JonBenet Ramsey: Who is John Mark Karr? Here's why the former school teacher falsely admitted to killing her
Six-year-old JonBenet Ramsey was found dead on December 26, 1996, in the basement of her parent's house. She was found bludgeoned, strangled and hidden underneath a white blanket with a nylon cord around her neck. Her wrists had been bound above her head while her mouth was covered using duct tape.
Her body was found by her father around eight hours after she was reported missing by them. Police have no clue as to what happened that fateful day and now, over two decades later, the child's death still remains unsolved generating conspiracy theories and headlines.
There have been possible suspects and people of interest in the murder of JonBenet. This list of people includes former school teacher John Mark Karr who had randomly owned up to killing the beauty pageant star.
Who is John Mark Karr?
Karr had made a bizarre confession in 2006 where he claimed he was the one behind the murder of the child and described the strangulation of JonBenet in graphic, sexual detail.
Karr was arrested while he was in Thailand where he had been residing after he faced child pornography charges in the US. He had put himself on the radar when he reached out to a University of Colorado Boulder professor named Michael Tracey.
He had contacted Tracey via email with regards to a documentary that Tracey had been making on the case. Those emails soon took a sickening turn and revealed Karr's sexual fascination with JonBenet after which Tracey reported Karr to the police who arrested him in Bangkok, according to Rolling Stone.
He was flown into Boulder for questioning but was cleared when his DNA did not match the profile of an unknown male suspect whose DNA was found on the waistband of JonBenet's underwear. Karr's confession had included several diary entries that had allegedly been written from the scene of the crime. One such diary entry stated that he had strangled JonBenet in a "love game" gone wrong.
The entry reads, "Close your pretty eyes, sweetheart." In the entry, he refers to himself as "Daxis" and writes, "Daxis loves you so much. Oh God, I love you, JonBenét. And my lover's eyes are slowly closing …"
Why did he confess to a crime he did not commit?
According to Bustle, experts believe that Karr would have done so in order to gain notoriety and fame. A psychology professor Saul Kassin spoke to the Christian Science Monitor after Karr's 2006 confession and said that there are some people who have a pathological need for attention and notoriety.
It is possible that for this reason, Karr chose to make a false confession to killing JonBenet. Another possibility is that Karr was suffering from some form of delusion and even before his confession, was strangely obsessed with the case itself.
He had written long letters to JonBenet's family and had also been in contact with the professor making a documentary about the case. A criminal psychology professor, Eric Hickey, had suggested to WebMD that Karr's reality and fantasy could have become blurry in his mind.