JonBenet Ramsey: Rush to judgment – twice?

Cold cases are solved but very infrequently. After years passed in the case of JonBenet Ramsey, the child beauty queen found beaten and strangled to death in the Boulder, Colorado home of her wealthy parents, most people probably thought the killing would forever remain a mystery.

Many if not most observers, including this writer, strongly suspected that the killing was an “inside job.” We thought her father John Ramsey, her mother Patsy Ramsey, or her brother Burke had killed JonBenet. It was hard to believe that someone outside the family had gotten into the home without their knowledge and stayed around long enough to slam little JonBenet in the head, twist a garrotte around her neck and strangle her, and finally pen the ransom note, with its peculiar identification of the claimed multiple writers as “a small foreign faction” and equally peculiar demand for a ransom of $118,000 (the exact amount of a bonus recently awarded to John Ramsey) found at the residence.

It appears we may have rushed to judgment. After ten years an arrest has been made in the case. American schoolteacher John Mark Karr, 41, was taken into custody in Thailand. The handsome Karr has confessed to the murder, supposedly claiming that he “loved” the child and that her death was an “accident.”

I think much of the public breathed a sigh of relief when hearing of Karr’s arrest and confession. At last this horrible, heartbreaking crime would be solved! Many of us, including myself, also felt more than a twinge of remorse at having maligned the Ramseys who may have been innocent after all. However, it was good to read that, a month before Patsy Ramsey’s death from the ovarian cancer she had battled for well over a decade, authorities had informed her that the arrest of an outsider was pending.

However, doubts have recently surfaced about suspect John Mark Karr. A San Francisco television station has reported that Karr’s ex-wife, Lara Karr, has said her husband was with her in Alabama at the time JonBenet was killed. His former wife has supposedly also reported that her husband was fascinated by prominent murder cases involving children and collected information on both the Polly Klaas and JonBenet Ramsey slayings. This opens the possibility that Karr is a disturbed man who made a false confession.

Authorities have also indicated that Karr has knowledge of aspects of the crime or crime scene that were never made public. It is also possible that DNA evidence may provide a crucial physical link between Karr and the murdered child.

At this stage, perhaps the best we can all do is heed the words of John Ramsey, the father of the murdered girl and a man who has lived under a dark cloud of suspicion for a decade: “Do not jump to conclusions, do not rush to judgment, do not speculate. Let the justice system take its course.”