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Boulder D.A. Mary Lacy, who took over the case in 2002, admitted her investigation into Karr wasn't complete at the time he was picked up. So far, it's not clear if she has lined up basic evidence such as handwriting samples to match against the ransom note or proof that Karr was even in Boulder at the time of the killing. At a press conference Lacy suggested that Karr – who in 2001 was charged with possessing child pornography but had still recently managed to land three teaching jobs in Thailand – posed a serious safety risk, which would explain his sudden arrest.
The key evidence so far seems to be hundreds of e-mails Karr sent to journalism professor Michael Tracey, who produced three documentaries about the Ramsey case. In the e-mails, the Ramseys were told, Karr showed he knew things that "only people in the house or the killer would know," says Suzanne Goebel. "One was about a bracelet JonBenét had on and that Patsy evidently purchased and gave to her earlier in December." Boulder officials won't comment further, and the arrest warrant is under seal, but "I would be shocked if Mary Lacy made the decision to arrest this man on anything other than substantial evidence," says the Ramseys' friend and attorney Lin Wood. "The [arrest] document is 80 or 90 pages."
So is Karr a cold-blooded killer or just delusional? What's clear is that throughout his life he has struck many people as strange. His parents, Wexford and Patricia Karr, raised him in Georgia and divorced when Karr was 9. His mother, Karr once said, tended to raise him like a girl. Smaller and quieter than most boys, Karr went to live with his grandparents in Hamilton, Ala., where "he was the neighborhood kid who wouldn't play with the rest of us," says Brenda Perham, who lived nearby. "We'd be in someone's yard and he'd come and sit with a book." The flip side to his shyness was an urge to stand out: When he was old enough to drive, Karr made the rounds in a DeLorean he painted fire-engine red. "He said, 'I don't want to blend in with everyone else,' " says Perham.
