BOULDER, Colo. - A man suspected in the slaying of 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey was arrested Wednesday in Thailand in a surprise breakthrough in one of the nation’s most lurid murder cases — a decade-old crime some feared would never be solved.
District Attorney Mary Lacy said the arrest followed several months of work. She would not disclose any details about the suspect, but the Ramsey family’s attorney in Atlanta said the man was a schoolteacher who once lived in nearby Conyers, Ga.
Federal officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, identified the suspect as John Mark Karr, a 42-year-old American, and said he was already being held in Bangkok on unrelated sex charges. CBS reported he will be brought back to the United States this weekend.
The Ramsey family attorney, Lin Wood, refused to say if the Ramseys knew the suspect and said he knew nothing else about the man. JonBenet was born in Atlanta in 1990, and the Ramseys lived in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody for several years before moving to Colorado in 1991. The couple moved back to Atlanta after their daughter’s slaying.
Wood said the arrest was vindication for JonBenet’s parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, who had come under suspicion in the slaying. The attorney said the Ramseys learned about the suspect a least a month before Patsy Ramsey’s death June 24 after a long battle with ovarian cancer.
“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.
Murder and ransom note
JonBenet was found beaten and strangled in the basement of the family’s home in Boulder on Dec. 26, 1996. Patsy Ramsey reported finding a ransom note demanding $118,000 for her daughter.
The image of blonde-haired JonBenet in a cowgirl costume and other beauty pageant outfits has haunted TV talk shows ever since, helping feed myriad theories about her killer.
Investigators said at one point that JonBenet’s parents were under an “umbrella of suspicion†in the slaying. But the Ramseys insisted an intruder killed their daughter, and no one was ever charged.
In the months after the slaying, Patsy Ramsey went before the cameras, vigorously defending herself and her husband, chastising the media and blasting local law enforcement as incompetent.
Over the years, some experts suggested that investigators had botched the case so thoroughly that it might never be solved.
In a statement Wednesday, John Ramsey said: “Patsy was aware that authorities were close to making an arrest in the case and had she lived to see this day, would no doubt have been as pleased as I am with today’s development almost 10 years after our daughter’s murder.â€
Lib Waters of Marietta, Ga., visited the gravesites of Patsy and JonBenet Ramsey in the Atlanta suburb immediately after hearing news reports about the arrest.
Waters, who described herself as a longtime friend of the Ramsey family, taped a piece of notebook paper to JonBenet Ramsey’s headstone that read: “Dearest Patsy, Justice has come for you and Jon. Rest in peace.â€
Work of an intruder, judge concluded
In 2003, a federal judge in Atlanta concluded that the evidence she reviewed suggested an intruder killed JonBenet. That opinion came with the judge’s decision to dismiss a libel and slander lawsuit against the Ramseys by a freelance journalist, whom the Ramseys had named as a suspect in their daughter’s murder. The Boulder district attorney at the time said she agreed with the judge’s declaration.
Wood said Wednesday’s arrest further vindicated his clients.
“I am sure there were still doubts in the minds of individuals whose thinking had been poisoned against this family because of the years of false accusations,†Wood said.
“Today is additional vindication of the family, but I think that knowledgeable individuals familiar with the evidence in the case have known for many years that this family was falsely accused, that they were innocent and that what they lived through in the last 10 years was an American tragedy.â€
Wood said he and the Ramseys “have been totally amazed and impressed with the professionalism of law enforcement†under Lacy’s direction. Lacy became district attorney in 2001.
KUSA-TV of Denver, citing no sources, reported that the suspect has confessed to certain elements of the crime.
Bob Grant, a former Adams County district attorney who worked on the case, said there was never enough evidence to convince him that any potential suspect could be successfully prosecuted.
“I wasn’t convinced it was an inside job, nor was I convinced it was an outside job,†he said. “All the outside suspects were cleared after exhaustive investigation, and there were a whole lot of outside suspects.â€
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