He wasn’t in prison in Thailand. He happened to be in Thailand, the US authorities notified Thai authorities that they had a warrant for his arrest, the Thai authorities picked him up, revoked his visa, and turned him over.
Few in the Colorado media thought Alex Hunter had his head screwed on straight over this case. Boulder PD pretty much fucked it all up from the first minutes, and it’s taken a new DA and a new police chief to get things straightened out.
Still, there are some things that require explaining – like how that bizarre ransom note in Patsy’s handwriting, from her tablet, ended up on the back stairs.
Gonna’ be interesting to see how this all unfolds.
From the link:
Either way, I hope this turns out to be the solution to the case.
Also, he didn’t volunteer his confession. Someone researching the JBR case dropped the dime on him. Karr kept emailing him about it, and eventually the researcher got so creeped out, he contacted the DA.
It simply wasn’t in her handwriting.
They had a forensic linguist who concluded that it may have contained elements of her writing style, such as liberal use of exclamation points. But if she was the author, it was apparently carefully dictated to a unknown third person. Uh-huh.
Funny. He doesn’t look Puerto Rican.
[shallow analysis and snap judgments] It figures, he looks creepy. And he has three names, just like all the most famous murderers in history. [/saasj]
This confession is getting weirder by the moment.
*He says he drugged her - but toxicology reports didn’t show any drugs in her system.
*His ex wife swears he was in Alabama that Christmas.
*As pointed out above, he said he picked her up from school which is utterly out of the question.
*His statements about loving her and her death being accidental don’t really gel with the abuse that was inflicted on that little girl before she died.
I don’t know what he said in his emails that convinced LA that he was responsible, but I’m concerned that he’s looking more like a false confesser, a paedophile who has fantasied about it so much that he’s convinced himself that he killed JonBenet or a random freak who is excited by the attention he’s getting than a guilty child-killer. I hope they have a DNA match or some other solid proof.
Please, please don’t let this turn out to be false.
I think you might be out of luck. The BS-O-Meter is starting to get pegged with the inconsistencies in this case, and the rest of his family (father-brother-ex-wife who seem relatively sane and intelligent) swearing up and down he couldn’t have been anywhere near CO when it happened as he was in Alabama at the time.
It starting to smell like a big fake by an obsessive nut case.
How did he know the details which had not been known to the public? he knew, for instance, where the killer had put the murder weapon (and what the weapon was). How could he guess that if he’d never even been in the house?
He had apparently done extensive research on the case, and according to some accounts had even talked with GB’s grandparent’s. It not stretch that they could have let some non-public details slip if that conversation took place.
The bottom line with this is if his family can prove (and they indicate they probably can) he was in Alabama the day she was killed it’s all over for this drama.
There are a lot of really odd pieces about this case (which granted, nobody here knows about just yet) that don’t seem to measure up. From CNN, NYT, Court TV, and the AP reports here’s what I’ve surmised:
[ul]
[li]Strong evidence suggests this guy is a pedophile. Child porn arrest (not sure if he was convicted) in California in 2001, he’s been on the lam since then. Teaching license suspended.[/li][li]He lived in the Atlanta suburbs at one point, as did the Ramseys (they lived in Dunwoody). NYT suggests that it’s possible he may have moved from the area before JBR was born.[/li][li]He doesn’t appear to have ever lived in Boulder or Colorado, nor did he apply to teach there.[/li][li]Apparently he struck up a relationship with a UC professor who produced a documentary about JBR. He sent e-mails to the professor, and they started to get creepy - which is when the professor contacted the police.[/li][li]It’s been reported that he “knows a lot about the case,” but it isn’t clear what he knows.[/li][li]Ex-wife and brother acknowledge that he was obsessed with this case and the Polly Klaas case.[/li][/ul]
So how did he know the Ramseys? How did he find, then tail this child home? (It doesn’t sound like he was teaching at a school she might have attended.) JBR was six when she was murdered which puts her in first grade, probably. If there was evidence of him being a friend of the family where he might have visited in Atlanta or in Boulder, maybe that’s a connection. Or I suppose he might have been involved in the pageant scene in some way - that would explain how he encountered JBR.
His comments to the media were frankly bizarre. If he has an ounce of sanity and self-preservation, he’d keep quiet with the media. He would say provocative things like he loved JBR, her death was an accident - but then clam up when asked follow-up questions.
The press conference in Boulder said absolutely nothing, but it seems that they are working the “we wanted to keep him from hurting other children” rationale which isn’t connected to this case… but I can understand them not wanting to say anything that might jeopardize the case.
I guess we’ll have to wait and see. I’m wondering, if this guy is a pedophile and obsessed with this case, he might know a lot about it without being involved. I’m wondering if some of the folks following this might provide some links from which you’re getting your info…
And if the DNA matches?
I JUST watched that South Park episode last night.
Man, I wonder if Matt and Trey will issue an apology…
lisacurl, my comment was based on the notion, that IF it is true, as reported, the ransom note quoted dad’s bonus check amount, AND was in mom’s handwriting or a similar handwriting (she is only one close to the decased who could NOT be ruled out IIRC) and IF the note used terms the mom used and IF the mom changed the way she writes after the note was written, (all of which has been reported), if all of that is true, and this guy is the killer, that would mean a family member wrote the note to cover up for a killer. What would be a rational excuse for that, other than the one I posited? Sick and twisted yes, but not unprecedented.
He’s been corresponding for 2 years with a guy (Tracey?) who has done I think 3 documentaries on the case. If Tracey had let little nugets of info slip out, they could have been assembled into a plausible confession. Shouldn’t be too hard to discredit him under questioning if he’s a false confessor.
Henry Lee Lucas used similar tactics to “confess” to many murders it was almost certain he couldn’t have committed. He would hear a snip here and there and use that info to lead police on a wild goose chase, delaying his execution. He knew that as long as he could string them along, they’d keep him alive.
Also, per Wikipedia entry, Alberto DeSalvo, who many believe was NOT the Boston Strangler, knew “initmate details that no else knew” about many cases, yet got specifics wrong on others. I think that phrase should be phased out, because in this day and age, is there really anything that “only the killer would know”, what with all the media leaks and what not?
My personal hypothesis, based on the information leaking out of the Boulder PD (which, as I’ve already said, hosed this case from the beginning) is that Patsy wrote the note to cover up what was basically a “crime of passion” by Burke, who was prone to temper tantrums, hoping that the red herring would so confuse the investigation (which, as it turned out, wasn’t that hard to do) that it would ultimately wither and die. And it did.
**Larry Mudd ** is technically correct – handwriting analysis never conclusively showed that the note was in Patsy’s handwriting. And we don’t have conclusive evidence that she deliberately changed her handwriting after JonBenet’s death.
But the note still has to be explained. And the discrepancy between Patsy’s contention that Burke was gone that night (staying with friends or relatives, I believe) and the claim by police that his voice is heard in the background during the 911 call to report JonBenet’s disappearance. (Oh, wait, that was a claim by the Boulder police – didn’t I just say they screwed the pooch from the first minutes? Yeah, I think I did.)
Anyway, yeah, my skepticism isn’t yet satisfied. An arrest is a long, long way from a conviction.