John Mark Karr is likely to be released, all charges dropped, despite having a computer filled with child pornography and having confessed to being involved in the death of JonBenet Ramsey.
Why?
Police incompetence for the most part, along with the administration of justice concerned more with media optics than the law.
If you need a refresher, read the archived posts. Karr is likely to be freed because authorities rushed him out of Thailand where he was facing charges before waiting for a simple DNA test to confirm he had any role in the JonBenet Ramsey murder, a role he claimed to have in a fabricated confession. Back in America, the lesser charges of possession of child pornography are likely to be dismissed because the sheriff's department has lost the evidence, and then lied about it.
This reminds me of two other famous cases -- Marc Dutroux and Karla Homolka.
Marc Dutroux is Europe's most infamous pedophile. He kidnapped, tortured, and sexually abused 6 girls. Four died as a result. And he got away with it for years, despite police interest in him, and a previous conviction for sex crimes:
In February 1986, Dutroux and [girlfriend Michelle] Martin were arrested for abducting and raping five young girls. In April 1989 he was sentenced to thirteen and a half years in prison; Martin received a sentence of five years. Showing good behaviour in prison, he was released on parole in April 1992, after having served slightly more than three years. Upon releasing Dutroux, the parole board received a warning letter written by his own mother to the prison director.
After his release, he was able to convince a psychiatrist that he was disabled, resulting in a government pension. He also received sleeping pills and sedatives from the doctor, which he would later use to quiet the abducted girls.
He came to own seven houses, most of them vacant, and he used three of them to torture the girls he kidnapped. In his house in Marcinelle near Charleroi (Hainaut), where he lived most of the time, he started to construct a concealed dungeon in the basement. Hidden behind a massive concrete door disguised as a shelf, the cell was 2.15 metres (7 feet) long, less than a meter (3 feet) wide and 1.64 metres (5.38 feet) high.
I'll skip the details. But despite police efforts, Dutroux was able to continue for years:
Authorities were criticised for various aspects of the case. Perhaps most notably, police searched Dutroux's house on December 13, 1995 and again on December 19, 1995 in relation to his car theft charge. During this time, Julie Lejeune and Melissa Russo were still alive in the basement dungeon, but they were not found. Since the search was unrelated to kidnapping charges, police searching the house had no dogs or specialised equipment that may have discovered the girls' presence. However, one officer heard children crying.
Several early hints as to Dutroux's intentions were not properly followed-up. Dutroux had offered money to a police informer for providing girls, and told him that he was constructing a cell in his basement. His mother also wrote a second letter to police, claiming that he held girls captive in his houses.
There was widespread anger and frustration among Belgians due to police errors and the general slowness of the investigation. This anger culminated when the popular investigative judge in charge of the case was dismissed after having participated in a fund raising dinner by the girls' parents. His dismissal resulted in a massive protest march (the "White March") of 300,000 people on the capital, Brussels, in October 1996, in which demands were made for reforms of Belgium's police and justice system.
A 17-month investigation by a parliamentary commission into the Dutroux affair produced a report in February 1998. The commission found that while Dutroux did not have accomplices in high positions of police and justice system, as he continued to claim, he profited from corruption, sloppiness and incompetence.
Of course, the parallels are only the broadest possible sense. Karr, unlike Dutroux, has never been convicted of a crime. But like Dutroux, he will be able to continue with his activities because of police bungling. In Dutroux's case, the justice system ignored warning signs that allowed him a second chance to prey on young girls. For Karr, the justice system completely botched their first chance at Karr, meaning he too will have a second chance, presumably having learned how to better hide his activities.
As a consequence of the way the Dutroux case was handled, four more young girls died.
We don't know what the future holds for John Mark Karr.
In Canada, we have had the case of Karla Homolka. She served her 12 year sentence, given to her as a result of a plea bargain in which she testified against her husband, rapist and murderer Paul Bernardo.
Karla Leanne Homolka, also known as Karla Leanne Teale, (born May 4, 1970 in Port Credit, Ontario, Canada) is a Canadian serial killer who attracted worldwide media attention when she was convicted of helping her husband, Paul Bernardo, rape and murder teenage girls, including her own sister Tammy Homolka. For her admission of her crimes she was given a plea bargain whereby she escaped the maximum penalty for her crimes. She pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served 12 years in prison. Currently she is unemployed and living in the eastern end of Montreal, Quebec in Canada.
She was seen as a victim, and the plea bargain quickly struck, in part because of political interference from Ontario's socialist government at the time:
One particularly controversial aspect of Homolka's plea deal was the Crown's belief that she was a "compliant victim," the justification of which came largely from an FBI document titled Compliant Victims of the Sexual Sadist. Another was that the provincial political party in power at the time (the Ontario New Democratic Party) influenced the plea bargain process, especially Attorney-General Marion Boyd. Some federal politicians attempted to reopen the plea agreement and throw more light on Boyd's personal involvement during the debate concerning Bill S-3, a proposed bill on plea bargaining.
What was galling was that had the police done their job right, they would have developed the evidence they needed to convict both Bernardo and Homolka:
After more than sixty days of searching the Bernardo home for the videotapes that Bernardo and Homolka recorded, police were only able to find a tape containing Bernardo, Homolka and an unnamed American prostitute, and a very short videotaped segment of Homolka apparently raping an unconscious girl who could not be identified from the segment. The unidentified girl would later be called "Jane Doe" after the discovery of the full tapes in which her identity was revealed to be that of a minor. Her true identity remains covered by the publication ban.
After the expiration of the search warrants, Bernardo provided his attorney, Ken Murray with detailed instructions on where to find the six videotapes that depicted the rapes of Tammy Lyn Homolka, Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy. The tapes were hidden in a pot-light in an upstairs bathroom.
Three monsters, each benefiting from an inexplicable level of police incompetence.
In Belgium. Dutroux is behind bars and will remain their for the rest of his life.
In Canada, Homolka is under strict orders to maintain contact with police, provide a DNA sample, stay away from anyone under the age of 16, and stay away from the families of the victims.
In America, however, it is likely that Karr will walk free with no restrictions whatsoever. Unlike Dutroux and Homolka, no one holding Karr responsible for any assaults or deaths. Thanks to the police, though, all Americans can do is hope that that remains the case.
