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Nancy Grace
John Mark Karr Cleared
Aired September 01, 2006 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ATIKA SHUBERT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Paraded before the international media, John Mark Karr, the 41-year-old school teacher, now accused of murder, kidnap and sexual abuse of JonBenet Ramsey. As he was led into police headquarters, Karr made a stunning admission.
JOHN MARK KARR, CLEARED JONBENET RAMSEY MURDER SUSPECT: I love JonBenet very much.
SHUBERT: He then sat impassively as Thai officials tried to control the media scrum...
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: All right, step back!
SHUBERT: ... before speaking again.
QUESTION: What happened?
KARR: Her death was -- was an accident.
QUESTION: (INAUDIBLE) in the basement?
KARR: Yes.
QUESTION: Can you tell us about your connection to the Ramsey family?
KARR: No comment (INAUDIBLE)
QUESTION: How did you get into the basement?
KARR: No comment on that.
QUESTION: And how do you feel now? How are you being treated?
KARR: I`m being treated OK.
QUESTION: How long had you known JonBenet?
KARR: No comment on that.
SHUBERT: At sometimes chaotic news conference, a U.S. official outlined the charges against Karr.
ANN HURST, U.S. IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT: He has been charged by the state of California -- I`m sorry -- Colorado for first degree murder after deliberation, first degree murder, felony murder, first degree kidnapping, second degree kidnapping, and sexual assault on a child.
SHUBERT: Thai police said that when informed of the charges, Karr had insisted he had not meant to kill JonBenet.
GEN. SUWAT THAMRONGSRISAKUL, THAI IMMIGRATION POLICE CHIEF: He said (INAUDIBLE) not intentionally.
SHUBERT: U.S. Officials say Karr has cooperated with investigators.
What was he doing here for the last two years? He lived a lonely life on the ninth floor of this Bangkok guest house, staff and neighbors say, and was never seen with anyone. CNN obtained a copy of his hotel bill with several phone numbers. Among the calls, a tour agency that says he traveled to Cambodia, and a medical clinic specializing in cosmetic surgery, including sex change operations. Doctors there say Karr had several appointments, but refused to divulge what treatments he received.
Karr taught in at least two Bangkok international schools for several weeks. Both refused to hire him full-time. One reported inappropriate behavior with young girls. Another said he was too intimidating to his students. CNN also obtained a copy of his application to another school that declined to hire him. According to a school official that interviewed him for the job, Karr seemed, quote, "overly eager" to work with elementary school girls, refusing any supervision or assistance in the classroom. The school official also told CNN Karr sent the school a series of pornographic and sexually explicit e-mails.
Once in detention, Karr was monitored 24 hours a day by English- speaking guards. He ate little, only asking for the occasional bottle of water. Immigration officials say he passed the days watching television, including news reports of his arrest, and reading one book, "The Secret Garden," a children`s story about an orphaned young girl who goes to live with her reclusive uncle in the English countryside.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
NANCY GRACE, HOST: Tonight, a decade-long investigation in the still unsolved JonBenet Ramsey murder case. Ten years later, and tonight, back to square one. Boulder, Colorado, authorities announced to the world they`re this close to finally solving the bizarre murder mystery, and then in the midst of a media blitz, the elected DA, red-faced, played catch-and- release, admitting a colossal mistake: She brought in the wrong guy.
As Karr now heads to California to answer up on a series of child pornography charges, we want answers! Who is John Mark Karr? We investigate.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Let`s go out to a special guest joining us, "People" magazine staff editor Larry Sutton. He has researched this exhaustively. Larry, what was your first impression of John Mark Karr? In the first few moments I heard his statement, I thought he was a crackpot.
LARRY SUTTON, "PEOPLE" MAGAZINE: I think everyone thought that. I think everyone thought that. If you found anyone that had said, yes, this is the guy who did it, from the start -- that didn`t happen. This is a guy who -- you know, whose own family said he wasn`t even in the states, moments after the arrest was made known. So...
(CROSSTALK)
GRACE: But Larry, as an old trial lawyer myself, you have to take anything a family says, God bless them, with a box of salt because I don`t think there`s anybody here in this studio that night not be tempted to lie to save a family member.
SUTTON: No, absolutely true. But as they pointed out, no one had evidence that he was there in Colorado at the time of the death. I mean, they made some good points right from the start, even though they were family members.
GRACE: So how did it get this far? How are you going to stand in front of a jury five years from now and go, OK, you know what? We think we were wrong with the mom and dad, we think we were wrong with Santa Claus, we think we were wrong with Hellgoff (ph). We even brought somebody home from Bangkok, Thailand. Yes, we were wrong about that, but this time, we`re pretty sure.
SUTTON: I don`t think it`s that much of a problem, to be honest with you. They tried. They went out. They investigated. They came up with the conclusion this isn`t the guy. Well, they`ll go out and try again. Just because they failed one or two times in their attempt, that doesn`t preclude anyone from coming along down the road a year from now. Maybe they will find the killer.
GRACE: Maybe -- you know, Larry -- hold the camera on Larry just one moment. Larry, did you just say, Maybe they will find the killer?
SUTTON: I don`t know.
GRACE: I mean, it`s already been 10 years, Larry!
SUTTON: Sure. Absolutely. Stranger things have happened. It doesn`t look likely, but can it happen? Sure, it can.
GRACE: The eternal optimist there, Larry Sutton, "People" magazine staff editor. But I got to say, when I read your article -- stunning.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: On to a special guest, an expert on so-called false confessions. His name, Richard Ofshe. Richard, thank you for being with us. What do you make of John Mark Karr`s so-called confession?
DR. RICHARD OFSHE, FALSE CONFESSIONS EXPERT: His confession or his statement is really very troubling. It starts with the fact that we really have no idea who interrogated him, how long they interrogated him. For the first time today, I saw something on an AP wire that actually admitted he was interrogated. Up to that point, it wasn`t clear exactly what happened. In the beginning, people thought he had just sort of volunteered this statement.
But what`s really troubling about what he said were things such as, I was present when it happened, and it was -- her death was an accident. Those two statements are not inconsistent, in fact, they are consistent with classic interrogation tactics used to elicit statements from people that are not infrequently false.
The first one is the result of a strategy in which the interrogator tries to sell someone, as happened in the Central Park jogger case, on the idea that, You were only a witness to this and you need to tell us about what you saw. That got five false confessions to the assault and rape of Patricia Melly (ph) in the Central Park jogger case.
The other one, She died by accident -- well, we know that that`s not true based on the forensic evidence, and somehow transforming what is obviously an intentional killing...
GRACE: Richard, other than the few recent things that we`ve heard that he said, what about his volumes and volumes of e-mails and conversations he`s had with people other than police?
OFSHE: And I don`t know of one statement in any of that that goes beyond showing that he had a very extraordinary and perhaps distasteful fascination with JonBenet Ramsey, but I don`t know of anyone saying he ever confessed or admitted to harming her.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: DNA, deoxyribonucleic acid, the make-or-break evidence in millions of court cases, including the murder case of 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRACE: Former school teacher John Mark Karr totally consumed, obsessed with 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey. Does he truly believe he killed the little girl Christmas 1996? Well, the DNA says otherwise. Boulder authorities confirm John Mark Karr`s DNA taken on a buccal swab inside the mouth does not match the DNA found on and about the body of JonBenet at the crime scene. Well, we now know that same DNA was actually contaminated, contaminated by Colorado authorities themselves at the very beginning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARY LACY, BOULDER COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: Why didn`t you surreptitiously take DNA in Bangkok before you took this person into custody? We did. We took surreptitious DNA on multiple occasions. Immediately upon locating this person, he went to mailboxes to pick up a package that we had sent to him. Two different officers took DNA off of the bicycle that he rode back. On a separate occasion, they obtained a cup that he used to drink from and a tissue or wipe that he used to wipe his hands.
The bottom line is that after we did that, our expert -- and we put a great deal of respect in our expert from the Denver lab -- said that the sample in the underwear of the victim was a mixed sample and that we do not want to compare a mixed sample with a mixed sample. We need a pristine sample. That means a buccal swab. A buccal swab can only be taken by consent or by court proceeding or court order. We couldn`t get his consent because he didn`t know he was under investigation, and we couldn`t alert him at that time.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Joining us now, a forensic scientist who actually examined DNA in the Ramsey case way back when, Mark Stolorow. Sir, thank you for being with us. What did you learn from your examination of the DNA?
MARK STOLOROW, FORENSIC BIOLOGIST: We determined that there was DNA that did not match any of the family members in that particular household.
GRACE: Mark, is it -- the DNA in JonBenet`s underwear, is it a mixture of her DNA and the perp`s DNA?
STOLOROW: From what I understand, the relevant stain that is being examined or under investigation presently is a blood stain which is known to have come from a male. And so the presence of biological fluids other than blood has not been substantiated.
GRACE: Mark, I`m showing the viewers now the way that an oral DNA swab is taken. It`s really simple. It looks like a long Q-tip, and it`s simply run along the inside of the mouth. From an oral swab, it`s very easy to do, the DNA match will be made.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JANE VELEZ-MITCHELL, GUEST HOST: Let us go straight to Dr. Henry Lee, noted forensic scientist. We are very delighted to have you with us tonight, Dr. Lee. I know you worked on this case. You have been hearing all these reports about he reportedly said, according to someone who wasn`t there at the interrogation, that he drugged this girl and that he had sex with her. You have studied the autopsy. What does the autopsy tell you vis-a-vis those two points?
DR. HENRY LEE, MEDICAL EXAMINER, FORENSIC SCIENTIST: There`s two issues. First of all, there`s no drug was found in her system. Secondly, no male ejaculate was found. In other words, no semen was found. But they did found small amount of foreign DNA on her underpants.
VELEZ-MITCHELL: Isn`t it possible, though, that what he is referring -- if, in fact, he referred to this -- as sex is not necessarily -- not to be too graphic -- penile penetration but something less, like digital penetration or penetration with a foreign object? And weren`t there splinters and abrasions in the vaginal area in the autopsy that would point to something like that?
LEE: Well, it`s may be. So we have to wait and see what exactly what does he means and what`s the confession consist (ph) of. Of course, this is some information, detailed information, only the people involved in the case knows about it. So there are so many issue we have to work out, generally, forensic investigation and forensic evidence.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: In a world of "CSI" and high-tech sleuthing, juries want to see forensic evidence. But guilty verdicts have been handed down many times, on circumstantial evidence. No DNA. JonBenet`s case had DNA evidence for 10 years, and still not one suspect has ever gone to trial.
When we come back, let`s analyze the other evidence, the ransom note.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRACE: Possibly the strongest evidence in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case, a three-page ransom note found inside the Ramsey home, a ransom note and a practice note. Highly coincidental, the letter includes the exact total of John Ramsey`s bonus that year. It is also signed "SBTC," a similar signature confessed killer John Mark Karr used to sign classmates` high school yearbooks but did the letters in the ransom note and the letters in the yearbook match?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Right here on the set, a very special guest with me from Alabama. Teresa Alligood went to high school with John Mark Karr, and coincidentally, she brought her annual. That`s Alabama for yearbook. Yes, no?
TERESA ALLIGOOD, FORMER HIGH SCHOOL CLASSMATE: Yes.
GRACE: Show me. What do you have in here?
(CROSSTALK)
GRACE: What was he like, by the way, in high school?
ALLIGOOD: He was very quiet, very to himself, very nice.
GRACE: He looked like John Travolta in high school.
Teresa, show them what you consider to be the most important part of this yearbook signing.
ALLIGOOD: Everybody seems to be focusing on the "shall be the conqueror." I`m focusing on "deep in the future, maybe I shall be the conqueror." He`s saying "deep in the future." This was written in 1982. The ransom note was written in 1996.
GRACE: "Sometimes, so blurred by my own eyes, I`ve seen the best things come and go simultaneously, though deep in the future, maybe I shall be the conqueror and live in multiple peace."
OK, you don`t expect that type of a signing in your high school yearbook.
ALLIGOOD: No.
GRACE: OK. Let`s show the viewers what really stopped me in my tracks when I saw this because I find his intruder theory to be crazy, wacky and unbelievable, but you`ve got to see this. Do you have that graph for me? The comparisons between the -- OK, we`ll start at the top. "Will" -- that is from the high school yearbook. Notice the curving in the parallel "L`s." "Still" -- got it in the ransom note. "All" -- the "a" with the umbrella, "a," umbrella, still the curved parallel "l`s." "Excellent" -- and I`m looking at the "t." Catch this for me, Dusty (ph). If you see the "t" has a tail. There`s a tail here. There`s a tail here in the ransom note. Same thing in these "t`s". They`ve got tails and umbrellas over the "a." The umbrella over the "a" very unusual. Really unusual is the teardrop "d," as in "dog," "d" -- "around" and "delivery adequate." This is years later. The "w," the same. And very importantly, the "a."
You`ve all heard of handwriting analysis. Joining us tonight is a veteran handwriting comparison expert. His name, Don Lehew, and he believes Karr did, in fact, write the ransom note. Mr. Lehew, thank you for being with us.
DON LEHEW, HANDWRITING EXPERT: Glad to be here.
GRACE: Sir, you have taken a look at not only the ransom note -- how many pages was that thing? I`ve got it right here. Let`s see -- one, two, three, and then there was the practice ransom note. That should give the police pretty good fodder to make a handwriting comparison. You`ve looked at that and his current known handwriting. What do you think?
LEHEW: I looked at that. I looked at a little of his known handwriting, and I also looked at handwriting from back when he was -- in his high school yearbook.
GRACE: And what did you see?
LEHEW: I found significant comparison documents that were adequate to convince me that he is the one that wrote the ransom note.
GRACE: Well, what really got me -- and Elizabeth, when you can, pull this up for the viewers. At first, I thought it was all bogus and there`s no way this guy was even remotely involved except in his own dreams. But if you take a look at his "d" specifically, the "a" specifically, with the umbrella over it, I find -- look -- there you go. Thanks, Liz. Take a look at that. To find the umbrella over the "a" is not that -- you don`t often find that. And the "d" -- I don`t know if we have the "d," but the "d" is like an upside-down candy cane. It`s a very unusual marking Don.
LEHEW: That`s true.
GRACE: And what do you make of it?
LEHEW: Well, that`s part of what we look at to make the comparison to make the match on the handwriting. The lower case "l`s" are a little bit strange, to say the least. They`re not the typical lower case "l." And certainly, the "a" and the "d" are out of character from what we learned in school, typically. The "w" is a good match. And the lower case "t" has got a tail that comes off of the -- off into the right in both in the known and the questioned document.
GRACE: Don, when you make a handwriting comparison, how many similarities do you look for?
LEHEW: Well, in this case, as many as I could find.
GRACE: OK, let me rephrase it. I`m a JD, not a DDS. When you say it`s a match, how many matches do you have? How many points of match do you have?
LEHEW: OK. You`ve actually asked two questions, Nancy. In this case, I had 13 letters that matched significantly. Typically, in a forgery, you are looking for differences, whereas in this case, I was looking for similarities.
GRACE: How many similarities does it take before you will deem it a match?
LEHEW: I don`t have a specific number. It`s kind of like fingerprints. They don`t have a specific number, and neither do we. But I like to get at least 10 or better, and once I`ve got 10 or better, I`m pretty convinced.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Joining us now is Linda James. She is a forensic document examiner. And contrary to many other examiners that we have heard from, she believes John Mark Karr did not write the ransom note. Welcome, Linda. Why do you believe he did not write the letter?
LINDA JAMES, HANDWRITING EXPERT: Because there are major structural differences that cannot be reasonably explained, and we have to look at the differences, as well as the similarities.
GRACE: What are the differences?
JAMES: There are the differences in the letter "e." There are the letter "m," the letter "v" as in victor, the letter "u." Those letters -- and there`s several others that are basically structural differences between the question and the known.
GRACE: OK, let`s hold that up, Liz, just a second. With us, a respected forensic document examiner. Her name is Linda James, joining us out of Dallas tonight. She says no match. Now, I got to tell you, I was hung up on the "e." The "e" doesn`t match that well. But specifically, as you were stating, the "v" and the "u" -- never once did you see a tail on the "u," and the "v" is never sharp the way it is in the ransom note.
However, did you see -- can you show her the other graph, Liz? The "a" with the umbrella on the top, the teardrop "d," which is very unusual, the tail to the right on the "t" and the parallel "l`s" -- those were similar.
JAMES: Well, I said there are similarities. But similarity is not identity. If you have a set of twins, at one point, you`re going to have to look at the differences in order to establish one from the other. And there is differences here that we cannot ignore. We must look at those differences, even if there are similarities.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Under the law, a criminal case may not be built on a confession alone. As it turns out, that`s just what Boulder authorities did in the arrest of John Mark Karr. Karr`s extensive and detailed confessions when we come back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRACE: Extensive and highly detailed confessions first alerted authorities to John Mark Karr as a prime suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey murder case, confessions he made to a professor, to a police informant who secretly recorded his calls, and to the public. Take a listen. After hearing and reading these, we see just why the Boulder district attorney was alerted.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CALLER: What it amounts to is, I think that most of us are capable of having any of those fantasies. And it`s hard for me to differentiate between what, what they mean, you know? Instead of thinking she`s pretty, you start to think she`s sexy. I guess, at that point, you`re probably having a sexual attraction to that child.
Who else was I going to share that with? I`ve never driven by her house and said, "There is Polly Klaas` house." I want that because I want her. I want her. I mean, I want her so bad.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Joining us right now, the woman who recorded those phone calls, she alleges this is John Mark Karr. We have no reason to disbelieve her. CNN has not been able to confirm that. I want to advise you that Wendy Hutchens, the woman who taped those calls, was asked to tape calls by Sonoma County police. As you recall, 2001, John Mark Karr had child pornography charges leveled against him in Sonoma County, and these allegations and information was sent in 2001 to Boulder authorities.
Joining us tonight, a very special guest, Wendy Hutchens, Sonoma County sheriff`s department informant, she taped numerous conversations with John Mark Karr, many of them about the 6-year-old beauty queen, JonBenet Ramsey.
Ms. Hutchens, thank you for being with us.
WENDY HUTCHENS, SONOMA COUNTY POLICE INFORMANT: Thank you, Nancy.
GRACE: Are you a little stunned that all of this information was sent to Boulder in 2001 -- hold on. Yes, it`s 2006.
HUTCHENS: Yes. It`s been really hard to live with this for five years, whether or not he actually killed JonBenet, knowing that this is a creepy guy out here teaching our children. It`s been so hard for me to live with it for five years knowing he was out there.
GRACE: But did you take some comfort in the fact that you tried? You tried. I mean, what can you do, go throw yourself on the steps of the police department?
HUTCHENS: I know. I tell you, it`s been really hard. There was, you know, especially five years ago, the Ramseys were in the news a lot. And I was like over here, "Come over here. He`s right here. He`s right here." You know? And it`s a very frustrating...
GRACE: Ms. Hutchens how did you meet this guy, John Mark Karr?
HUTCHENS: Well, it`s just kind of a matter of timing. I had happened to decide to contact Richard Allen Davis to resolve an issue from my childhood that he happened to know about. And John Karr was actually trying to contact Davis at that same time. And Karr and I met a woman by the name of Abigail who has a death row inmate`s visitation Web site, and we had both contacted her and she connected us.
GRACE: Everyone, Richard Allen Davis is the convicted killer of the daughter of Marc Klaas, Polly Klaas. Davis behind bars right now on death row for that murder.
Now, question. Back to how you ended up meeting John Mark Karr, it`s my understanding you grew up in the same neighborhood as Richard Allen Davis, the same town?
HUTCHENS: Yes. We lived in La Honda, California. And so he used to come over to my house with my babysitter when I was like 11, 12, 13 years old.
GRACE: Now, why did you want to get in touch with a convicted killer of a little girl?
HUTCHENS: Because my babysitter died, and I thought that he had something to do with it. I know he was there the night that she died. And I had seen -- I`ve been like across the street from what happened. And he was the only one who could tell me what actually happened that night. And it was something that I just had always wanted to know, and I finally decided to write him and ask him if he would tell me what happened that night.
GRACE: Did he tell you?
HUTCHENS: Yes, he did.
GRACE: Did he have anything to do with it?
HUTCHENS: No, he didn`t. He actually found her and called the authorities to let them know that she killed herself.
GRACE: Well, with Richard Allen Davis involved, I would just naturally assume that he was the killer, since we know that he killed Polly Klaas. So, frankly, I don`t blame you for trying to find out on your own.
HUTCHENS: Yes.
GRACE: So, in trying to reach him, you somehow got hooked up with John Mark Karr who was also trying to reach Richard Allen Davis. Why was he trying to reach Richard Allen Davis? I mean, I understand your motivation, but what about him?
HUTCHENS: Well, you know, these kind of serial offenders have a really twisted sense of logic. But in his mind, he thought, if he could meet with Richard Allen Davis, that Richard Allen Davis would confess to him that he had the same feelings about Polly Klaas that John Mark Karr had about JonBenet and that, if he could get the world to understand that we should forgive Richard Allen Davis and that we should understand that he loved Polly Klaas, and this and that, he thought, you know, that he could go around, and be on talk shows, and get the world to think that Richard Allen Davis wasn`t such a bad guy, that that way people wouldn`t think he was such a bad guy, either.
GRACE: And just how long did you stand in a hot shower with a cake of soap after talking to this freak on the phone?
HUTCHENS: Oh, it was really hard. I would get literally sick to my stomach after we would talk on the phone. And I would cry for hours. And Detective Phil Martin and the Sonoma County sheriff`s violent crimes unit, those guys were excellent, Dave Thomas, and Mark Essex (ph), and Sergeant Steve Brown.
I mean, they`d come -- you know, every day were like, you know, "Just hang in there. Try to get more details out of him." And constantly, I mean, just really keeping me going through it, because that was like a month of talking to him on the phone.
GRACE: It`s very hard. It`s very difficult on a lot of informants to do this, to tape conversations, to be wired, to be exposed to what they are exposed to. Let`s take a listen to a tape that this woman, Wendy Hutchens, said she taped of the confessed killer of JonBenet Ramsey, John Mark Karr.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CALLER: JonBenet, God, what a powerful thing, to just be alone with that little girl, that doll face. You know, she was just so incredible in mind and so unreal in death. She`s just so alive. She`s so alive. She`s so alive. She`s so alive. I mean, she`s wonderful.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Ms. Hutchens, what do you say on the phone to a grown man who says he`s got a sexual attraction to a little girl, a 6-year-old little girl?
HUTCHENS: Well, it was really hard. The FBI asked me to pretend that I was interested in molesting little girls myself or...
GRACE: Oh, good lord in heaven.
HUTCHENS: ... that I at least wanted to watch him do it, and that was something that I made him promise that he wouldn`t touch a little girl without me, that I wanted to be there with him. I wanted to do it with him, so that I had hopes that he wouldn`t do anything while we were trying to -- you know, while the sheriff`s department was trying to hook him up against other crimes, because he talked about snatching little girls off the streets and stuff like that.
So it was really hard to actually have to say that that sounded like something I`d really want to watch. It was really hard.
GRACE: Also joining us tonight, a very close friend and adviser, a confidant to Wendy Hutchens, A.J. Fardella.
Mr. Fardella, thank you for being with us.
A.J. FARDELLA, CONFIDANT TO WENDY HUTCHENS: Very nice to be here, Nancy. Thank you.
GRACE: Mr. Fardella, you have listened to all of these tapes very carefully. You`ve worked with law enforcement on many occasions.
FARDELLA: That`s right.
GRACE: You`ve heard a lot more than any of us have heard. You know Boulder is keeping it tight to the vest. What`s your take on Karr, Mr. Fardella?
FARDELLA: Well, anybody who`s listened to this material as often as I have, and certainly Wendy`s been exposed to it more, gets the absolute, unequivocal position that this man has hurt little girls. There`s no doubt about it.
GRACE: Confessed, true. But he didn`t do it. It`s not over yet for confessed killer John Mark Karr. Also, have Boulder authorities forever destroyed any chance for justice in the JonBenet Ramsey case?
(NEWSBREAK)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRACE: John Mark Karr, nowhere near Boulder, Colorado, the night JonBenet was murdered, Christmas 1996. He wasn`t even in the same state. But there`s no doubt Karr remains to this day a clear and present danger to children. Can you imagine this guy back on the streets or, even worse, allowed to teach in schools again? As a fugitive from justice for nearly five years, Karr faces charges of child pornography, Sonoma County, California.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DENNIS MELFIN, KARR`S CHILDHOOD FRIEND: He talked about JonBenet. And, on his way out here to Petaluma, when they moved out here -- so that would have been after the fact -- he diverted the family up to Boulder, Colorado. He went and walked around her house and got a feel for everything.
He told me that that was the first time he ever was up there. He didn`t strike me ever as the type that would physically do anything to anybody. You know, he`s kind of a mousy-type person, you know, almost effeminate, almost effeminate.
I decided that the guy really was pretty sick, but he was, you know, everything he was saying, whether it was made up or whether it was harmless, you know, I figured it was harmless.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Take a listen to just a little bit of what the district attorney heard before this colossal blunder. These are secretly recorded videotapes taken by Professor Tracey.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
KARR: I have (bleep) tolerated this (bleep) world, the little twisted (bleep) running around amok, thinking I`m a monster. They don`t even know who I am. And I`ve put with them putting their hands on my little girl for 10 (bleep) years, and it`s time for me to take her back. It`s time for her parents to take her back, Michael. It`s time for her parents to be able to take their little girl back and say, "This is my child. Leave my child alone. Stop looking at my child." Just live my life in obscurity quite well as I have.
TRACEY: Right.
KARR: I mean, why come out of obscurity, and reveal myself, and take a chance, and take risks that I might be caught? Why do that? I don`t know. I`m compelled to do it for the strangest of reasons, for -- I don`t know. It`s not really -- it`s for JonBenet, in a way. In another way, it`s just like to tell the -- to shout at the world, "Listen, that`s my little girl, and this is why. She`s mine, and this is why."
And I want to just somehow maybe -- maybe I just want to shout to the world that she is mine and she`s not theirs, and she`s mine because of this and it`s -- I guess I just can`t take it anymore that, after 10 years, that`s still -- and I lost her. And I can`t even visit her grave anymore. And I can`t even rush to her mother`s side, who requests to see me at her grave, which is killing me right now.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: Yes. The voice recordings, the e-mails, the other voice recordings by Wendy Hutchens were all chilling, were all scary. In fact, in one of the e-mails to Professor Tracey, John Mark Karr states he only wished that he could get into the coffin with JonBenet Ramsey and make love to the 6-year-old girl one more time. Yes. Perverted? A felony? I don`t know.
Out to a very special guest joining us tonight, Steve Thomas, a former detective on the JonBenet Ramsey murder case.
It`s a pleasure to have you on the air. Thank you for being with us, Mr. Thomas.
STEVE THOMAS, FORMER DETECTIVE: Thank you, Nancy. My pleasure.
GRACE: Steve, I`m about to play you some sound from the Boulder district attorney`s press conference today. Take a listen to this, before I ask for your comment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If we were able to put him in Boulder with rock- solid, you know, credit card receipts, somebody who saw him on the hill, would we have had an airtight case at that point? Given the way he described the crime having been committed, it would have been a horse race.
Had we been able to put him absolutely right here in Boulder, his confessions, admissions and description of the crime, but not having DNA, we would have had -- there would have been a tribal lawsuit.
MARY LACY, DISTRICT ATTORNEY: The decisions were mine. The responsibility is mine, and I should be held accountable for all decisions in this case.
Last night, as I was preparing to leave, I received a telephone call from a gentleman in Longmont. And he said -- this was a voicemail -- he said, "You should be tarred and feathered and run out of town. And I want you to call me and tell me that you`re going to resign."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GRACE: I`m surprised that that`s the most disturbing language she heard after this colossal blunder.
Out to Steve Thomas, who put his heart and soul into finding the killer of JonBenet Ramsey, I don`t get their discussion of an airtight case, Steve. They`ve got no DNA, no fingerprint, no palm print, no footprint matching. He`s not in the city. He`s not even in the same state the night that she`s killed. What were they thinking?
THOMAS: What I continue, Nancy, to witness from this district attorney`s office is simply inconceivable. She had an insufficient and incomplete case in which, unfortunately, now, speaking with friends in the Colorado law enforcement community, she has lost all credibility within the cops and detectives. And I can tell you the Boulder police department is outraged and livid about being drug back into this after being removed from it in December of 2002.
But, Nancy, you`re absolutely right. You tack down and then you double tack down, you corroborate, you create a nexus. You check airline passenger manifests. You show that he was in the home. You pull the victim`s funeral video. You show him in the back row at the church, for example.
And there`s only three ways to solve a crime: through witnesses, through evidence or through a confession. And they acted solely on confessionary statements from this 5150 cuckoo and without any other corroboration, and it just simply boggles my mind.
GRACE: And now, what is next for John Mark Karr, confessed killer of JonBenet Ramsey, brought halfway around the world on a confession alone?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GRACE: Ten long years, the JonBenet Ramsey murder case back in the spotlight, making headlines around the world. The latest, the ill-fated arrest and release of John Mark Karr. From Thailand to L.A. to Colorado, another colossal legal misstep on the road to justice in the JonBenet Ramsey murder.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KARR: I love JonBenet, and she died accidentally.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We knew that two things had to happen for it to be the right guy. We had probable cause to arrest, but we had to be able to put him in Boulder and we had to be able to say that the DNA in this case was, in fact, John Mark Karr`s DNA.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you an innocent man? Are you an innocent man?
KARR: No.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, John Mark Karr himself sincerely believes that he killed JonBenet Ramsey. There`s no question in anybody`s mind about that.
KARR: Her death was an accident.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So were you in the basement?
KARR: Yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Can you tell us about your connection to the Ramsey family.
KARR: No comment on that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How did you get into the basement to play with her?
KARR: No comment on that.
GRACE: This guy`s got holes so big in his story you could drive a tractor through them.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How did you get into the basement to play with her?
KARR: No comment on that.
GRACE: I am reading to you the supporting affidavit attached to the arrest warrant for John Mark Karr. It is 90 pages long. And I`ve got to tell you, there`s a lot of disgusting talk in here about little children and having sex with little girls.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How long had you known JonBenet?
KARR: No comment on that.
GRACE: I`m on the side for seeking justice. And this colossal blunder may have forever precluded the real killer being brought in, if that killer is still alive.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
GRACE: Thank you for being with us tonight and this special NANCY GRACE examination of the JonBenet Ramsey murder. Nancy Grace signing off for tonight. See you right here tomorrow night, 8:00 sharp Eastern. And until then, good night, friend.
END
