said Wednesday that Karr once lived near the family in Conyers, Ga.

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