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Author Topic: Suspect arrested in JonBenet Ramsay case
Michelle
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posted 16 August 2006 04:40 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
CNN story

quote:
A suspect has been arrested "for the December 26, 1996, murder of JonBenet Ramsey," the district attorney in Boulder, Colorado, said Wednesday.

A law enforcement source identified the suspect as 41-year-old John Mark Karr, a one-time school teacher. He was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, following "several months of a focused and complex investigation," District Attorney Mary Lacy said.

JonBenet's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, were consulted during the investigation, Lacy said, and the Ramsey family was notified of the arrest. Patsy Ramsey died in June of ovarian cancer at age 49.


Did anyone follow this story at the time? I didn't, really, so I don't really know much about it except that the father was the prime suspect for a long time and a lot of people still think the parents were involved.

I'm still not sure why this story was so huge. I mean, kids get murdered all the time, but this one was a total runaway story, even moreso than many other "blockbuster" true crime stories.


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Stargazer
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posted 16 August 2006 04:50 PM      Profile for Stargazer     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I think I caught about as much as you did. I think this particular story was so huge because of the kid beauty pagent queen thing. I mean, here you have a little girl who had been dressed up to look like an adult female. Then she was killed. Doesn't look good on her parents at all.
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Stephen Gordon
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posted 16 August 2006 04:58 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
From what I recall, the creepy thing about the story was how the parents seemed to have been grooming her for life as a model: contests, any number of professional photo sessions, the works.

[cross-posted with Stargazer, who said pretty much the same thing.]

[ 16 August 2006: Message edited by: Stephen Gordon ]


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glasstech
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posted 16 August 2006 05:40 PM      Profile for glasstech     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
What was really strange was the lack of help the family gave the police to solve the crime. It was some time after the fact that the parents were even interviewed. A public relations firm had to approve all the questions asked by the police and only so many questions were allowed to be asked at a time. I always felt something was being covered up but that was my opinion only.
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Michelle
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posted 16 August 2006 06:18 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
That's weird. Since when do people get to dictate to the police how many questions they're allowed to ask them while investigating a crime?
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Stargazer
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posted 16 August 2006 06:36 PM      Profile for Stargazer     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
It was weird. I remember how the partents were. Not very cooperative and they seemed to be almost hindering the case on purpose. I never did trust the parents but maybe they figured they were going to get fried for grooming their young girl to be a beauty queen at 6 years old. Not something most people want to do.

Doesn't it strike anyone as odd that the guy they caugh was in Thailand?


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Stephen Gordon
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posted 16 August 2006 06:41 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Yeah. Don't know what to make of it though: "He was visiting Thailand? That settles it! He MUST be a pedophile!"
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Stargazer
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posted 16 August 2006 06:47 PM      Profile for Stargazer     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
To be honest that was my first reaction.
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Sven
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posted 16 August 2006 09:18 PM      Profile for Sven     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by glasstech:
What was really strange was the lack of help the family gave the police to solve the crime.

They were prime suspects. If I were their attorney, I'd probably advise them to keep their mouths shut, too. Innocent statements intending to be helpful can too easily be twisted by the police against you.

I've never thought the parents were guilty. And, it appears this guy was emailing some detailed information about the crime (the weapon used, etc.) that was never made public. This guy was a sex offender here, it sounds like. I bet they've got their guy. But, we'll see.


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thorin_bane
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posted 16 August 2006 10:05 PM      Profile for thorin_bane     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I am with you people on this, I caught as much of this story as the Blake story. Celebrity pecadilos don't do much for me. I think this is one of those M Jackson moments...oops the prez did something stupid, what do you have to distract the idiot masses?
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Sven
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posted 17 August 2006 05:43 AM      Profile for Sven     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
National Public Radio reported this morning that the suspect captured yesterday confessed to a reporter to killing the girl and that it was an "accident" and he didn't mean to kill her.
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Sharon
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posted 17 August 2006 06:24 AM      Profile for Sharon     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I remember the case well because around the same time it happened, I saw a documentary about the child beauty pageant culture that is so huge in the southern states. The documentary followed a few families as they went from town to town, staying in cheap motels, dressing the little girls up like Barbie dolls and putting make-up on them -- even curling their eyelashes with one of those little torture devices.

The pageants were always held in motels also. Some of these families did this pretty much full-time, just travelling from one to the other.

It all seemed quite squalid to me although it was clear that the families that I saw thought they were living quite glamourous lives.

Anyway... I agree that this case was big because there were so many videos of JonBenet -- which we're all seeing again -- taking part in the pageants.


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Stargazer
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posted 17 August 2006 06:48 AM      Profile for Stargazer     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Turns out the family knew this guy and let him spend time with their daughter. On top of that he is supposedly being investigated for other sex crimes against children. What a whack job.
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pencil-skirt
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posted 17 August 2006 07:12 AM      Profile for pencil-skirt     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Sharon:
even curling their eyelashes with one of those little torture devices.


Hahah if you do it right, the eyelash curler doesn't actually hurt at all...since you don't have feeling in your eyelashes

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Sven
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posted 17 August 2006 10:19 AM      Profile for Sven     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Stargazer:
What a whack job.

What an understatement!!

What a sick fuck.


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Farces
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posted 17 August 2006 10:49 AM      Profile for Farces   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Michelle:
That's weird. Since when do people get to dictate to the police how many questions they're allowed to ask them while investigating a crime?

In the US, you don't have to talk to the police at all. It is part of the Constitution. Specifically, the Constitutional right is the 5th Amendment right against self incrimination.

To speak very roughly, the fifth amendment says that the help a criminal might give the police in solving a crime is not as important as preventing police from sliding into the torture of a suspect to get that confession.

The Fifth Amendment may not be the best way to prevent torture by police, but one should not dismiss the good parts of the Fifth Amendment too lightly because police have ways of getting around prohibitions on their conduct that are narrower. For example, the Fourth Amendment tries to allow some police searches, while prohibiting others, but the US has not figured out a good way to draw the line between what is allowed and what is not in its 200+ years of Constitutional history. (See the recent Hudson v. Michigan case and especially Scalia's criticism of the exclusionary rule on this head.)

Let me put it another way:

if there was no 5th Amendment and the Ramseys were poor and POC, the Colorado authorities probably would have gotten a confession from them in the 1st week. That is why the Ramseys had the right to decide how many police questions they would entertain.

[ 17 August 2006: Message edited by: Farces ]


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Farces
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posted 17 August 2006 10:53 AM      Profile for Farces   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Stargazer:
Turns out the family knew this guy and let him spend time with their daughter.

I was wondering if this was a false confession because false confessions by nutjobs are common.

However, if it has been established that Carr had actual contact with JonBenet in Colorado, then his confession is probably true.


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glasstech
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posted 17 August 2006 11:06 AM      Profile for glasstech     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Farcus, the problem is everyone, including the innocent witnesses, use that excuse for not helping the police. This was the murder of a small child but no one except the police seemed interested in finding the murderer, certainly not the family from what I saw. It's a fine line, personal protection balance against the security of the group.
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otter
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posted 17 August 2006 11:10 AM      Profile for otter        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
But what can we expect from a culture that allows parents to sexualize and then parade children as if they were grown women to be gawked and fantasized over? It is indeed sad that the majority of attention in this case will be on the guy arrested.

Yet the real horror lies with the whole industry that has been created around this so-called pagentry that sexualizes children. And just who do you think are the main instigators and audience members of this perverted show?

I see this as just another example of the incredible rot that permeates Western culture in general and the u.s. mentality in particular.


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Michelle
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posted 17 August 2006 11:10 AM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I don't know, I figure if my kid is already dead (so it's not like anything I do is going to change that), I'm going to protect myself if I'm innocent but figure the police are giving me the hairy eyeball.
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arborman
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posted 17 August 2006 11:54 AM      Profile for arborman     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Very little information about this case that we've been exposed to hasn't been warped, twisted and bastardized by the spectacle-driven media.

I have no idea what happened to the poor kid, but I refuse to draw any conclusions about her parents based on the hysteria driven frenzy that was the media after the killing.

If my kid were killed (god forbid) and I found myself at the center of that kind of ghoulish insanity I have no idea how I'd behave. I'd be deep in a pit of despair to begin with, and then to have my every action, move and statement parsed, distorted and smeared would be a truly horrifying experience. To be honest I'm not sure I'd survive.


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otter
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posted 17 August 2006 12:13 PM      Profile for otter        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Given the now disclosed facts that the parents knew the guy and the futher admissions that he sent numerous letters to the parents discussing the event, it is not too far a stretch to suspect that the parents were, somehow, complicit in the child's death.

Then there is the further admissions of the guy that he 'loved' the girl indicating his pedophilic leanings.

One of the things i find curious about it all is the charges of kidnapping when the child's body was actually found in the family home?

But there is not much liklihood that this whole Pedestry Pagent will be affected by this case.


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arborman
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posted 17 August 2006 01:30 PM      Profile for arborman     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by otter:
Given the now disclosed facts that the parents knew the guy and the futher admissions that he sent numerous letters to the parents discussing the event, it is not too far a stretch to suspect that the parents were, somehow, complicit in the child's death.

Most crimes like this tend to be done by someone who knows the family. That doesn't make the family complicit. Nor does talking with them about the event afterwards - what the hell else would they talk about other than the death of their child and the appalling media circus that ensued?

Unless they were talking about it and knew he did it - unlikely - then suggesting that knowing him and talking to him makes them somehow complicit in his crime is just more ghoulish speculation. I'm surprised that you, otter, radical critic that you are, would swallow this particular chunk of media frenzied monstrosity so thoroughly.


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Michelle
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posted 17 August 2006 01:40 PM      Profile for Michelle   Author's Homepage     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
There's one thing that kind of bugs me about the hype surrounding this case.

It's largely focused on the fact that the parents had JonBenet involved in these very controversial child beauty pageants, where the girls are made up with tons of cosmetics, wearing adult clothing, and trained to be a combination of sultry and coy and feminine on stage and with the judges. I have long been a critic of this kind of sexualization of little girls and find it disturbing in the extreme.

HOWEVER, I am also a bit disturbed when I hear this being talked about as "the reason" she was victimized. It sounds a little too much like, "No wonder you got raped - look how short your skirt was!" Assigning even indirect blame to her parents for entering her in these beauty pageants seems to me the same type of thinking.

If her parents were not involved in the planning or the carrying out of her murder, then they are NOT to blame. The way JonBenet dressed up for pageants is not a cause of the murder. The cause of her murder is that someone decided to kill her.

Women have the right to dress any way we wish, in any location at any time, and if we are raped, we are not to blame because of the way we are dressed. Accordingly, as long as JonBenet and her parents weren't breaking the law (and those beauty pageants, while problematic, are not illegal and neither is putting make-up on little girls), they have the right to dress their daughter any way they wish, and when she was killed, neither she nor her parents were to blame because of the way JonBenet was dressed.

Is this kind of beauty pageant a hallmark of a rather sick and seedy part of North American culture? Absolutely. Are children or their parents who participate to blame for what some sick person does to them? Nope.


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Sharon
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posted 17 August 2006 01:57 PM      Profile for Sharon     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I just heard Antonia Zerbisias on the radio -- and here's her column from today's Star.

quote:
It was the Ramseys' great misfortune that both Fox and MSNBC had been born in the wake of the last "true crime" media feeding frenzy, the mother of all cable coverage marathons, the O.J. Simpson case, and they were determined to cash in on JonBenet's murder.

What's more, primetime was still filled with trashy tabs and more than a dozen network newsmagazines.

Of course, it must not be lost on anybody that JonBenet was white, and pretty, and her parents rich.



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writer
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posted 17 August 2006 02:09 PM      Profile for writer     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I remember being on a panel with a Globe columnist who kept on claiming that these parents weren't behaving normally, and so were obviously guilty.

I asked her how she would know what a normal response would be to waking up from white professional privilege to discover your child's body brutalized in the basement over the holidays, then becoming the cops' prime suspect, learning that their suspicion turned to your young son, with the added trauma of seeing images of your family and murdered child smeared everywhere for months on end, and cameras and journalists hounding your family out of town?

What's normal about that? It was a freak show.

How can any of us know how we'd respond? Do we practice the scenario for several minutes every day?

[ 17 August 2006: Message edited by: writer ]


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Sharon
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posted 17 August 2006 02:12 PM      Profile for Sharon     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Another voice heard from:

quote:
Karr's ex-wife, Lara Karr, told KGO-TV in California that she was with her former husband in Alabama when JonBenet was killed. She said she does not believe her husband was involved in the homicide.

She said her ex-husband spent a good deal of time reading about the cases of Ramsey and Polly Klaas, who was abducted from her California home and slain in 1993.


This is from the CBC website and I also just heard it on The World At Six.


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jeff house
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posted 17 August 2006 04:04 PM      Profile for jeff house     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Antonia Zerbezias makes the right point, that right-wing media used the case to push their true-crime agenda, and had little compunction about treating the parents as guilty.

Here in Canada, the parents of Cecilia Zhang also faced a lot of scepticism, with many people suggesting that "their story is too unlikely".

Too often, people go with the "most likely" explanation, but they forget that the world is full of surprises and unlikely things which do actually happen.


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otter
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posted 17 August 2006 06:28 PM      Profile for otter        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
I'm surprised that you, otter, radical critic that you are, would swallow this particular chunk of media frenzied monstrosity so thoroughly.

Point well taken and i appreciate the reminer I was wrong to target the parents so quickly for the death when its not where my disgust comes from.

Dressing up like adults has long been a fun playtime event for children, particularily girls, probably because there is so much more dressup variety to play with. I guess my own prejudices have come to the fore since i rail against the commercializing of children and the exploitation of so much of their childhood by turning them into mere consumers and commodities.


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v michel
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posted 20 August 2006 07:38 PM      Profile for v michel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Michelle:
There's one thing that kind of bugs me about the hype surrounding this case.

It's largely focused on the fact that the parents had JonBenet involved in these very controversial child beauty pageants, where the girls are made up with tons of cosmetics, wearing adult clothing, and trained to be a combination of sultry and coy and feminine on stage and with the judges. I have long been a critic of this kind of sexualization of little girls and find it disturbing in the extreme.

HOWEVER, I am also a bit disturbed when I hear this being talked about as "the reason" she was victimized.


I'm disturbed by that too. I wonder if it isn't a case of parents dealing with their own fears. The thinking might go like this: Surely in a just world, nothing this terrible would happen at random to a little girl such as mine, so there must have been some reason for this act. The reason becomes the beauty pageants, in its own way -- not by explicitly blaming the pageants for her death, but rather by fixating on the one aspect of her life that is completely different from my daughter's life. If her parents hadn't sexualized their daughter, if they hadn't put her on display, maybe this wouldn't have happened... and that makes my daughter safe, because I don't do any of that.


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Robert MacBain
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posted 22 August 2006 05:06 PM      Profile for Robert MacBain     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Having examined four of the autopsy photos of JonBenet Ramsey, I find it impossible to believe that the parents had anything to do with her death.

JonBenet wasn’t strangled by hand. Someone tied a thin nylon cord around her neck and then tightened it to cut off her breathing.

The nylon cord cut deeply into the flesh on her neck.

Her skull wasn’t just fractured. It was split open.

This was no “accident”. This was a brutal, drawn-out, attack on a helpless six-year-old girl.

As the grand jury found, this had to be the work of an intruder.


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jas
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posted 22 August 2006 06:38 PM      Profile for jas     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
I seem to recall at the time reports of evidence of prior and chronic sadistic sexual abuse and that somehow the parents were implicated, and that she died by asphyxiation while enduring sick abuse, but I thought the big mystery around it was that there was no sign of forced entry into the house. I can't find any of this currently. Does anybody else remember this?
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