![]() By M.P. Pellicer | Eerie.News Ramsey is hoping that DNA will finally bring resolution to the 1996 murder of his 6-year-old daughter JonBenet. He has petitioned Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, so the items from the crime scene, which so far had not been tested for DNA should be screened. ![]() However he has specified it should be done by an independent agency, and not the Boulder Police Department. Ramsey called Boulder cops "inexperienced" and faulted them "for not accepting help from people who knew what they were doing." According to FoxNews, he said, "“Why they won’t test the DNA samples that should be tested for DNA, I don’t know. It’s baffling." John Ramsey and his wife Patsy who passed away in 2006, were considered suspects but in 2008 they were cleared when an unknown male DNA was found on JonBenet's clothes. In 2019, his son Burke who was also cleared by DNA, settled a $750 million defamation suit with CBS, after they suggested he might have been the person to rape and kill the young girl. JonBenet was murdered on December 26, 1996. Her father discovered her body in the basement of their Colorado home seven hours after she was reported missing. Her skull was broken by a blow to her head, and she was strangled with a garrote still tied around her neck. A ransom note had been left on the kitchen staircase. TEXT OF RANSOM NOTE ![]() This was not the first child John Ramsey lost. In 1992, his daughter Elizabeth Pasch Ramsey, 22, was killed in an automobile accident along with her boyfriend Matthew Derrington. An 18-wheeler crashed into the car. She was the oldest of three children from John Ramsey's first marriage to Lucinda Pasch. JonBenét was interred in a Marietta, Georgia cemetery next to her half-sister Elizabeth. ![]() SUSPECTS In 1997, Michael Helgoth committed suicide after the police department declared in a press conference they were coming close to producing a new name as the perpetrator of the crime. He was an electrician who was allegedly involved in a property dispute with the Ramseys. Eventually he was cleared by DNA. In 2000, a local man who was a known sex offender named Gary Oliva was arrested on drug charges. Inside his backpack, police found a magazine cutout of JonBenet. He was released. In 2016, he was arrested again on child abuse charges and was sentenced to 10 years. In 2019, in a series of letters to a high school classmate he claimed that he killed JonBenet. He was cleared by not being a match to DNA evidence from the crime scene. In 2019, Randall DeWitt Simons, 66 was indicted on 15 counts of first-degree encouraging child sex abuse in Oregon. He was convicted in 2021, of all 15 counts and sentenced to 10 years. Simons had reportedly photographed JonBenet a few months before her murder. In 1998, he was arrested for walking naked down a Colorado street mumbling, "I didn't kill JonBenet." He was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation, however it's unknown what happened with the case. In July, 2018, the police were led to Simons when employees at a local A&W Restaurant in Oakridge reported someone was using their WiFi signal to download x-rated content. Investigators traced it back to a man living near the restaurant. The computer identification address for the computer belonged to a man who sold that computer along with others to Simons who lived near the restaurant. They tracked Simons' activity to his home. Simons was never declared a suspect, however in 1997 he sold several glamour photographs of JonBenet to a photo agency for $7,000, which later he declared ruined his career because of the notoriety connected to the case. ![]() FALSE CONFESSION In 2001, John Mark Karr lived with his wife and three children in San Francisco. He was employed as a schoolteacher. Investigators acquired computer evidence of child pornography in April 2001, when he substituted in schools in Sonoma and Napa counties. He pled not guilty and was ordered to report to a probation officer, and to avoid child pornography, children and places where children congregate, such as schools, beaches and parks. He chose to flee the country. In the meantime, California school officials stripped him of his teaching credentials. Among the evidence found by police was correspondence between Karr and Richard Allen Davis the man who killed 12-year-old Polly Klaas in 1993. The 2001 police report detailed how he was fascinated with the case. The police found letters from Davis to Karr, along with photographs of Karr wearing makeup, a .38 semiautomatic pistol and hundreds of photos of small children. Davis was sentenced to death in 1996; as of 2022, he remains on California's death row in the Adjustment Center at San Quentin State Prison. During these years, Karr's online resume reflected that from 2001 to 2002, he taught English to grade-school children in Seoul, South Korea and then Heemstede in the Netherlands. From 2002 to 2003, he worked as a private school teacher and caregiver in schools in the Netherlands and Germany. From there he made his way to Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Honduras. Eventually he returned to Thailand, where he was extradited from in 2006 when he was 41 years old. At the time he had just started a job where he was teaching second grade. From Colorado, he was extradited to California to face the charges of child pornography that were pending since 2001. Eventually the charges were dropped after police mishandled evidence. Investigators considered Karr in the murder of 12-year-old Georgia Moses. While living in Georgia, he rented an apartment to an African American family with the surname of Moses. The girl's remains were found very close to Karr's Petaluma home, wrapped in a piece of carpet. She had been dumped on the side of Highway 101. He moved to Petaluma years after the crime, but police believed he might have been familiar with the area from before. Karr was married twice to girls, 16 and 13 years of age. In 2010, the Daily Beast reported that his first wife said she married him when she was 13 years old, and was forced to commit degrading sex acts with him. They had married in Alabama, and he had forged her age on the marriage certificate. He would dress up in her clothing and wear makeup. Less than a year after their 1984 wedding, it was annulled. Lara Karr, his second wife, filed for divorce two days after he was arrested. In the divorce affidavit filed by Lara Karr she said her husband was told "by one school in or about ’97 or ’98 that he would not be asked to continue to serve as a substitute teacher because he had a tendency to be too affectionate with children.” A judge issued a three-year restraining order for Karr to stay at least 100 yard away from his wife and three sons, then ages 8, 9 and 10. Shortly after, is when he fled the country and was gone for the next five years. ![]() In 2007, Karr was arrested in a domestic case and charged with battery and obstruction. This involved an argument with his father Wexford Karr who lived in suburban Atlanta at the time. Karr came to the police's attention again when a former student complained of threatening emails he sent her. Samantha Spiegel was a former fourth grade student at San Francisco's Convent of the Sacred Heart School. Karr was mysteriously fired after just 20 days. Spiegel and Karr reconnected later via the internet when she was a teenager and was battling drug addiction. She recognized him when he was brought back from Thailand, and his face was splashed across media outlets. When she was 17, they became engaged until her parents intervened. They sent her to a treatment center for 16 months. In 2010, the Atlanta News reported that Spiegel, 19, gained a restraining order from Karr. Sandy Springs Police served the restraining order issued in San Francisco after Karr had sent her several emails, writing in one, "If you deceive me, I will kill you." Another read, ""If you cost me my little girls I will hunt you down and kill you." The police found him at his father's house in Georgia. According to Spiegel, Karr planned to undergo gender reassignment surgery in order to get closer to little girls. Spiegel claims that Karr started a child sex cult, called "The Immaculates". He wanted her help to recruit girls 6 years old or under, preferably brunettes. Prior to this Karr had become infamous when he confessed to killing JonBenet Ramsey. According to CNN there was no DNA match to link Karr to the JonBenet crime scene. His family also provided evidence he was with them in Georgia when the crime was committed. A former fiancee, Brooke Dovgan reported that Karr would visit JonBenet's tomb in Georgia which was very close to where they lived in Alabama. According to Karr's personal website he claimed that in 2006, he underwent an orchiectomy which is a surgical procedure in which one or both testicles are removed. He said this eliminated sex thoughts and fantasies away. In 2008, John Mark Karr, changed his legal name to Alexis Valoran Reich, (or Delia Alexis Reich, according to a Washington State drivers' license) after coming out as transgender. Then he moved from North America. He changed his name back, after his new name became associated with him. He returned to the United States in 2017, but then sold his home and allegedly left the U.S. in 2020.
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