JonBenet suspect 'treated like VIP'

LOS ANGELES - The schoolteacher suspected in the 1996 murder of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey was being held in Los Angeles yesterday pending extradition to Colorado for questioning in the 10-year-old unsolved case.

John Mark Karr, 41, landed in California at 9.30pm (5.30pm Mon NZT) Sunday after travelling for 15 hours in business class from Bangkok, Thailand, with US law enforcement officials.

Karr sipped champagne, ate heartily and chatted calmly to officials accompanying him on the Thai Airways flight, according to Fox News.

"He was treated like a VIP," Sanjay Chowdhury, a passenger who sat in front of Karr, told Reuters upon landing. "He was actually quiet."

Another passenger, Kathryn Sorrells, said Karr was calm and relaxed during the flight.

US officials turned Karr over to Los Angeles police, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a statement.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department said it would detain him for up to 48 hours pending an extradition hearing to send him to Boulder, Colorado, where the murder occurred.

Karr was arrested in Bangkok last week on suspicion of first-degree murder, kidnapping and child sexual assault. He told reporters he had been with the 6-year-old when she died at Christmas a decade ago but that her death was an accident.

Wearing a short-sleeved red shirt and dark tie, Karr looked composed but nervous when he arrived at the Bangkok airport escorted by Thai police. He did not answer questions fired by the crowd of journalists who thronged around him.

In Los Angeles, he was led off the plane outside the view of the media.

It was not clear when he would be flown on to Colorado, where investigators were waiting to question him. Karr said last week he loved JonBenet and answered "no" when asked whether he was innocent.

Some of his statements were at odds with details of the crime, leading some to believe he may not have been involved in JonBenet's murder.

The arrest was a surprise development in a case that has drawn intense media coverage focussing on JonBenet's success in child beauty pageants, her family's wealth and mysterious details of the murder, including the bizarre ransom note.

JonBenet was found December 26, 1996, in the basement of her home in Boulder, strangled with a garrotte made from a stick and cord and her skull fractured.

Her father discovered her body hours after the girl's mother stumbled on three-page letter claiming she had been kidnapped for a US$118,000 ransom.

- REUTERS