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Latest twist fits with case's bizarre history

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published August 20, 2006

Ten years later, it is a blur of morbid fascination and speculation, of gross misjudgments and disturbing suspicions, a torrent of bold type and flashing images that makes it difficult to remember the dark winter stillness in which it all started.

It was 5:22 a.m., the morning after Christmas, 1996 - the moment the story of JonBenet Ramsey simultaneously ended and began.

In the 15-room Tudor home at 755 15th St., Patsy Ramsey picked up the phone and dialed 911. Please help, she told a Boulder, Colo., police dispatcher; someone had taken her little girl.

When officers arrived at the home in the upscale Chautauqua neighborhood, not far from the University of Colorado campus, they were told they were looking for a 6-year-old with shining eyes and flowing blonde hair, a diminutive beauty queen. They studied a ransom note reportedly found inside.

"Mr. Ramsey: Listen Carefully!" it began. "At this time we have your daughter in our possession. She is safe and unharmed, and if you want to see her in 1997, you must follow our instructions ..."

In that moment, the case, horrific as it was, seemed at least fairly straightforward. By afternoon, even that bit of reassurance would be lost.

Nearly a decade has passed, but the uproar unleashed by the arrest in Thailand of John Mark Karr, a 41-year-old teacher who says he killed JonBenet, makes it clear that fascination with the case has never really diminished.

And it provides just one more discomforting twist to a story that continues to both repulse and intrigue in a way that few other notorious cases have ever done.

"We move on (from other cases) because they get replaced. They're almost generics. But how many involve victims of this degree of wealth? How many involve ... parents of victims who call press conferences (to) keep it alive?" said Andrew Vachss, a bestselling author of crime novels that are an outgrowth of a career spent defending the rights of children.

It is not at all clear that Karr is guilty. His confession appears pockmarked by inconsistencies. Doubts and questions have been raised about whether Karr, who has not lived in Colorado, was ever in the state, let alone at the time of the murder. Authorities, urging patience and caution, will not say whether DNA tests have revealed any connection.

It is all very strange. But looking back on the JonBenet case, is it also all too typical?

The doubt that now twists around the case took root hours after police reached the Ramsey's home. As police searched the scene that Thursday afternoon, detectives allowed Patsy's husband, John, to re-enter the house alone.

He emerged a few minutes later, JonBenet's body limp in his arms.

That was the first of what would be criticized as a series of mistakes by investigators. It set the scene for the Ramseys to launch their own campaign for clues, even as they straight-armed Boulder police Chief Tom Koby's department. And, as tabloids and cable networks swarmed over the case, a bizarre dynamic began to take shape.

"The family is cooperating," a Boulder city spokeswoman told reporters early on. "They are in Boulder under protective custody. They are not under house arrest."

By New Year's Eve, the Ramseys had hired an attorney, their own publicist and their own investigators. Soon, they drew into seclusion, shifting between friends' homes week to week, their movements and possible motivations the subject of cover headlines in the tabloids.

Investigators began to signal their frustration. The case would take months to solve, Koby said.

Five months after the murder he would remove two detectives from the case, including the first one to arrive at the Ramsey home. Later, he would acknowledge mistakes had been made in the early going. He would retire in disgrace.

As the months dragged on, little headway appeared to be made. Handwriting samples were taken from both of JonBenet's parents. But their thrust and parry with investigators intensified, as the two sides negotiated publicly about where detectives would be allowed to interview the couple - at their home together or at the police station, recorded on tape.

Not until more than four months after the murder did they sit down with police for formal interviews. It would be more than a year before the couple and their 9-year-old son, Burke - under the "umbrella of suspicion" along with his parents - were interviewed again.

Even as it began to appear that the murderer might never be identified, prosecutors seated a grand jury to examine the case in spring of 1998. But in late 1999, prosecutors said no indictments would be issued, citing a lack of evidence.

By the end of 2000 - four years after the murder - with investigators exhausted, vast amounts of time and money spent and no progress made, many observers thought the case might never be solved.

That is the case that Mary Lacy inherited when she became district attorney for Boulder County, promising to revisit JonBenet's death.

In 2003, after the Ramseys moved to Georgia, a federal judge in Atlanta concluded that evidence in the case was suggestive that an intruder had killed JonBenet. Lacy agreed.

Still, the case appeared to be going nowhere. In 2004, tests on DNA found in JonBenet's underwear were compared with a national database of offenders, with no match. This June, weeks before Karr's arrest, Patsy Ramsey died of ovarian cancer.

Without an arrest, the story seemed to be winding down. But behind the scenes investigators were piecing through e-mails exchanged by a University of Colorado professor, Michael Tracey, and a stranger with a deep and disturbing interest in JonBenet's death.

In one of those e-mails, Karr asked Tracey to go to the Ramsey house and recite a poem he had authored for the girl. It could be the last chilling clue in the case and, true to pattern, one that raises at least as many questions as it answers.

"JonBenet, my love, my life. I love you and I shall forever love you," Karr wrote. "I pray that you can hear my voice calling out to you from my darkness - this darkness that now separates us."

[Last modified August 20, 2006, 01:24:20]