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Live From...
Ramsey Case Arrest
Aired August 17, 2006 - 13:32 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Karr's arrest caps almost a decade of questions, speculation, investigations. And the Boulder D.A. emphasizes there's a lot of work still to be done.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MARY LACY, BOULDER CO. DIST. ATTY.: John Karr is presumed innocent. We are rightfully constrained by the code of professional conduct and the presumption of innocence from answering those questions that you want answered this morning.
What I can tell you in a generic sense is that in all serious cases we work hard with law enforcement, not to make an arrest until the investigation is substantially complete. There are circumstances that can exist in any case which mandate an arrest before an investigation is complete. The primary reason for that is public safety. A secondary reason is fear of flight. In short, exigent circumstances can drive the timing of an arrest.
I'm asking you this morning, let us do our job thoroughly and carefully. The analysis of the evidence in this case continues on a day by, on an hour by hour basis, as we speak.
What I can and very much want to share with you is a deep appreciation for the hard work, total cooperation and dedication of many individuals and agencies across this country and in Bangkok, Thailand.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
PHILLIPS: And reminder, CNN has reporters from Boulder to Bangkok and beyond. And when they have new information, you'll hear it first right here.
Let's get straight to the newsroom. Carol Lin is working details on a developing story -- Carol.
CAROL LIN, CNN ANCHOR: Kyra, and you also first heard hear from the Associated Press that a Thai police general was quoted by the Associated Press as saying that John Karr, The suspect there, killed JonBenet Ramsey, that he drugged and had sex with the child before, quote, "accidentally killing her."
Well, now that general is telling CNN on the ground there in Bangkok that that is not true that he was misquoted, and that he was told of the alleged admissions by an American investigator. So he heard this from an American investigator, but he won't say who actually briefed him. But I wanted to get that out, because obviously the language that he was using was pretty graphic, with the -- at least that's how the Associated Press reporter was quoting him on the wire.
So that report we gave you a little more than an hour ago, and just wanted to care fly with our own reporting on the ground in Bangkok.
PHILLIPS: All right, thanks, Carol.
Well, even among sensational headline-grabbing murder cases, the JonBenet Ramsey murder stood out.
CNN's Tom Foreman looks back at why.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT, (voice over): They are images frozen in time. A child beauty queen, six-years-old, performing on a stage. We know her name and now, 10 years after her death, we may soon know who killed her.
On the day after Christmas 1996, the body of JonBenet Ramsey was found in the basement of her family's home in Boulder, Colorado. She had been beaten, strangled. A handwritten ransom note left on the staircase. It was the city's only murder of the year and it instantly became the focus of a nation.
JonBenet's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, said an intruder murdered their daughter after attempting to kidnap her. In an interview with CNN, they urged parents to be carefully.
PATSY RAMSEY, JONBENET'S MOTHER: If I were a resident of Boulder, I would tell my friends to keep -- keep your babies close to you. There's someone out there.
FOREMAN: But the police, and much of the media, were pointing fingers at the Ramseys.
CHIEF MARK BECKNER, BOULDER POLICE: They do remain under an umbrella of suspicion, but we're not ready to name any suspects.
FOREMAN: Even after a grand jury failed to indict the Ramseys, to many they remain subjects of suspicion. On 2000, on "Larry King Live," Steve Thomas, former Boulder police detective, confronted John and Patsy.
STEVE THOMAS, FORMER BOULDER POLICE DETECTIVE: I felt that Patsy is involved in this death, in this tragedy. And I felt it had become such a debacle and was going nowhere.
LARRY KING, CNN'S "LARRY KING LIVE": John, why did you agree to come on with Steve tonight? I mean this is rather historic. I'm trying to remember if there's ever been television like this.
JOHN RAMSEY, JONBENET'S FATHER: This man, as a police officer, has called my wife a murder. He has called me a complicity to murder. He has call me a liar. He has slandered my relationship with my daughter. Patsy's relationship with JonBenet.
FOREMAN: Thomas wrote a book claiming the Ramseys were involved in their child's murder. In 2001, the Ramseys sued and a year later settled out of court. Then in 2003, the Boulder Police Department ended its investigation and handed it over to the district attorney. The D.A. vowed to reopen the case but refused to eliminate the Ramseys as possible suspects.
Just a month later, the D.A. changed her mind. A judge ruled in a civil case that an intruder most likely killed JonBenet and the prosecutor agreed, finally removing the cloud of suspicion over the parents. By that point the Ramseys had moved to Michigan where they continued to monitor the investigation hoping DNA evidence would bring the killer to justice.
Patsy Ramsey wouldn't live to see her daughter's murder solved. In June, she died of ovarian cancer, but not before learning that Boulder authorities had a suspect in their sights. Patsy was buried in a Georgia cemetery next to JonBenet, who, had she lived, would now be 16 years old.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: We are expecting a briefing by the Roswell, Georgia Police Department regarding the Ramsey case. We'll bring that to you live as soon as it happens.
Plus, a woman who says she was married to John Mark Karr puts a hole in his confession. Find out what she had to say.
The news keeps coming. We'll keep bringing it to you. More LIVE FROM straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
(BUSINESS HEADLINES)
PHILLIPS: Well, Tiger and Lefty, together again, whether they like it or not. You may be surprised who's talking smack as the last major golf tournament of the year swings into action. We're live from Illinois on the backside of the break.
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PHILLIPS: Well, the last major golf tournament of the year, why not add a little more to the Tiger Woods/Phil Mickelson feud?
CNN's Larry Smith is at the Medinah Country Club in Illinois with the first round leader board and more on the Woods/Mickelson rivalry.
What's up between the two of those guys?
LARRY SMITH, CNN SPORTS: Well, you know, it's funny that there's this rivalry there, and certainly they're very competitive. But really, no one really truly knows if there was an issue there. I do know at the Ryder Cup in 2004, which is a team competition between U.S. and Europe, they were paired together at Oakland Hills, near Detroit, did not talk to each other during the round. They both played horribly, and certainly that has fueled the speculation that they don't get along.
But the bottom line is, they're both very competitive golfers, and they are in the same round here today and tomorrow, the first two rounds here at Medinah, just outside Chicago. Neither one playing very well right now. But U.S. Open champion Geoff Ogilvy is the third member of that group, and he is serving as a witness to what these two do and talk about here at Medinah.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEOFF OGILVY, 2006 U.S. OPEN CHAMP: It's going to be fun. It will be interesting to see how they get along with each other. I don't know. I mean, that's what you guys want to know. I don't know. It will be -- I don't know, either.
TIGER WOODS, 2006 BRITISH OPEN CHAMP: Obviously, I get along with other players better than others, and that's just the way it is. You know, sometimes I talk. Sometimes I don't. Sometimes in a mood to talk. Sometimes I'm not going to say a word even to my best friends out there. You know, but you're there to win a tournament.
QUESTION: So what's the difference for you playing with a guy like Freddie, which you did at the Masters, compared with someone like Tiger?
PHIL MICKELSON, 2006 MASTERS CHAMP: Amount of conversation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SMITH: Mickelson referring to his jovial final round at the Masters back in April with Fred Couples, a very good friend of his, and someone who certainly helped him along the way as he won his third career major title. I mentioned neither one playing very well right now. Both Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods at two under par. And they're getting close to wrapping up their first round. Geoff Ogilvy just double bogeyed a moment ago. He is at one under par.
Great story developing here today is Billy Mayfair. Just had a birthday a couple weeks ago, also just underwent surgery for testicular cancer. He is the leader right now at six under par. We weren't even sure if he'd even play here at the PGA Championship, but he is playing and leading at this moment. What a great story.
Let's go back to you.
PHILLIPS: Absolutely. That's what's so great about the game, Larry, right? You just never know when you're going to do well, you're going to surprise people.
SMITH: That's right.
PHILLIPS: All right.
Well, medical news straight ahead. It's called the perfect storm of infectious diseases, and it appears to be infecting more and more children. What you need to know to stay healthy, coming up next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
PHILLIPS: Kids and superbugs -- the latter aren't the new cartoon or this year's must-have Christmas gift. They're potentially deadly germs that can act like garden variety viruses until their young victims are desperately sick.
Here's CNN medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): What in the world made this baby go from happy and healthy to desperately ill in just days?
This did. A superbug so powerful it's alarming doctors across the country for its ability to rip through a child's body. For Evan McFarling it started last Spring when he came down with a fever.
Evan's fever went on for 10 days. His pediatrician tried three different antibiotics. None of them worked. Finally a chest x-ray solved the mystery.
MATT MCFARLING, EVAN'S DAD: And I mean we went from a checkup to we're going in to heart surgery in about 20 minutes.
Can you smile for me baby? No, we're not ready for smiling yet.
COHEN: The tissue around Evan's heart was filled with bacteria and not just any bacteria, the dreaded superbug called MRSA or MRSA, a staph infection so sophisticated it knows how to outwit most antibiotics.
DR. JAIME FERGIE, DRISCOLL CHILDREN'S HOSPITAL: It's becoming sort of a perfect storm in infectious diseases.
COHEN: Many times it's impossible to tell how a child caught the bacteria. The bacteria enters the skin in a way parents might miss, through a scrape or a pimple. Sometimes it's mistaken for a bug bite. The number of these infections is escalating quickly in many parts of the country.
Here at this hospital in Corpus Christie, Texas in 2,000 they had around 50 MRSA cases. In 2002 that number jumped to 300 cases. In 2005 750 cases. And in the past six months three children have died here from MRSA.
FERGIE: The patients that we saw had really nothing in common. It was not that they came from a particular school or a day care.
COHEN: And that's what scares pediatricians. Take Josh Grant. He was healthy and to this day his doctors don't know for sure how he got the infection. He needed four surgeries to get rid of the MRSA bacteria, which had spread into his lungs, through his spinal cord, into his neck, and into his left arm.
HOYA GRANT, JOSH'S DAD: And they said it was a possibility that he could bleed out and that we could lose him.
COHEN: That was in may. Today Josh is still weak and needs physical therapy. His parents advice to other parents? In this day of superbugs, you can never be too careful.
GRANT: If you even get a fever make sure you see the doctor, jump on it with both feet, because no parent ever wants to go through what our family went through.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
PHILLIPS: You can catch more of Elizabeth Cohen's medical reports on "PAULA ZAHN NOW." That's weeknights at 8:00 Eastern.
An arrest in the JonBenet Ramsey case. What led authorities to John Mark Karr? A closer look at the case and the suspect. The second hour of LIVE FROM is straight ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
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