USA: JonBenet suspect John Mark Karr arrives in US from Thailand

The American schoolteacher suspected of murdering child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey arrived on Sunday night (August 20, 2006) in the United States, where he will face questioning about the 1996 killing. John Mark Karr, 41, landed in Los Angeles at around 9:30 p.m. (0430 GMT) after travelling for 15 hours in business class from Bangkok, Thailand, with U.S. law enforcement officials. Passengers from Thai Airways flight 794 described the trip from Bangkok to Los Angeles on Sunday for the most part as uneventful. "When we landed there was a bit of a scrum at the door and we saw the police there," explained passenger Stephen Dorf of Australia. "After that it was fine, we just came out as normal, no problems," he added. Another passenger, Dan Shiff of Montreal, Canada, said Karr was calm and relaxed during the flight. "He was very calm, he was very collected, he didn't seem to be caught up in anything. But, when you folks, the press, was all over him with the camera's during flight when he gave them maybe a two-minute photo op, he looked very stressed out by the lights," said Shiff, who sat just a few seats away from Karr. U.S. officials accompanying Karr turned him over to Los Angeles police, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement. The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said it would detain him for up to 48 hours pending an extradition hearing before he would be sent to Boulder, Colorado, where the murder occurred. Karr was arrested in Bangkok on Wednesday on suspicion of first-degree murder, kidnapping and child sexual assault. He told reporters he had been with the 6-year-old when she died at Christmas a decade ago but that her death was an accident. Wearing a short-sleeved red shirt and dark tie, Karr looked composed but nervous when he arrived at the Bangkok airport escorted by Thai police. He did not answer questions fired by the crowd of journalists who thronged around him. In Los Angeles, he was led off the plane outside the view of the media. It was not clear exactly when he would be flown on to Colorado, where investigators were waiting to question him. Karr said last week he loved JonBenet and answered "no" when asked whether he was innocent. Some of his statements were at odds with details of the crime, leading some to believe he may not have been involved in JonBenet's murder. The arrest was a surprise development in a case that has drawn intense media coverage focusing on JonBenet's success in child beauty pageants, her family's wealth and mysterious details of the murder, including the bizarre ransom note. JonBenet was found December 26, 1996, in the basement of her home in Boulder, strangled with a garrotte made from a stick and cord and her skull fractured.

ITN Source | August 21, 2006

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