Carlos and Jason Sanchez, John Mark Karr 2007

Do you ever find yourself wincing and contorting your face when you are reading something really fucked up? Even if no one else is around, you just can’t help but to make an “ewww” face, if only for yourself? I sported such a grimace reading today about the new scandal John Mark Karr has gotten himself herself into.

Where to start with this one? You remember who Karr is, right? Karr was the pedophile weirdo the world first saw in handcuffs being perp-walked through an airport in Thailand in 2006. He falsely confessed to a documentary filmmaker that he was the killer of JonBenet Ramsey, the authorities stepped in, arrested him, deported him back to the US and for about a week, everywhere you turned this dude was on television confessing to a crime that he did not commit. (He was even a guest on Larry King Live). The DNA evidence proved Karr didn’t do it. So why the confession?

It was surmised by many that he was so infatuated with the dead child beauty queen that he felt the need to insert himself into her story. Another theory was that Karr sought to avoid arrest in Thailand, where he was alleged to have exercised his sexual impulses for minors and faced major jail time, and the confession was a ploy to be extradited back to the US where he stood a better chance of escaping prison. Although Karr had clearly made false statements to the police, all charges were dropped (including the kiddie porn charges, which were dropped because his old computer—the evidence—was thrown out accidentally).  On the matter of the false confession, Karr walked because although investigators knew for certain that he had nothing to do with JonBenet’s death, he was convinced—had convinced himself—that he had. Being crazy is not a crime. The guy is deeply troubled, almost assuredly a nonce—although material proof of him acting out on it is lacking—yet there was nothing they could really do about it without evidence he had committed a crime.

But making death threats and cyber-stalking are crimes and this is why Karr, who’s allegedly had a sex change, is back in the news.

From Fox News:

The accusation this time is that Karr, 46, a reputed pedophile who married a 13-year-old and later a 16-year-old in the 1980s, has been trying to create a cult of JonBenet Ramsey lookalikes he is calling “the Immaculates” — blond girls as young as 4 years old with small feet — and has been threatening harm to one of the girls, whom he used to recruit others and who escaped from his influence.

The news of the cult and the fresh accusations come from 19-year-old Samantha Spiegel, who says she met Karr when she was 9 and he was a teacher’s aide at the elite Convent of the Sacred Heart Catholic School in San Francisco, where he briefly taught her fourth-grade class.

Spiegel says they reconnected two years ago after she saw Karr on television at a court hearing and contacted him. That began an intense relationship over the Web that involved thousands of e-mails, which she says convinced her she was special to him and was destined to recruit his “Immaculates.”

When Karr proposed to her and she accepted, Spiegel’s parents intervened and sent her to a rehabilitation facility for 18 months to break her connection with him. But for two years, she says, Karr “demanded” that she try to recruit young girls into his cult. She says that when she emerged from treatment, Karr — now Reich — found her and, failing to reconnect, began a campaign of threats.

“He said if I got in the way of him and his little girls, he would have me hunted down and killed,” Spiegel said at a hearing in San Francisco last month at which she got a restraining order against him.

—snip—

The search for Karr has painted a disturbing picture that chillingly mirrors that of cult killer Charles Manson. Sax says the investigation so far has revealed that “Reich” has as many as 30 “minions” — or followers — who provide him with food, money and computers so that he can travel, survive, communicate with them and remain a phantom. She says those “minions” are also his recruiters for “the Immaculates.”

Karr reportedly now goes by the name “Alexis Valoran Reich.” It’s not certain that Karr actually had a sex change and it might be a ruse to throw people off his/her trail. Karr is said to rely on Craig’s List for locating short term accommodation and to eat at soup kitchens. There is a website, almost certainly kept by Karr (who writes of himself in the third person!) called Lei Sussurra (Latin for “I murmur”) which also features messages from “Daxis” another of Karr’s alter egos.

The following is the text of a letter from Karr received by Ed Walsh, a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner:

I was warned of the impending reports almost a month prior. In a
letter of cease and desist, I pleaded with concerned parties of the
media and the individuals who reported to them, to respect my
privacy. My request was cast to no avail. Instead, the media pulled
in their most powerful legal teams to make sure that a private
citizen should be exposed. I learned quickly that I am afforded no
right to privacy that is assured by the U.S. constitution to all
other Americans. Profit has prevailed and there were those who made money - let there be no doubt of that.

To answer whether I am female now, I say as did Saul who also
changed his name. As Paul, he said, “I have become all things to
all men so that, by all possible means, I might save some.” 1
Corinthians 9:22.

I am the subject of a witch hunt that dragged me from my private
life to display me to the world like some strange oddity stuck
through with a straight pin in my enemies’ collection. I was hunted
down to be exposed as a witch, moreover, to be destroyed as one.

Alexis

For an absolutely jaw-dropping look into this story, The Daily Beast asked Diane Dimond, the woman who did the best of the Michael Jackson kiddie-fiddling exposes to investigate what was going on with Karr. It’s an absolutely wild ride, a must read.

Horrifying “Little Girl Sex Cult” (Daily Beast)