WWW- John Mark Karr confessed five years ago to killing JonBenet Ramsey – saying he lured the 6-year-old girl to her brutal death after listening to mom Patsy Ramsey tell the tyke a bedtime story, a California woman says.
“I believed he was telling the truth,” said the woman, Wendy Hutchens, in interviews with The Press Democrat newspaper in Santa Rosa, Calif., and San Francisco’s KRON-TV.
The bombshell claim comes as Karr, 41, is scheduled to appear today in a Los Angeles courtroom, where he will be asked to waive extradition to Boulder, Colo., to face murder, kidnapping and sex-assault charges.
His former lawyer said he’ll do just that.
“I think Mr. Karr is very anxious to be able to exercise his right to face the charges that are being brought against him, and he knows those charges are in Boulder, they are not here,” Patience Van Zandt told the Denver Post.
Karr will represent himself when he makes his initial appearance in a Los Angeles courtroom today, the newspaper reported.
Hutchens said she had extensive conversations in 2001 with the creepy Karr – who last week told the world he killed JonBenet – about his obsession with her high-profile slaying. Those conversations, she said, were recorded at the behest of California police and the FBI, who were investigating Karr for possessing child porn.
Authorities have refused to discuss Hutchens’ possible role as an informant – or why no action was taken against him at the time for the murder.
Hutchens said Karr told her he went to the Ramsey family home in Boulder for a Christmas party while visiting his brother, who he claimed worked for JonBenet’s dad, John Ramsey.
Karr also told her he was drinking at the party, and that he talked to JonBenet on a staircase, KRON said.
Karr said he later went to the basement and noticed a storm window. Later that night, he said, he sneaked into the house through that window after the other guests left.
He claimed he hid under a bed in a room across from JonBenet’s, and eavesdropped on the girl’s mom, Patsy, reading her a bedtime story. Then, he told Hutchens, he went into JonBenet’s room and got the drowsy little girl to go with him on the pretext her parents wanted her.
Hutchens’ story about Karr could fill in some of the gaps left by the shocking confession that the child-obsessed former schoolteacher made to reporters last week in Bangkok after his arrest there. And it could explain how Karr – who had no known connection to the Ramseys or Colorado – gained access to their house.
But several facts conflict with Karr’s account to Hutchens, bolstering suspicions he is an attention-seeking wacko rather than a cold-blooded killer.
For instance, the Ramseys’ 1996 Christmas party was Dec. 23 – three days before their daughter was found strangled in their basement.
Karr’s father and brothers don’t recall him ever missing Christmas dinner in Atlanta or traveling to Colorado after the holiday, a family lawyer told The Washington Post. Karr’s former wife also has said she remembers him being with her and his family that Christmas.
Chillingly, the e-mail address that led to Karr in Thailand was [email protected] – the date of the little girl’s slaying, the Rocky Mountain News reported yesterday.
Meanwhile, Karr spent his first full day in a high-security Los Angeles County jail known as Twin Towers yesterday after arriving late Sunday on a flight from Bangkok, on which he had guzzled champagne and dined on paté, fried king prawns and roast duck while seated comfortably in business class.
“Compared to what he had on the plane, it’s a world of difference,” Deputy Ban Nguyen said of jail chow.
Yesterday’s lunch was a bologna sandwich, carrots and an apple; dinner was beef chili, white rice, Jell-O, bread and milk.
Karr, who was being held in isolation, met for several hours with a lawyer, Patience Van Zandt, who said she was not formally representing him, and that he wanted to get a lawyer in Boulder.