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Location: West Virginia, United States

Former U.S. Army, SPC E-4, Veteran of Operation Desert Storm. If you are or have ever been a soldier, you have friends in my house.

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

FLASH: Man Arrested in JonBenet Ramsey Murder Case - UPDATED

After damn near a decade of investigations, finger-pointing, and just plain all-around malaise surrounding the incident, it appears that there has been a huge break in the murder case of JonBenet Ramsey.

From the AP story, as covered in the San Diego Union-Tribune:

BOULDER, Colo. – A man suspected in the slaying of 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey was arrested Wednesday in Thailand in a surprise breakthrough in one of the nation's most lurid murder cases – a decade-old crime some feared would never be solved.

District Attorney Mary Lacy said the arrest followed several months of work. She would not disclose any details about the suspect, but the Ramsey family's attorney in Atlanta said the man was a schoolteacher who once lived in nearby Conyers, Ga.

Federal officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, identified the suspect as John Mark Karr, a 42-year-old American, and said he was already being held in Bangkok on unrelated sex charges. CBS reported he will be brought back to the United States this weekend.
I just found out about this on FNC a few minutes ago, so not a lot of details available just at the moment. According to the above article, a Denver NBC affiliate says the suspect confessed to at least some details of the crime.
I will update with any new info as I find it. But I do hope it's true. This case has festered long enough.

UPDATE: Hot Air, Dave Lucas, LaShawn Barber, Morning Coffee, Outside The Beltway and Suzie Views all have info on this as well. Check 'em out.

UPDATE: Allahpundit over at Hot Air has some new info that would seem to suggest our man Karr was nabbed in some kind of kiddie-porn sting op.

UPDATE: FOX News has an expanded version of the AP story that offers a few more details. According to the story of the Fox website, the tip-off that started things rolling in Karr's direction seems to have come from a University of Colorado journalism professor named Michael Tracey, who for some reason had communicated with the suspect and contacted police about it.

Also in the Fox story (emphasis mine):
U.S. authorities said Karr was initially taken into custody in Bangkok on unrelated sex charges. But Thai police Lt. Gen. Suwat Tumrongsiskul said he was unaware of any criminal charges the suspect faced in Thailand.

Karr was arrested at his apartment in downtown Bangkok at the request of U.S. officials, and was being held until they arrived, Thai police said. Suwat said he expected U.S. officials to take Karr back to America in the next few days.
Hmmm....might mean something, might not. Worth keeping an eye on, though.

Tip o' the rock to Jim Addison of Wizbang. His piece on the subject led me here.

UPDATE: It's official, folks....He has confessed to participating in what he describes as a kidnapping gone wrong. I will try to keep up as more details unfold---there will most certainly be more to tell here later---but at least we finally have some real answers for this. (Thanks to Lorie Byrd of Wizbang for the new information, which led me to find James Cloninger in the Addison article's Comments section for the link to the Fox story. Good work, people.)