Boulder Columnist Played Key Role in JonBenet Arrest

By: E&P Staff After 10 years of speculation surrounding the brutal slaying of JonBenet Ramsey, the event that eventually led to the first arrest in the case came down to a chance encounter between a sports writer from Boulder, Colo. -- the scene of that murder -- and a drifter outside a bookstore in Paris.

The writer said today on MSNBC that he got the strong impression from the conversation that the alleged killer had been to Boulder. This could be significant, as many have suggested that there is no proof of this.

Michael Sandrock, a 48-year-old author, journalist for the Daily Camera in Boulder and runner, said he bumped into John Mark Karr outside a bookshop called Shakespeare and Company in June, 2002. They struck up a conversation.

It put in motion a sequence of events that would lead to Karr's 4-year e-mail exchange with Sandrock's friend, University of Colorado professor Michael Tracey. The correspondence culminated in Tracey turning over a suspicious passage to prosecutors in May and ultimately Karr's arrest in Thailand this week.

Karr, 41, was escorted to Bangkok's international airport Sunday for a flight to the United States. He then flew to Los Angeles and is to end his journey in Boulder, where he faces charges of first-degree murder, kidnapping and child sexual assault.

Sandrock said on MSNBC today that Karr seemed familiar with Boulder, had even accurately described the newspaper building as "brick," and mentioned other landmarks. He said he did not ask Karr if he had been to Boulder but it certainly seemed that way from their conversations.

Karr's family members, and others, have suggested that he has never been to Boulder.

Sandrock is a longtime sports journalist and has written several books on running. He writes a weekly column for the Daily Camera called "On Running." He?s a two-time winner of the Colorado Press Association Best Sports Story of the Year. According to an online bio, he was the founder of the "Shoes for Africa" project where runners donate new and used running shoes and clothes for underprivileged athletes in several countries, including the United States.

Karr seemed like a normal fellow in 2002, friendly and well-groomed, Sandrock said. But he was obsessed about who killed 6-year-old JonBenet at her parents' home in Boulder six years earlier, Sandrock said.

"I said I worked for the Daily Camera in Boulder and John Karr got real interested. ... I didn't think it was real strange at that time because so many people ask about the Ramsey case," he said Saturday.

Karr seemed to know a lot about Boulder, and Sandrock said he assumed Karr had visited.

But something was strange about the man Sandrock knew only as "John." Sandrock said the man almost always wanted to talk about JonBenet during the few days they knew each other, and he seemed to know every detail and fixate on the lurid death of the child beauty queen - who was strangled and had a fractured skull.

"I just started getting a real uncomfortable feeling, because it was just too much," he said.

Sandrock said Karr's interest intensified when he learned Sandrock was friends with Tracey, who produced three documentaries on the case and believed JonBenet's parents, John and Patsy, were unfairly suspected for a slaying he believed should be blamed on an intruder.

As the conversations intensified, Karr seemed to be holding back, smiling knowingly as he prodded Sandrock to speculate on who had done it.

"I said something about the intruder, and he kind of smiled a little bit," he said. "I always had a feeling if I had pursued it more, he was ready to tell me something. He needed to definitely talk to someone."

Back home in Boulder a month later, Sandrock found an e-mail from Karr waiting for him. And then another, asking to be put in contact with Tracey. Sandrock forwarded the messages to Tracey, along with a warning of Karr's intensity.

Years of messages continued back and forth. Sandrock said he gathered Karr, who seemed well-educated and intelligent, had "some kind of chess game going on" with Tracey.

When he saw Karr's picture this week and learned of the arrest, Sandrock said he wasn't shocked.

Meanwhile, Tracey told the Daily Camera for a story published on Sunday that he is finishing a book on the murder but feels there is too much attention on the case right now. "The media coverage of these kinds of things is overdone," he said. "It's excessive and unfair." He mentioned the number 804 -- children under 12 who were killed the same year that JonBenet was murdered.

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Portions of this article came from The Associated Press.