from rockymountainnews.com: I’ve had enough. So I will just come right out and say what others in this business apparently will not:

Mary Lacy, that’s not your boy.

John Mark Karr as much killed JonBenet Ramsey as Mickey Mouse did. This is a fool’s errand you’re on, and it won’t end pretty.

If you haven’t noticed, the guy is a lunatic.

OK, my upbringing tells me that it is a lousy thing to say about anyone. So let me put it this way: He is the saddest of all sad cases, a delusional, completely whacked out, early-teen-girl-marrying sociopath who writes bad poetry to long-dead little girls.

Perhaps that’s better.

What I’m saying is no different than anyone capable of reading a newspaper or watching a television is saying.

On CNN this morning, I swore the two anchors were going to fall over laughing after they ran for the 35th-something time the audio of John Mark Karr making his wild, “It was an accident” claim.

Most journalists in this town and across the globe have been falling over themselves trying not to – in the words of Mrs. Lacy – “rush to judgment” on this fool, all the while rupturing an intestine to keep from laughing.

Not me. I can barely get up off the floor.

I watched on TV Thursday as Mary Lacy stood on a big stage, flanked on each side by a line of stiff, grim-faced G-men and cops, solemnly speaking of the “exigent circumstances” that necessitated the man’s arrest in Bangkok.

On the other channel is yet more footage of John Mark Karr, staggering, half-leaning and vacant-eyed, in to his press conference, looking like a poor Pee-wee Herman impersonator.

“I’m so sorry for what happened to JonBenet,” he said.

Please.

Even the Bangkok police, notorious for arresting people whether they need arresting or not, reportedly figured it out early, that this Pee-wee was whack-o.

Even they knew John Mark Karr couldn’t have picked up JonBenet from school on the day he says he killed her, it being Christmas and all.

Maybe I’m wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve fingered the wrong killer in this case. I still maintain I’ve got it at least half right.

Remember Tom Koby, the Boulder police chief at the time of the murder? He once went on TV and into the newspapers declaring he was about to hunt the killer down, that he or she wouldn’t get away with it.

Call me cynical, but I don’t think he had John Mark Karr in his cross hairs at the time.

Just for fun, let’s say Mary Lacy has it right. Think of it.

It would make John Mark Karr the dumbest smart murderer who ever lived.

He somehow sneaked into what was then 755 15th St. in Boulder, figured out in which bedroom his “love,” JonBenet was sleeping, got her downstairs unnoticed, fed her pineapple, drugged and sexually assaulted her before smashing her in the head and garroting her to death.

According to his account, such deliberation was done all “by accident.”

Yet he is not done. He sits down and writes a ransom note. Maybe he did it before the pineapple thing. No matter. He scratches out a first draft. It isn’t good enough.

He sits down and crafts a second one. He drops it and skedaddles.

It is a clean getaway, not a trace of John Mark Karr left behind. What’s more, the coroner finds not a trace of either semen on or drugs in the girl.

Perfect crime.

And then what, 10 years later he comes clean? In Bangkok?

I’m not even waiting for the DNA tests to come back. I know the guy didn’t do it.

How do I know?

Her name is Lara Knutson, the divorced wife of John Mark Karr and the mother of his children.

On Friday, she publicly said the guy was with her and the kids in Alabama on Christmas Day 1996, that they hardly had anything, much less money for a trip to Colorado.

Now, ex-wives will say and do a lot of things, but trust me, the last thing they’d ever do is risk jail time to provide your sorry backside with a phony alibi.

If I’m wrong, that is just dandy with me. DAs and cops on murder cases always tell you to just wait, that there are things they know that they just can’t talk about right now.

They said the same thing in Boulder 10 years ago.

So go for it, Mary Lacy.

Being wrong again this time, though, does come with a heavy price.

On television the day of the arrest, you might remember, JonBenet Ramsey’s relatives exulted over the news.

I felt sorry for them, fearful – if not certain – that once again because of blind overeagerness or sheer incompetence, Boulder authorities will disappoint them, scraping that unbearably painful 10-year-old wound.

The little girl’s memory and the loved ones who survive her deserve knowing and peace, not this.

That the first time John Mark Karr ever steps foot in Boulder County will be the day Mary Lacy flies him in, well, that is simply sad and embarrassing. Not funny at all.