Murder suspect John Mark Karr today awaited expulsion to the US where questions mounted over whether his confession to the killing of six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey would stand up.

For a moment, it seemed the decade-old mystery surrounding the slaying of a child beauty queen had been solved. But authorities have cautioned against rushing to judge the schoolteacher who made a stunning confession that he killed JonBenet Ramsey.

An American expatriate school teacher said publicly today he was with JonBenet Ramsey when she died in what he called “an accident", a stunning admission after a decade without answers in the six-year-old’s murder.

The American suspect in the 1996 killing of six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey in Colorado told questioners he drugged and then had sex with his victim before accidentally killing her, a senior Thai police officer said today.

The suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey killing held in Thailand said he was “very sorry for what happened” to the six-year-old beauty queen who was murdered a decade ago in the basement of her home, and that he loved her “very much”.

Thai police today said that a 41-year-old American man has admitted to the killing a decade ago of six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey in the United States.