JonBenet murder suspect arrives in Colorado

JonBenet Ramsey murder suspect John Karr arrived today in the Colorado city where the six-year-old was killed to face charges in a case prosecutors said was still in its “very early stages”.

The three-hour flight from Los Angeles landed at Jefferson County airport, a few miles from the wealthy Boulder home where JonBenet’s father discovered her body on St Stephen's Day 1996.

Karr, in handcuffs both as he entered and exited the plane, was put into a black sport utility vehicle and driven in a convoy to the Boulder jail, with news helicopters trailing overhead.

The plane ride offered none of the prawns, wine and champagne that accompanied Karr’s Thailand-to-California flight, but the former teacher was allowed to wear dark trousers and a red shirt instead of a prison jumpsuit.

Karr’s first few hours at the jail would include physical and mental evaluations, Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle said. He will be locked alone in an 8x10ft cell, away from the other 480 inmates.

“Anybody that’s in jail in our population that faces these kinds of charges, charges against children, faces some danger,” Pelle said.

Questions about Karr’s involvement in the case have arisen since he told reporters following his arrest in Thailand last week how he was with the child beauty queen at the time of her death, but that her death was an accident.

Karr will make his first court appearance in Boulder as soon as practical, according to the district attorney’s office. During an initial hearing, judges advise defendants of their rights to remain silent, to have a lawyer and to post bail unless it is denied.

A preliminary hearing must be scheduled within 30 days after formal charges are filed.

Boulder County prosecutors have refused to reveal any evidence they might have, but in a court filing this week said investigators did not learn of Karr’s name until August 11, five days before his arrest in Thailand.

They said he was arrested partly because they feared he might be tipped off and vanish.

“It is like this guy fell out of the sky for them and they’re trying to figure out what they have going,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law School and a former federal prosecutor.

“They can’t really let him go or proceed to convict him until they have the evidence. It’s in a bit of a limbo now.”

But the court filing conflicts with the Sonoma County, California, sheriff, who said his office alerted Boulder authorities about Karr in 2001 after he was arrested on child pornography charges. The sheriff and Boulder prosecutors both refused to comment on the apparent discrepancy.

Karr, 41, has professed love for JonBenet in emails with a Colorado professor, and told a California woman, Wendy Hutchens, he believes the little girl was tortured before she was strangled.

Sonoma County sheriff’s Lt Dave Edmonds said Karr expressed an “apparent fascination” with the 1993 murder victim Polly Klaas and JonBenet, and “presented ideas about what the murderers of Polly Klaas and JonBenet Ramsey must have thought and felt”. But there was no confession, Edmonds said, or anything else to suggest Karr played a role in JonBenet’s murder.

The Boulder arrest warrant and supporting affidavit remain sealed and the district attorney is fighting media requests to open them. Prosecutors said in Wednesday’s court filing that the affidavit contained evidence never before disclosed publicly.

“To a large extent, the evidence from the investigation in the affidavit has to do with Mr Karr and it was only developed recently,” wrote Bill Nagel, an assistant district attorney. “Furthermore, the investigation of Mr Karr is in its very early stages.”

After JonBenet’s father, John Ramsey, found her body in the family’s basement, police collected DNA from blood spots in her underwear and from under her fingernails.

Investigators have said some of the DNA was too degraded to use as evidence, but some was of sufficient quality to submit to the FBI in 2003. The sample did not match any of the 1.5 million samples in the agency’s database, according to the Ramsey family lawyer.

Other evidence includes the ransom note, a mysterious boot print found outside the house, marks on JonBenet’s body that some say could have been made by a stun gun; and signs that someone may have entered the house through a basement window.