Karr was suspect in 2001
WASHINGTON – Five years before John Mark Karr was arrested this week as a suspect in the killing of JonBenet Ramsey, law enforcement officials in California investigating him on child pornography charges suspected he may have been involved in the death of the 6-year-old, according to a former attorney for the suspect.
Marie Case, who represented Karr on the 2001 misdemeanor charges, said Friday that members of the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department mentioned to her at the time that “there was possibly some involvement” in the Ramsey slaying 1,200 miles away in Boulder, Colo. – “just saying, ‘Hey, we’re looking at this guy.’ “
The old suspicions about Karr, 41, emerged Friday as one of his former wives combed through old family photos, mementos and financial records to establish whether Karr was with his family on Dec. 26, 1996, the day the girl’s battered body was discovered. Karr told reporters this week that he was with JonBenet when she died.
Michael L. Rains, an attorney for Lara Knutson, who was married to Karr for a dozen years until late 2001, said Friday that she is looking for tangible evidence to reinforce – or perhaps refute – her memory that her then-husband spent that day after Christmas with her and their three sons in Alabama, where they lived at the time.
Rains said that Knutson “really absolutely detests” Karr and added: “Believe me, her better instincts would be to find some way to bury him for the rest of his life.” But he said that Knutson, who lives in Petaluma, Calif., is preparing to meet with Boulder County investigators, probably next week, and wants to give an accurate account.
On Thursday, the Boulder district attorney said Karr had been arrested in Bangkok early in the investigation and that law enforcement officials are continuing to evaluate evidence.
Karr was to fly to the United States on Sunday, a Thai police official said today.
“The tickets for John Mark Karr’s departure are ready,” Thailand’s immigration police chief, Lt. Gen. Suwat Tumrongsiskul, told reporters. “He is leaving for the United States on Sunday evening.”
Case said that she did not know the depth of the investigators’ suspicion in 2001 that her client could have had a role in JonBenet’s death. But she said it “seemed somebody dropped the ball.” She said that she was not contacted by law enforcement officials from Boulder and that no one sought to test her client’s DNA to determine whether it matched evidence from the Colorado crime. “It never went anywhere,” she said.
On Friday, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department would not comment about the 2001 case.
On Wednesday, Sonoma court records show, a California Superior Court judge granted prosecutors’ request to seal the police reports that had led to Karr’s arrest on the child pornography charges.
The porn charges were lodged against Karr less than a year after he moved with his family from rural Hamilton, Ala., to Petaluma, a small town in the California wine country, in the summer of 2000. Several acquaintances from Alabama, interviewed Friday, said they never understood why the family left.
Starting in early 2001, Karr worked sporadically as a substitute teacher. That April, Sonoma County detectives informed him that he was under suspicion for child pornography based on a confidential tip. Investigators searched two homes in Petaluma and seized two computer hard drives, a laptop computer and other equipment that belonged to Karr.
During an hour-long videotaped interview with Detective Martin Frey, Karr denied that he had engaged in child pornography, according to court records. The records indicate that he told Frey he was researching a book about Richard Allen Davis, the man convicted of another notorious child slaying, the 1993 murder of 12-year-old Polly Klaas, who had lived in Petaluma. Karr said he kept Klaas’ death certificate in a binder at home, the records show.
Karr was charged with five counts of child pornography.
In an interview Friday, Mark Klaas, Polly’s father, said he had never heard of Karr until his arrest this week but speculated that Karr came to Petaluma to be close to the site of his daughter’s death. “The guy had an obsession with my daughter,” Klaas said. “He lived in Alabama with his family, and all of a sudden he moved to a sleepy little farm community … in Northern California … and ends up living eight-tenths of a mile from where she was. … This guy seems to be a little-dead-girl pedophile groupie.”
On Thursday, after learning that Karr may have corresponded with Davis, Klaas’ killer, guards at San Quentin State Prison searched Davis’ death-row cell but found no evidence, according to Lt. Erick Messick, a prison spokesman. On Friday, Case, Karr’s former defense attorney, confirmed in an interview that she had been aware her client had an interest in both the Klaas and Ramsey cases.
After Karr’s 2001 arrest, bond was set at $100,000, and he was jailed for five months.
Karr was released under a program of supervision. He skipped a court appearance before the trial and left town. “He just vanished, disappeared,” Case said.