While most seem to be railing on the media for jumping all over what is now an apparently false confession by John Mark Karr in the JonBenet Ramsey case, Phil Rosenthal of the Chicago Tribune says that the media doesn’t owe anyone an apology, and reminds people how we got into this mess in the first place:

True, the media went overboard with the rerunning of the kiddie pageant photos and videos that made the story such a sensation from the start. But, no matter what readers and viewers claim about being repulsed, bored or ambivalent, the media make their money by responding to what the public is interested in, as well as what’s in the public interest.

Let’s not forget, it was also the media that reported complications such as Karr’s ex-wife saying the guy was nowhere near Boulder, Colo., on the night of the crime and how DNA tests would be needed to sew up the case. Read the rest… (registration required)

If you have not heard already, the Boulder, CO prosecutor has decided to not press charges against John Mark Karr because his DNA didn’t match that found at the murder scene of Jon Benet Ramsey. Even if John Mark Karr didn’t kill Jon Benet, he’s a gi-normous freak of nature. I would say clever, because he nabbed a free vacation from hell, back to Sunny California and then onto beautiful Boulder, Colorado (too bad it’s not quite skiing season yet, he could have taken in a few slopes in between fantasizing about little girls).

I’ll admit, I pretty much fell for it at first. He seemed just freaky enough, yet there was somethin’ shifty within his shifty eyes. He just seemed so nonchalant about the whole thing and then you throw in his desire to have a sex change, this guy was obviously craving some negative attention.

So, great. The only person (or persons) jerkier than John Mark Karr are the Boulder prosecutors. And, to be even jerkier than the freak that went to Thailand and turned out to be so incredibly creepy that the police of pedophile paradise thought him to be too slim shady is sayin’ somethin’!

(Hmm…what can I confess to to get a free trip, half-way around the world and travel in business class? I hear Aruba is nice this time of year.)

So now John Mark Karr is sitting pretty in the United States when he should have been locked up in Thailand. The poor Ramsey family. I’m still convinced they didn’t do it, but they definitely are victims of some bad-ass karma, which is the understatement of the century.

From the New York Times:

Ramsey Suspect Won’t Be Charged in Killing 
 
By KIRK JOHNSON and MARIA NEWMAN
Published: August 28, 2006
BOULDER, Colo., Aug. 28 — The district attorney’s office in Boulder, Colo., decided today not to file criminal charges against John Mark Karr in the killing of the child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey because his DNA did not match the evidence found at the scene of her death 10 years ago.

Mr. Karr had been scheduled to make his first court appearance in Boulder this afternoon after he was arrested in Thailand on Aug. 16 and extradited last week to Colorado, by way of Los Angeles. He had not been charged in the killing.

That hearing was canceled, and the Boulder County district attorney, Mary Lacy, said this afternoon that the case against Mr. Karr had been dropped “because no evidence has developed other than his own repeated admission to place Mr. Karr at the scene of the crime and in particular because his DNA does not match that found in the victim’s blood in her underwear.” Read the rest…