EXCLUSIVE: Secret Tapes of John Mark Karr

Aug. 22, 2006 — -- Five years ago, few Americans had ever heard of John Mark Karr, the man now under arrest for the murder of JonBenet Ramsey. But Wendy Hutchens says she knew him as few others may have: back in 2001, she says, he told her some of his innermost thoughts.

The conversations with Hutchens depict a man overtaken by his attraction to young girls. "They're so beautiful some of them … just overwhelming, dripping with attractiveness."

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"I can see through the eyes of the person who stopped the life of [JonBenet] … as easily as … if I did it myself," he says. Hutchens ended up with hours of taped conversations with a man she says is Karr. ABC News has exclusively obtained one hour of the tapes, and the hour reveals a man obsessed with young girls and deeply confused about his own life.

Hutchens says she met Karr through their mutual fascination with Richard Allan Davis, the man convicted of the 1993 murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas in California. She says that when they began exchanging letters and telephone calls, Karr quickly opened up to her in ways she found deeply disturbing. Wendy Hutchens says she went to local law enforcement officials with her concerns, and they instructed her to tape the calls, providing her with equipment to do so.

"There were things that he wanted to share that he had never been able to share with anybody," Hutchens tells ABC News. Those things included thoughts about JonBenet Ramsey and graphic descriptions of his desire for young girls. "She was just so, so incredible in life and so unreal in death," the man in the recording says of JonBenet Ramsey.

"I've kissed little girls on the mouth and they've actually most of the time initiated the kiss, but I've kissed little girls on the mouth," the man on the recording says. "I've never French kissed a little girl in my life. But … I've been kissed by them. I've held them. I've caressed them."

Soon after those recordings were made, Karr was arrested and charged in Sonoma County with possession of child pornography.

The former prosecutor on Karr's case confirmed to ABC News that Hutchens was, in fact, a confidential informant in the case. Karr spent nearly six months in jail and was released before trial, one of the conditions for his release being that he stay away from Hutchens.