JonBenet's Murder, 10 Years Later
A Cruel Hoax? (Part One)

by Paul Petersen

News of the alleged confession by John Karr, arrested in Thailand, came to me by way of an excited call from my wife, Rana who was homeward bound in traffic on the Harbor Freeway.

"At last," I thought, jubilant at the breaking news. Then I thought of Patsy Ramsey who died in June. "How cruel," I thought, "that she didn't know." These thoughts were quickly followed by the sense of indignation that yet another pedophile was nabbed in Thailand, an infamous destination of sexual predators who vacation in exotic lands intent on having sex with children. "How appropriate that John Karr was arrested in Bangkok."

It is estimated that 60% of all tourists to Thailand are there for the sexual circus featuring children that plagues that country…merely first among too many. John Karr has traveled to Thailand at least five times in the past two years. White North American males make up the bulk of these sexual tourists. This is a global cesspool. America itself harbors a quarter-million children who disappear into the sex trade, and we've become an easily penetrated target for sexual predators fleeing their country of origin where pedophilia charges or convictions hang over their heads. We may be swarming with illegal aliens, but at least we deported 5,000 child molesters last year.

Civil libertarians, the ACLU and the Politically Correct can go hang for all I care. What we need is Political Directness.

Our children are at risk. Those who prey on them need to be identified, tissue-typed, fingerprinted and conspicuously tagged at the first sign of inappropriate behavior involving children.

I suggest an incandescent Pink Collar made of unbreakable metal, complete with an internal tracking device reporting to orbiting satellites tied to an international headquarters..

We can call it The Karr Collar.

Hester Prynne would understand.

I was born in the wrong century…and so were my kids.

The vividness of JonBenet's death remains with me to this day…the damning beauty pageant image…the chilling coroner's report…the police department's bungling of the crime scene…the image of the parents defending a generational fixation on pageants. It all came swimming back to me.

Almost immediately, Karr's confession came under intense scrutiny as our global media, driven by rapacious consumer appetites, sank its teeth into the details. What has emerged is a portrait of a man who presents a clear and present danger to children everywhere on earth…but almost certainly not the person who killed JonBenet Ramsey on Christmas night, 1996.

False confessions are a fact of life in high-profile criminal cases. Nearly 200 people "confessed" to the Lindberg kidnapping. Pending the proof John Karr's ex-wife and family have promised to provide in order to destroy Karr's claim, and the DNA evidence even now being processed, I need to speak to the irrefutable facts so far presented concerning this worthless man who has laid claim to Murder…and the role that each and every one of us played in his twisted growth and development.

Years ago John Karr married his 13 year-old cousin, a marriage that was annulled after a year. John Karr then married a sixteen year-old girl. Karr's professional life as a teacher was shadowed by whispers and insinuations about his behavior around children and he could not sustain his job as a substitute teacher. In time he left his wife (and three children) and drifted to California where he was arrested on the charge of Child Porn possession. Karr skipped the country to avoid prosecution, his resumé claiming that he then taught grade-school kids in at least a half-dozen countries, most of them known as hotbeds for sexual adventurism involving children. He had just undertaken a new job teaching 2nd Graders in Thailand when he was arrested…an unimposing monster with an uncanny resemblance to Lee Harvey Oswald…and the sordid story of a man consumed by his cowardly attraction to very young girls began to emerge.

Inappropriate connections to children, especially a marriage to a thirteen year-old, ought to have triggered alarm bells throughout America's law enforcement community, and John Mark Karr should have been tagged with an unmistakable symbol of his nauseating attraction to children.

Talk about Behavior Modification.

There was a time, and not so long ago, when sexual predators whose victims were children were set loose in the general population of our country's prisons. These "short eyes," as they are called in prison slang, were swiftly dealt with at the hands of their fellow inmates, most of whom had fathered children on the Outside.

Tribal Darwinism at its best.

Just think of it. No repeat offenders. No recidivism. No paroles. No serial molestations. No internet sites revealing how many molesters live in your neighborhood.

When do we get to be Mad as Hell?

Where can I buy that Collar?

The expected Motion to Dismiss came down yesterday in Boulder, Colorado. John Mark Karr remains in custody and is expected to be extradited to California where the charges related to child pornography are still pending, the charges he fled before embarking on his global odyssey.

We will hear more about this miserable little man. The media will see to that. Like many people I am left to wonder if this dog and pony show will ever get around to addressing the growing rot of Political Correctness and the absence of moral clarity when it comes to the use and abuse of children.

The JonBenet autopsy report gnaws at me…persistent and chronic vaginal irritation…

Sick and twisted people are running loose in our Society. Far too many are too close to our children and no one is paying attention when they go from job to job leaving suspicion (or worse) in their wake. One of them killed JonBenet Ramsey, but not John Mark Karr.