Arrested Man Wanted for Questioning in JonBenet Ramsey Case
Aug. 16, 2006 — -- John Mark Karr, 41-year-old former schoolteacher who is wanted for questioning in the murder of JonBenet Ramsey, is under arrest in Bangkok, Thailand, on unrelated sex charges, law enforcement sources told ABC News.
Ramsey, a 6-year-old child beauty pageant winner, was found strangled and beaten to death in the basement of her family's Boulder, Colo., home on Dec. 26, 1996, in a case that shocked the nation and cast suspicion on the girl's parents who fought to prove their innocence.
The man under arrest was charged in 2001 with possession of child pornography in Sonoma County, Calif., and is also wanted in that state for failing to appear in court, sources told ABC News.
The arrest came early today, according to the Boulder County District Attorney's Office.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials, along with the Boulder County police, helped identify and locate the suspect, sources told ABC News.
JonBenet's mother, Patsy Ramsey, first found a handwritten ransom note on the back staircase of the home where her daughter was later found murdered almost a decade ago. It demanded $118,000 -- the exact amount the little girl's father, John Ramsey, had received as a corporate bonus -- if the family ever wanted to see JonBenet again. Eight hours later, Patsy Ramsey found her badly beaten daughter's body in the basement.
From the beginning, the focus of suspicion was directed squarely at her father, a software millionaire, and his wife, a former beauty queen.
The Ramseys refused to take lie-detector tests and would only agree to be interviewed by police together.
Yet the Ramseys were steadfast in defending their innocence.
"Let me assure you, I did not kill JonBenet," Patsy Ramsey said then.
The Ramseys offered a reward of $100,000 to the person who captured their daughter's killer. They also wrote a memoir, "The Death of Innocence," and filed libel suits against several news outlets. Three years after the murder, investigators officially cleared the Ramseys.
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