Ramsey sorry for KarrJonBenet's father gives first interview since wife's death, suspect's arrest
By Charlie Brennan And Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News
November 24, 2006
John Ramsey used to talk about tearing his daughter's killer limb from limb.
But once a man - John Mark Karr - was in custody in connection with the crime, Ramsey's attitude softened.
In an interview to be broadcast Saturday, Ramsey voices empathy for the man arrested but later released after he confessed to JonBenet's slaying.
"After a while, he was so abused and vilified and convicted in the media that I started to feel sorry for the guy," Ramsey told "48 Hours Mystery" correspondent Erin Moriarty in his first interview since his wife Patsy's death and Karr's arrest.
"You have this expectation that absolute evil is going to be ugly and dark and reprehensible. Here, you know, is a nice clean-cut looking young man."
Karr was arrested in Bangkok on Aug. 15, after he professed to have intimate knowledge of how JonBenet died, in a series of e-mails with CU professor Michael Tracey. Karr was released Aug. 28 after Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy announced that Karr's DNA didn't match evidence from the crime scene.
The "48 Hours" broadcast reveals - via federal investigators who speak on camera - that Karr remains a person of interest in JonBenet's death on Christmas night 1996. The investigators are looking into his travels and contacts with children in other countries.
"They say quite clearly they're still investigating Karr because of his discussions where he seemed to know so much more about the (murder of JonBenet) than he should," Moriarty said.
She added that federal investigators remain interested in the possibility that two people were involved, and that Karr could be linked to the killing through a second person.
In their interviews, Department of Homeland Security agents also provide more detail about Karr's involvement with young girls in Thailand, some of it from what they observed on surveillance tapes.
"They became very concerned about his behavior with children," Moriarty said.
The "48 Hours" interview with John Ramsey took place over two days in October in Charlevoix, Mich.
John Ramsey acknowledged he has some concerns that Karr, whose own family says he is obsessed, might show up at his home.
"You can't live your life in fear, but, you know, we tend to be careful," he said.
Moriarty said that Ramsey, who turns 63 on Dec. 7, placed no conditions on the interview. "He seemed very relaxed, at peace and open to any question," Moriarty said. "There was nothing that he said 'I'd rather not talk' about.
The interview originally had been scheduled to take place earlier in the year and was to include Patsy Ramsey, JonBenet's mother, who died of cancer June 24. The interview was postponed when Patsy's health deteriorated.
On the broadcast, Ramsey recounted the difficulty of his wife's final moments.
The hospital staff "told me that I needed to tell her that in so many words that we'd given up (the fight against cancer). . . . That was hard. I just said, 'If you're ready to go, it's OK to go.' "
Moriarty said that Ramsey expressed disappointment in the way the case against Karr evaporated, and that he still seemed intrigued by certain facts that surfaced, including news that Karr once signed a high school yearbook S-B-T-C, matching the mysterious "S.B.T.C." sign-off to the ransom note in JonBenet's case.
Although Ramsey said some people always will suspect that he was involved in his daughter's death, he said many others now believe that he and his wife are innocent.
"He seems at peace with that," Moriarty said. "He also said he is not going to just disappear. He doesn't want people to forget this case. He doesn't want it to become some cold case that's not solved. And if that means he has to be in the public eye, he'll do that."
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