An American arrested in Thailand said Thursday he was with child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey when she died in her parents’ basement in 1996 and called her death “an accident.”
To some folks, perhaps, this ten-year-old case is old news, hardly notable in the face of recent, more global events…. but not for me, because in a very real sense, JonBenet Ramsey’s tragic story helped Polimom raise Adorable Child (AC).
It was her murder that I thought of when a stranger approached Polimom in the produce section of the grocery story in 1997, asking if he could take AC’s picture, and it was JonBenet’s face I saw when people started encouraging me to submit AC’s photos to various agencies for media promotion.
This beautiful little girl’s killing affected Polimom deeply, and her story underpins the very strong opinions I now hold regarding brutal crimes against children; Polimom has an oddly personal interest in seeing her death resolved.
Unfortunately, there’s something about John Karr’s statements to the press that makes me think the story is going to get much uglier before it’s put to rest at last:
“I was with JonBenet when she died,” Karr told reporters afterward, visibly nervous and stuttering as he spoke. “Her death was an accident.”
Asked if he was innocent of the crime, Karr said: “No.”
That whole “with [her] when she died” thing is bothering me a lot.
Update: There’s something strange here:
Karr told investigators he drugged and had sex with the child beauty queen before accidentally killing her, said a senior Thai police officer, who was briefed about the interview.
[snip]
An autopsy on Ramsey said a blood screening showed no drugs or alcohol in her body, which had a 1 centimeter area of vaginal abrasion. Searches initially showed that there was semen on JonBenet’s body but further examinations conducted by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation revealed there was none.
Lots of things wrong with this picture at this point…