It's tough to verify some aspects of suspect's life
As investigators puzzle over the life and mind of John Mark Karr, who has confessed to the killing of JonBenet Ramsey, they must unravel an elaborate and hazy narrative woven in part by Karr himself, much of it constructed around a clear and chilling theme — a yearning to be close to children.
Karr is a man who, while wanted as a fugitive on child-pornography charges, sought to impress prospective employers with a record of accomplishment preparing young lives "for a successful future."
He is a man who twice married teenagers — one just 13 at the time. Both would later claim they had been coerced.
And he is the man who confided to family members that he was deeply troubled by the slaying of the Colorado 6-year-old. He now claims to have loved and sexually assaulted her.
It's difficult to know how much to believe about the life Karr says he has led since JonBenet was found strangled and beaten a decade ago in the basement of her family's home.
"I awoke the children in the morning and gave them breakfast," Karr wrote in one online résumé, recounting life as a private teacher and caregiver for three girls in Germany, ages 7, 11 and 12. "At day's end, I made sure the children had their evening bath, then put them to bed and read to them before they went to sleep."
Karr, who arrived in Thailand earlier this year looking for work as a teacher, claims to have spent years skipping from job to job, country to country, nearly all the time working with children. Details proved difficult to pin down Thursday.
School officials in Alabama and California confirmed that he worked in both states as a substitute teacher in the latter half of the 1990s and in 2001.
"He just seemed like somebody who thought he wanted to be a teacher," said Bob Raines, superintendent and principal at Wilson Elementary School, in one of the four districts near Petaluma, Calif., where Karr worked. "After a few days, I could tell it just wasn't for him."
Former wife speaks
One of Karr's former wives, Lara Karr, told KGO-TV in California that her ex-husband studied the cases of Ramsey and Polly Klaas, who was abducted from her Petaluma home and slain in 1993.
Lara Karr said that she was with her former husband in Alabama at the time of JonBenet's killing and that she does not believe he was involved in the homicide.
Some experts raised questions Thursday about Karr's arrest, noting that some details of his confession seem out of line with circumstances of the case.
But it is not easy to establish his whereabouts at any point in recent years.
Karr is remembered in his hometown of Hamilton, Ala., as a smart kid, one who played in the high school band.
"You couldn't help but like John. He always had something going on," said Marion County School Superintendent Bravell Jackson, who taught Karr in elementary school.
His work in schools appears to have begun in 1996, the year JonBenet was killed. According to his online résumé, that was the start of a five-year stint teaching in "some of the most prestigious schools in the United States. ... "
But that is not the way people and court paperwork in Marion County recall it.
Married 13-year-old
In 1984, when Karr was 19, he married a local girl, Quientana Shotts, who was 13 at the time, court records show. Shotts filed for an annulment the following year, complaining that she was "fearful for her life and safety."
In 1989, Karr remarried, this time to Lara Knutson, who was 16.
Contrary to his description of a life in the classroom, Karr's sole Alabama experience was being hired as a substitute teacher in 1996. It ended after school officials received complaints about Karr saying things "that didn't need to be said in an elementary class," Jackson said. He declined to elaborate.
Afterward Karr sold used cars and was known in the Alabama town for his own flashy car: a red DeLorean.
Karr moved his family to California in 2000 and in 2001 found work as a substitute teacher. But that came to an end when Karr, then 36, was arrested on five misdemeanor counts of possession of child pornography, according to the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office.
His wife filed for divorce.
In the affidavit filed with her divorce petition, Lara Karr 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."
In December 2001, a warrant was issued for Karr's arrest after he violated the terms of his release. By that time, according to Karr's résumés, he was working with children overseas. He arrived in Bangkok earlier this year and found work teaching second grade, a job he started Tuesday.