Who Is John Mark Karr?

Now the entire world wants to know more about the man accused of killing JonBenet Ramsey.

Karr’s past is as sketchy as his confession about his alleged activities in the Ramsey house that December 1996 in Boulder, Colorado.

Here’s what we know about him so far.

The second grade school teacher is a divorced father of three who used to live in Georgia, the same state where the Ramseys once resided and JonBenet was born. But it’s never been made clear how he became aware of her or what he might have been doing in Colorado at the time she was killed.

What appears to be his resume is padded with questionable claims. In an online posting seeking employment overseas, a man identified as Karr suggests he’s a world traveller who worked as a private tutor at schools around the globe.

But some of the institutions claim they’ve never heard of him and deny that he ever toiled for them.  “We have never even interviewed him,” counters Um Dae-jin, who works at the GnB in Seoul, South Korea, one of those listed in the resume.

Karr also claims he worked as an English teacher at a Netherlands school, and writes that he spent time at “some of the most prestigious schools…with children from high-profile families” in the U.S. 

The posting also lists the 41-year-old as having spent time in Honduras, Costa Rica, Germany, London, Paris, Zurich, Milan, Osaka, Japan, Sydney, Australia, Singapore, Taipei and Istanbul.

None of the boasts can be verified, including one that contends Karr can play unspecified musical instruments, writes poetry and considers himself an actor.

But while there are questions about his whereabouts since JonBenet was killed, it’s clear he was teaching in Petaluma, California in 2001.

His bosses remember the substitute teacher as being not very effective in the classroom and lacking focus.  “He just seemed like somebody who thought he wanted to be a teacher,” former principal Bob Raines recalls. “After a few days, I could see it just wasn’t for him.”

But everything changed when the pedagogue allegedly turned into a pedophile. Karr was charged with five counts of possessing child pornography but fled the country before he could be tried.

It’s not known what he did in his spare time, but one thing seems apparent – he displayed an ongoing fascination with the JonBenet murder case.

His brother says he was working on a book about unsolved child murders and that he seemed obsessed with the Ramsey case.

His father told a Denver newspaper that a university professor assigned him to write a paper on the case and that he even tried to get in touch with JonBenet’s grandparents for an interview. But they refused to see him.
 
There are reports that it was that professor who kept in touch with Karr and may have been the one who alerted police to their main suspect.

Police in Bangkok confirm he moved to the country on June 6th and had been living in a dormitory-style guest house in a neighbourhood filled with massage parlours.

When he was arrested on unrelated sex charges there, his visa was revoked and he was labeled an ‘undesirable person’ by Thai officials.

That ended any protection he might have been afforded by the country and is expected to lead to his extradition to the U.S. to face charges in the notorious child murder case.