Restraining order issued against onetime JonBenet suspect for alleged threats against woman
By APThursday, May 27, 2010
Woman seeks order against onetime JonBenet suspect
SAN FRANCISCO — A 19-year-old woman has requested a temporary restraining order against the man who once falsely claimed to have murdered JonBenet Ramsey in 1996.
San Francisco Court Commissioner William Gargano issued the order against John Mark Karr on April 19, on behalf of Samantha Spiegel, 19.
Spiegel claimed that Karr, who now goes by the name Alexis Valoran Reich, made what was described as “ongoing death threats” and “threats of sexual exploitation to children” in e-mails.
“I’m concerned for my safety: he knows where I sleep, where I go to school, what I look like,” Spiegel wrote in her request for the restraining order. “(He) has seriously threatened to hunt me down and kill me by any means necessary.”
In issuing the order, Gargano determined the threats were credible.
According to television interviews, Spiegel met Karr when she was 9 and he worked at the school she attended in San Francisco. The two began communicating in video chats, e-mails and instant messages, Spiegel said.
Her lawyer, Robin Sax, said the court has been unable to serve Karr with the order because they cannot find him. She said Karr was last seen in Seattle.
Spiegel said in court papers that authorities would have a hard time finding Karr.
“I am not absolutely sure of his employment, his location, and (he) is, to the best of my knowledge, traveling and indigent,” she wrote.
Karr did not return e-mails from The Associated Press that were sent to addresses that Sax said belonged to Karr.
A San Francisco police spokesman said he could neither confirm nor deny that an investigation into the alleged criminal threats was being conducted. The district attorney’s office said it had not been presented with a case against Karr.
Karr drew international attention in 2006 with his arrest in Thailand, where he made bizarre, detailed confessions in the death of 6-year-old child beauty queen JonBenet. He claimed he was with JonBenet when she died, but DNA tests failed to put him at the crime scene.
