Arrest made in Ramsey killing

BOULDER, Colo. – For years, the theories about who killed 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey a decade ago always included her family.

Could John or Patsy Ramsey have killed their daughter? What about JonBenet’s older brother?

The cloud of suspicion that has hovered over the family all but vanished Wednesday with news that a former schoolteacher had been arrested in Thailand in the lurid, decade-old murder case some feared would never be solved.

The Ramseys learned about the suspect at least a month before Patsy Ramsey’s death on June 24 after a 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,” said Lin Wood, the family’s longtime attorney.

Wood identified the suspect as John Mark Karr, 41. Federal officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, confirmed the name, and one law enforcement official told the Associated Press that Boulder police had tracked him down online.

U.S. authorities said Karr was being held in Bangkok on unrelated sex charges, but Thai police Lt. Gen. Suwat Tumrongsiskul said he was unaware of any criminal charges the suspect faced in Thailand.

Karr was arrested in his apartment in downtown Bangkok at the request of U.S. officials, and was being held until they arrived in the country, Thai police said. Suwat said he expected U.S. officials to bring Karr back to America in the next few days.

Karr was a teacher who once lived in Conyers, Ga., according to Wood. The attorney said the Ramseys gave police information about Karr before he was identified as a suspect in their daughter’s slaying.

“John and Patsy lived their lives knowing they were innocent, trying to raise a son despite the furor around them,” Wood told MSNBC. “The story of this family is a story of courage, and story of an American injustice and tragedy that ultimately people will have to look back on and hopefully learn from.”

Wood would not say how the Ramseys knew Karr. But 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.

A source close to the investigation said Karr confessed to elements of the crime.

A law enforcement source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the AP that Karr had been communicating periodically with somebody in Boulder who had been following the case and was cooperating with law enforcement officials.

District Attorney Mary Lacy said the arrest followed several months of work, but she said no further details would be released until today. 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 blond-haired little JonBenet in a cowgirl costume and other beauty pageant outfits has haunted TV talk shows ever since, helping feed myriad theories about her killer, and the case became one of the most sensational unsolved murders in the nation.

Investigators said at one point that JonBenet’s parents were under an “umbrella of suspicion” in the slaying. And some news accounts cast suspicion on JonBenet’s older brother, Burke. 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. The Ramseys moved back to Atlanta after their daughter’s slaying.

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.”

Wood lashed out at the frenzy that long surrounded the case, and he accused the media of “the most obscene false accusations.”

“I think the public’s mind was so poisoned against this family that no one was able for too many years to look at the evidence,” he said.

Unmatched DNA found beneath JonBenet’s fingernails and inside her underwear has long stumped detectives.

Two years ago, Wood said DNA found in JonBenet’s underwear did not match any of 1.5 million samples in an FBI database of convicted violent offenders, and investigators have said tests showed it came from someone outside the Ramsey family.

Patsy Ramsey’s sister, Pam Paugh of Roswell, Ga., said the family was celebrating news of the arrest.

“We are elated. We are elated. If this is, in fact, the killer, then we have a very heinous killer off the streets to never harm another child,” Paugh said.

Lib Waters of Marietta, Ga., visited the graves 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 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.”

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. At the time, Lacy said she agreed with the judge’s declaration.

“Today is additional vindication of the family,” Wood said.

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, taking over when DA Alex Hunter stepped down after 28 years.

Author Lawrence Schiller, who wrote the 1999 book “Perfect Murder, Perfect Town” about the case, said Wednesday he understood the suspect had been on a list of sexual offenders who were suspects for a long time.

“There are a lot of facts about her actual death that the public does not know,” Schiller said. “If he did confess to some facts of the murder, to reveal those facts of the case, that would finish the puzzle.”

Among the facts he said were not generally known: the murder weapon and what the killer did with it.

According to Schiller, retired investigator Lou Smit – who suggested years ago that an intruder was responsible for JonBenet’s death – told him last year there was a short list of sex offenders and “they were getting close.”

Smit could not be reached for comment and officials at the El Paso County Sheriff’s Department, where he does volunteer work, said he has been asked by Lacy not to comment on the case.

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.”