Man confesses to JonBenet murder -- and sick obsession
John Mark Karr arrested in Bangkok for "finally solved" murder
By Jeff Emanuel Posted in Culture | Featured Stories — Comments (10) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
The American suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case said publicly Thursday he was with the 6-year-old when she died and called her death "an accident."
John Mark Karr, 41, insisted after his arrest that his crime was not first-degree murder. "He said it was second- degree murder. He said it was unintentional. He said he was in love with the child. She was a pageant queen," according to a spokesperson for the Thai police.
[Karr was quoted] as saying he tried to kidnap JonBenet for a $118,000 ransom but that his plan went awry and he strangled her to death. Patsy Ramsey, JonBenet's mother, reported finding a ransom note in the house demanding $118,000 for her daughter.
There is so much wrong and creepy here that I don't even know where to begin. So, perhaps we should start with the fact that Karr, arrested in Bangkok, was there "to look for a teaching job"? Seriously -- what parent would allow their kids to be around this guy?
« Hating James Dobson: To Heck With His Qualifications, He's a Meanie — Comments (14) | A ruling on academic freedom — Comments (27) »
Man confesses to JonBenet murder -- and sick obsession 10 Comments (0 topical, 10 editorial, 0 hidden) Post a comment »
The person we should blame for the murder is the person who committed it. We don't 'blame' rape victims for having short skirts or the victims of burglary for having insufficient home defences.
Are the parents feeling a degree of guilt? I would think so, but it is a personal matter. At worst they made a misjudgement with tragic consequences. They did not do anything wrong.
Do I think this contests are tacky, degrading and foul? Oh yes.
Quentin Langley
Editor of http://www.quentinlangley.net
The victim is dead. The victim didn't do anything wrong. The parents bear some small measure of responsibility for the position they put her in. The same goes for the parents that took in random homeless drifters and had one make off with their daughter. Actions do have consequences.
It never really occurred to me before that these beauty pageants might identify the children and set up them up for pedophiles. I always thought the JonBenet videos were repulsive and the whole concept struck me as abusive.
Nonetheless, assuming this is the murderer, I'm glad he was caught and that the longtime suspicion of murder can be lifted from the Ramseys.
kept the Ramseys under the "umbrella of suspicion" because they had their daughter in pageants dressed as a showgirl for an adult audience. It's probably not surprising that Karr would become associated with them for that reason.
I guess victims are not always great people.
I'm sorry if this sounds bloodthirsty, but this guy deserves the death penalty if he is convicted.
if the death was an accident because this guy has confessed to enough other charges to put him away for a long time.
I doubt if a Colorado jury would give him the death penalty anyway because, according to this source, Colorado has performed exactly one execution since 1976.
Does it strike anyone else as weird that the guy on camera admits to "being there when she died" (though it was "an accident") yet when asked how he got into the house he says, "No comment"?
That would be like admitting you committed a drive-by shooting but refusing to say whether you were driving over the speed limit in the course of it.
Makes you wonder if there isn't more weirdness yet to come.
This guys seems very creepy and his story sounds fishy.
Is he just craving publicity? His life has already been ruined by his other sex offenses. He studies child murder cases in detail. Maybe he is just making this up. His ex-wife said he is lying and that he was in Alabama at the time of the murder.
but does anyone else find the whole concept of “show children” terribly disturbing? Certainly if this guy is guilty it completely exonerates the parents of the murder, but they must still accept some measure of blame for putting their child in the position to be so known to the predators. They’re the ones who made a public spectacle of their child, and dressed her and painted her up like an adult woman; for what? That sort of thing makes me cringe. To this pedophile it was irresistible. How can you fail to see that doing this to your child (for what I don’t know) makes them a target for the pedophiles out there.
I’m sorry, but the innocence of children is already so fleeting in this country that I simply cannot understand why any parent would try to sexualize their child at such a young age. To me it is very wrong. It teaches all the wrong lessons to the child, and literally places them in danger. To me it seems almost like a subtle form of child abuse. It simply invites the sickos and perverts to target those children. I cannot imagine a reason to make your children participate in that sort of thing.
I don’t understand it at all.