JonBenet Murder Case Heats Up Boulder, Colo.
Pastor Dale Morgan
JonBenet Murder Case Heats Up Boulder, Colo.*
Saturday August 19, 2006 9:16 PM
By CHASE SQUIRES
Associated Press Writer
BOULDER, Colo. (AP) - Reporters and camera crews crowded the local
courthouse grounds Saturday in anticipation of the arrival of teacher
John Mark Karr to face charges in the death of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey.
The intense media attention in the case that has fascinated the nation
for nearly 10 years has outraged JonBenet's father and driven him to
consider moving out of the country, a family lawyer said Saturday.
Karr said in a televised statement after being arrested Wednesday in
Thailand that he was with JonBenet when she was killed on the day after
Christmas 1996 in the basement of the family's home in Boulder. He
called the child's death ``an accident.''
Karr will face charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and child
sexual assault.
Authorities in Thailand said Karr, 41, would leave on a flight to the
United States on Sunday. ``The tickets for John Mark Karr's departure
are ready,'' Thailand's immigration police chief, Lt. Gen. Suwat
Tumrongsiskul, told reporters.
Suwat did not specify the route Karr would take. In the United States,
neither federal nor local officials would confirm the timing.
Television crews had already pitched camp Saturday on the grounds of the
Boulder County court building in this wealthy college town.
More than 30 journalists representing organizations as far away as Japan
attended a meeting Friday to divvy up media seating for Karr's first
court appearance - even though the hearing hadn't even been scheduled.
That initial court appearance is generally for the judge to advise a
suspect of his rights, said state court system spokeswoman Karen Salaz.
``It's going to be three minutes, max,'' Salaz said Saturday.
Lin Wood, the Atlanta attorney who has represented JonBenet's parents,
John and Patsy Ramsey, for years, said Saturday the media onslaught
facing John Ramsey is worse than it's ever been.
The intense coverage has Ramsey considering a move out of the country,
Wood said. Patsy Ramsey died in June.
Wood said camera crews and reporters followed Ramsey on Friday when he
took his son, Burke, to Purdue University to start the college year.
``He cannot go back to his home in Michigan because it is surrounded by
the media,'' Wood said. ``Last night, I've never heard him so angry. He
is upset. He is worried about his son's physical safety ... I'm not sure
John Ramsey will ever speak to a member of the media after what happened
to him yesterday.''
JonBenet's body was found the day after Christmas 1996 in the basement
of the family's Boulder home. She had a fractured skull and had been
strangled. Autopsy results were inconclusive about whether she'd been
sexually assaulted.
The girl had been in child beauty pageants, and photos and video of the
heavily made-up blonde from a wealthy neighborhood helped give the
mystery an appeal that created a cottage industry of books,
documentaries and TV specials.
Years of investigations and grand jury hearings never produced an
arrest. Police at one time declared that the girl's parents and older
brother were under an ``umbrella of suspicion,'' and the Ramseys
bitterly countered what they termed unfair speculation, even publishing
a book detailing why they said an intruder must have killed their daughter.
Legal experts have said DNA evidence will likely be key: DNA was found
beneath JonBenet's fingernails and inside her underwear. But others who
worked on the case warned that DNA evidence alone will not be enough to
convict Karr.
``It can only exclude or include him as the possible killer. It can
never be 100 percent,'' a forensic scientist, Dr. Henry Lee, said
Saturday, noting that investigators only have a partial profile to work
with.
``There was different DNA and mixture DNA that was hard to develop a
profile from,'' said Bob Grant, a former prosecutor from neighboring
Adams County who was an adviser in the case.
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.