An Outside Observer Gets Inside Ramsey Case

As the JonBenet Ramsey murder investigation unfolded in his adopted hometown, University of Colorado journalism professor Michael Tracey became convinced of two things: This would allow him to examine what’s wrong with American journalism. And someone needed to come to the defense of the girl’s parents, who were fingered as suspects.

Today, after producing three TV documentaries on the subject, the British-born academic finds himself not just an observer of the case, but a key player. He said he carried on an e-mail correspondence for four years with a person believed to be John Mark Karr, who was arrested this week in the 1996 slaying of the 6-year-old girl.

It wasn’t until May that the e-mails concerned Tracey enough to go to investigators. At that point, they traced the e-mails and began hunting in earnest for Karr. This week, they found the 41-year-old teacher in Bangkok, Thailand.

Tracey said he was disturbed by mistakes made by Boulder police. In an interview in his cluttered college office Friday, he picked up a stack of lurid crime scene photos that he keeps on his desk, pointing out injuries to JonBenet’s body that contradicted earlier police theories implicating her mother, father or brother.

Tracey said he had studied the case as part of an academic effort to show his students and ultimately the American public that the story -- however tragic and gruesome -- was an overplayed news item.

“I don’t regard JonBenet’s murder as an important story,” said Tracey, 58. “It raises questions about what the role of journalism is in a democratic culture.”

The Rocky Mountain News recently published some of the e-mails, which were confirmed as legitimate by The Times. The printed excerpts do not incriminate Karr in the killing, but they may give insight into Karr’s troubled personality.

At one point, Tracey asked Karr to elaborate on an earlier comment Karr had made, in which he said his mother raised him as if he were a girl.

“Michael, I will not discuss my sexuality as if it is a psychological disorder from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. In my case, I disagree with that totally, and if this is to be the way we progress in discussing it, I might as well stop while I am ahead.

“On the other hand, if you would like to learn something about my sexuality on an intellectual, nonjudgmental, nontraditional and nonpsychological way, I would love to share. It would help you understand a lot about my connection with JonBenet and possibly about the case. Shall we?”

The exchange has all the characteristics of a “mentally unstable” person who wants to keep a conversation going and stay as close as possible to a crime, whether or not he committed it, said Brent Turvey, a forensic scientist and author of “Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis.”

“He has people involved in the case doing what he wants them to do,” he said.

In one part of the e-mail, written in December, Karr tells the journalism professor he wants him to go to the crime scene and recite a verse that he sent, extolling his love for JonBenet.

“I pray that you can hear my voice calling out to you from my darkness, this darkness that now separates us,” it read in part.

The e-mails, coupled with Karr’s marriage at 19 to a 13-year-old and charges of possessing child pornography, are the trademarks of a deeply troubled man, said Dr. Janet I. Warren, associate director of the Institute of Law, Psychiatry and Public Policy at the University of Virginia.

“It doesn’t mean he is the murderer,” but he has become “obsessively connected to the details of the offense,” Warren concluded after examining the e-mails at The Times’ request.

Oliver Gray, who has long investigated the case on behalf of the Ramseys, said he had seen many of the e-mails and did not believe that any highly incriminating e-mail would be released before Karr is charged.

For his part, Tracey is refusing to discuss the contents of the e-mails because he said Karr deserved fair treatment, not a trial in the media. “The more serious the crime,” Tracey said, “the more you need these kinds of protections.”

Experts agreed that Tracey’s involvement in the case makes for another bizarre twist in the decade-long story.

Anthony Leffert, a Denver attorney and former federal prosecutor, said it was “very unusual” for the course of a criminal investigation to be altered by the work of an unofficial sleuth -- especially one who was openly partial to people who had been suspects in the case.

But he said investigators were obliged to check out all information that seemed valid, regardless of the source. He also said that if the case goes to trial -- and Karr’s attorney argues that his confession was false -- the defense could use the source of the information to undermine the prosecution’s case.

Scott Robinson, a Denver defense attorney and legal analyst, disagreed. “I don’t think Tracey’s role is something the defense could effectively use,” he said. “To use an analogy, he’s a little like an electrical wire -- he passes a current from point A to point B. But as far as we know he didn’t change the content of the letters.... He’s just a courier unless they can show there’s some mistake that took place along the way -- something that he changed or withheld, some kind of hanky-panky.”

Karen Steinhauser, a University of Denver adjunct professor and former prosecutor, said the Boulder district attorney’s office needed to be careful about Tracey’s biases.

“This all gets initiated through these e-mails from [a person] trying to put forward the theory that there was an intruder,” she said.

Since shortly after Dec. 26, 1996, when JonBenet was found dead in the basement of her home, the investigation has been a battle fought by those who believe the crime was committed by an intruder and others who blame the family.

Her mother, Patsy, said she had found a ransom note demanding $118,000 for her daughter.

At one point, prosecutors were ready to indict JonBenet’s father, John Ramsey, but pulled back when they realized their lack of DNA evidence against him would doom the prosecution, Tracey said.