The abrupt collapse Monday of the case against a man suspected of killing JonBenét Ramsey wasn’t much of a surprise, but it surely was a disappointment. Who among us didn’t hope that the little girl’s killer had been found and put behind bars?
John Mark Karr has been portrayed as a pervert without a sense of right and wrong who was a threat to young girls. But little by little it became apparent that he had been arrested without much evidence except his own pathetic story.
Monday, test results excluded Karr as a source of the DNA found with the 6-year-old girl’s body, dealing a fatal blow to theories that Boulder could prove the teacher committed the 1996 murder.
District Attorney Mary Lacy was right to aggressively investigate Karr, but the arrest and public spectacle has left egg on her face and damaged the record and the image of Boulder law enforcement. Again.
There had to be a better way.
Did Lacy really need to arrest Karr and drag him back from Thailand in such a public (and expensive) fashion based on little more than his own disturbed ravings? The effort to solve the case would have been better served with a quiet investigation that didn’t include an international perp walk.
Lacy didn’t fuel the furor that surrounded the sudden announcement of an arrest, but her headstrong pursuit of the suspect certainly triggered it.
Documents filed Monday in Boulder District Court leave little doubt that Lacy had reason to bore in on Karr. She got a tip from a journalism professor who had extensive e-mails from an anonymous correspondent who claimed to have accidentally asphyxiated JonBenét as he sexually assaulted her. And he seemed to be expanding his interest to other girls. Authorities confirmed Karr was involved with at least one girl he had identified as a target of his sexual interest. He took pains to keep his identity secret.
The documents should be a warning about the dark proclivities of pedophiles. But those chilling words weren’t sufficient to tie Karr to the Ramsey murder.
From the beginning, we hoped Lacy had the goods on Karr and that she could redeem Boulder after the inept efforts to investigate the sensational Ramsey crime 10 years ago. But with each passing day, the case seemed more a prosecution borne of passion than evidence and legal strategy.
Given the history of this mysterious case – including repeated episodes of missed opportunities and prosecutorial missteps – Lacy needed to take extraordinary care with Karr. She’s been burned badly so far, but it must not deter her from keeping JonBenét Ramsey from going into the cold case file.
