CU media professor has no regrets

But some critics rap Michael Tracey's role in DA's chase of Karr

Todd Hartman, Rocky Mountain News

Published August 29, 2006 at midnight

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University of Colorado media studies professor Michael Tracey, the man who spent four years exchanging e-mails with one-time JonBenet Ramsey murder suspect John Mark Karr, said Monday he'd do it all over again.

It was the e-mail exchanges he turned over to Boulder County District Attorney Mary Lacy's office that laid the foundation for the authorities' interest in Karr.

"From what I was reading, it was very troubling, and it became increasingly troubling," Tracey said of the communications from Karr, many of which focused on his sexual desire for little girls.

"It would have been irresponsible" not to act on Karr's statements, he said.

Tracey reacted philosophically to Monday's news that Lacy was dropping charges against Karr after discovering the 41-year-old's DNA didn't match that found on JonBenet's underwear.

Tracey called Lacy's decision to pursue Karr "courageous," and that "the process took its course."

Throughout the past 13 days, Tracey has stuck to his statement issued after Karr's arrest that the suspect should be presumed innocent. It's a message derived from Tracey's belief that many in the public, the police and the media rushed to judge the Ramseys guilty in the months and years after the 1996 murder.

Several critics have attacked Tracey for his focus on alternative suspects. Critics call him a hypocrite for saying the Ramseys were unfairly targeted by the public while he has cited others in his documentaries who need further investigation.

Some also have chided him for appearing on television and generating media attention in the same case that he criticizes the media for sensationalizing. As for the Karr case, Tracey has acknowledged his role in the DA's pursuit.

But he emphasized he hasn't been the source of information about the content of the e-mails, and wasn't the source of a Rocky Mountain News story Aug. 18 that documented the contents of a sample of the e-mails. In short, he didn't discuss evidence in the case.

But the criticism started ramping up again Monday afternoon. Within a couple hours of reports that charges wouldn't be filed against Karr, Tracey said he already was hearing flak.

He said he's prepared for the grief he'll take from pundits and talk radio hosts who have been bashing him all along.

"What's new?" he said. "It's nothing new."

Asked about KHOW radio talk-show host Peter Boyles, who has skewered Tracey almost daily since news of the Karr arrest, Tracey said, "Boyles is professionally and emotionally invested in the Ramseys being guilty. There's nothing you can do about that. Nothing."

Tracey said it's unfortunate that the news might lead some to point again to the Ramseys, despite the fact that Lacy doesn't consider anyone in the family a suspect, and that a federal judge has ruled that the evidence points more clearly toward an intruder committing the crime.

"You've still go to look at where the evidence leads, and it seems to me the evidence still leads in the direction" of an intruder as the murderer. "That doesn't change" with the exoneration of Karr, he said.

A book about the case and the media's coverage of it - already the subject of three documentaries Tracey has produced - is still part of his plans, he said, despite Karr's elimination as a suspect.

"I think it's important for me to write the book. I've written a lot already," he said. "That's what (professors) are supposed to do."

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