In 2006, John Mark Karr confessed to the December 1997 murder of six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey in Boulder, Colorado — but his claims were false.
Abaca Press / Alamy Stock PhotoJohn Mark Karr in 2006, shortly after he confessed to murdering JonBenét Ramsey.
On the day after Christmas in 1996, a couple in Boulder, Colorado woke up to a nightmare: their six-year-old daughter, JonBenét Ramsey, was missing from her bed. She was found murdered in the family basement later that day, launching a fervent — but frustrating — search for her killer. Her death remained a confounding mystery for a full decade, until an itinerant teacher named John Mark Karr seemingly confessed to killing her.
“I loved JonBenet very much,” Karr said. “Her death was an accident.”
On paper, the case against John Mark Karr — who has since changed his name and his gender pronouns — looked strong. He had married twice, to girls still in their teens. He’d been reprimanded for being “too affectionate” with children that he taught. He’d been arrested for possessing child pornography. And he had an obsession with the JonBenét Ramsey case.
So why was Karr never charged with JonBenét’s murder? This is the puzzling story of John Mark Karr, from his murky beginnings, to his involvement in the JonBenét Ramsey case, to where he is today.
John Mark Karr’s Disturbing Tendencies Before Confessing To JonBenét Ramsey’s Murder
Boulder County Sheriff’s Office via Getty ImagesA booking mugshot of John Mark Karr released by the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office on August 24, 2006.
Born on Dec. 11, 1964, John Mark Karr spent most of his life in obscurity. But his behavior began to ring alarm bells starting in his young adulthood.
When Karr was 19, he married 13-year-old Quientana Shotts (Karr later claimed she was 14). The marriage did not last — a year later, Shotts filed for an annulment and wrote that she was “fearful for her life and safety.”
Five years later, in 1989, Karr married again. This time, his bride was 16-year-old Lara Knutson. When Knutson filed for divorce from Karr in 2001, she alleged that he had “specifically set out to get me pregnant so we could marry without parental consent, as is the Georgia law.”
Despite this auspicious start, the couple had three children together. And after a purported stint in real estate, Karr began to seek teaching jobs. He got a substitute teaching job in Alabama in 1996, but only lasted a short time after parents started to complain about him. According to Knutson’s divorce petition, Karr was removed from the substitute teaching list because “he had a tendency to be too affectionate with children.”
He was teaching in the Alabama’s Franklin County School System between Dec. 17 and Dec. 19, 1996. JonBenét Ramsey was killed a week after his last day, on Dec. 26, 1996, in her family’s Colorado family home. But at the time there was no connection between the murdered six-year-old and John Mark Karr. The police instead focused on members of the Ramsey family, including JonBenét’s parents, John and Patsy, and other suspects.
FacebookJonBenét Ramsey competed — and won — a number of beauty pageants for children before her tragic murder at age six.
Meanwhile, Karr continued to live under the radar. He moved his family to Petaluma, California, where he worked a number of teaching jobs. But in April 2001, police searched Karr’s home and found child pornography — as well as a letter from Richard Allen Davis, who had abducted and killed 12-year-old Polly Klaas from her Petaluma home in 1993. Karr plead not guilty to five counts of possession of child pornography and was put on probation.
However, Karr told his father at the time that the charges against him were related to the JonBenét Ramsey case. And when police went to arrest him that December for violating the terms of his supervised release, they found that John Mark Karr had left the country.
But his apparent fixation on JonBenét Ramsey would continue.
Did John Mark Karr Really Kill JonBenét Ramsey?
After fleeing from California, John Mark Karr bounced from place to place, supporting himself with teaching and childcare jobs. By 2006, he’d made his way to Thailand. And there, he struck up an email correspondence with a University of Colorado professor Michael Tracey, who was making a documentary about JonBenét’s murder.
UPI / Alamy Stock PhotoJohn Mark Karr’s email correspondence with Michael Tracey, seen here, led to his arrest in 2006.
In their email correspondence, which Tracey once described as “voluminous,” Karr described his deep “love” for JonBenét Ramsey. He told Tracey: “Sometimes little girls are closer to me than with their parents or any other person in their lives. When I refer to myself as JonBenet’s closest, maybe now you understand.”
At another point, Karr suggested Tracey go to the Boulder home where JonBenét died and read a message which read, in part: “I love you and shall forever love you… If there is to be a life for me after this one, I pray that it will be with you – together forever with you and other little girls who are gone now from my life forever. This would be my Heaven.”
In May, Tracey decided alert the district attorney. John Mark Karr was arrested in Bangkok that August, and seemingly confessed to killing JonBenét at a news conference held at a Thai immigration detention center the next day.
“I loved JonBenet very much,” Karr told reporters gathered at the detention center. “Her death was an accident.”
When a journalist asked if he was “an innocent man?” Karr replied: “No.”
John Mark Karr was then extradited to the United States.
For a brief moment it seemed that the world might finally have answer to the question of who killed JonBenét Ramsey. But DNA evidence failed to link Karr to JonBenét’s murder — and investigators had trouble proving that Karr had even been in Boulder at the time that she died. Knutson, who had divorced Karr in 2001, claimed that he had been with her on Dec. 25, 1996.
Abaca Press / Alamy Stock PhotoJohn Mark Karr in Thailand. August 2006.
Shortly thereafter, the child pornography charges against Karr were also dismissed. According to reporting from NBC News at the time, a judge found that there wasn’t enough evidence to take him to trial.
Thus, despite his confession that he’d killed JonBenét Ramsey, John Mark Karr walked free. But he didn’t disappear back into obscurity.
Karr’s Life As Alexis Reich Today, From Assault Allegations To An Alleged “Sex Cult”
John Mark KarrA photo purportedly showing John Mark Karr, who changed his name to Alexis Reich, circa 2015.
After his return to the United States, John Mark Karr appeared periodically in the news. In 2007, he was charged with battery against his father and obstruction of a 911 call after a fight between Karr and his then-girlfriend, Brooke Simmons, broke out at his father’s home. However, his father said the fight was “minor” and that he had not been hurt.
Later that year, Karr and Simmons got engaged. When they broke up a year later, she told reporters that he’d “never said that he made [his confession] up, never.” She added: “Why [law enforcement] let him go so quick, I don’t understand,” she said, adding: “And based on things that I’ve seen and, I mean, many people have seen as well, it’s not just me but, I think they dropped the ball too quick on that with him.”
In 2010, Karr made the news yet again when a different ex-fiancée, 19-year-old Samantha Spiegel, claimed that Karr was trying to form a sex cult consisting of girls between the ages of four and eight. Spiegel, who was nine when she met Karr, claimed: “His mission is to create a cult that he wants to call ‘The Immaculates,’ of little girls that would have sexual relationships with him and do whatever he wanted and just, like, be his little minions.”
By that time, John Mark Karr had also begun living as a woman, with the new name of Alexis Valoran Reich. Inside Edition reported that Karr had undergone a sex change and legally changed their name. (That said, the Monroe Journal also reported in 2017 that Karr was going by “Alex Reich” and was “biologically a female living as a male.”)
In the end, the truth of John Mark Karr’s life and deeds are known only to Karr himself. On his personal website, he denies that he sought fame by confessing to JonBenét Ramsey’s murder. He stands by his confession.
But — to date — no one has been charged in JonBenét’s death. Her 1996 remains a mystery, and Karr stands as a strange chapter in her larger story.
Now that you’ve read the truth about John Mark Karr, read about JonBenét Ramsey’s brother Burke. Then, read about JonBenét Ramsey suspect Gary Oliva.
