Karr had offered to plead

He asked, 'How will you live with yourself when I kill a little girl?'

Charlie Brennan, Rocky Mountain News

Published September 9, 2006 at midnight

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John Mark Karr told a Boulder investigator when he was still in Thailand that he would agree to plead guilty to second-degree murder in the JonBenet Ramsey case.

"If you don't let me plead guilty, how will you feel? How will you live with yourself when I kill a little girl?" Karr allegedly said.

That is among numerous details revealed Friday by KHOW- AM (630) radio show hosts Dan Caplis and Craig Silverman, from a document they obtained from Boulder District Attorney Mary Lacy's office in response to two open-records requests.

Caplis made the requests Sept. 1, four days after the district attorney announced that Karr, arrested Aug. 15 in Bangkok for investigation in JonBenet's 1996 murder, would not be charged.

Lacy's decision came after the determination that Karr's DNA did not match the DNA recovered from JonBenet's underwear.

The document provided to KHOW by Lacy's office Friday - an affidavit for the search warrant that secured Karr's DNA sample - fell far short of all that Caplis requested. But it did reveal that:

• Karr claimed to have been in Hamilton, Ala., with his wife on Christmas 1996, the day JonBenet was killed. But he stated, "I could have flown on a Learjet to Colorado."

• Karr claimed he arrived at the unusual sum in the Ramsey ransom note, $118,000, by combining $100,000 with what he incorrectly believed to be the age of consent, 18.

• Karr drew a diagram of the exterior and interior of the Ramsey home that was largely accurate, but he put the driveway in the wrong place.

Those and other details were shared by Karr with Boulder district attorney's investigator Mark Spray during two interviews at the Bangkok Detention Facility after he was taken into custody by Thai authorities.

It was in the second interview, according to the affidavit, that Karr stated, "I want to plead guilty to second-degree murder. Get Mary Lacy on the phone right now.

"I don't want to die," Karr added, according to the affidavit. "This wasn't a killing after deliberation, it was an accident. I don't want the death penalty, but I'll plead guilty to second-degree murder."

Caplis said Friday that he believes details such as Karr's statement about his whereabouts the day of the murder, his explanation for the ransom demand and his imprecise placement of the Ramsey driveway should have been seen by Lacy as signs that she had the wrong man.

"The statements Karr made to investigators were a screaming red flag that he was not the killer but, instead, a publicity-seeking kook," Caplis said.

Lacy has accepted full responsibility for the decision to bring Karr to Boulder from Thailand and has offered no apologies for her decision.

Karr, 41, remained at the Boulder County Jail on Friday, pending extradition to Sonoma County, Calif., where he is wanted on child-pornography charges dating back to 2001.

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