Just as before, law enforcement appeared overeager and bumbling. Just as before, a hyperactive press went into overdrive, eager to pronounce guilt. And just as before, a nation of voyeurs proved only too ready to play pundit.
It has been almost a decade since the murder of JonBenet Ram-sey, but it has taken less than two weeks of fevered -- and apparently pointless -- speculation to show how little things have changed.
That seemed clear on Monday when prosecutors in Boulder, Colo-rado, abruptly dropped their case against John Mark Karr -- a 41-year-old itinerant teacher who insisted he had strangled the six-year-old beauty queen at her home on Dec. 26, 1996 -- saying DNA tests failed to put him at the crime scene.
"Because no evidence has developed, other than his own repeated admissions ... the people would not be able to establish that Mr. Karr committed this crime despite his repeated insistence that he did," district attorney Mary Lacy said in court papers.
The admission by prosecutors that they had the wrong man might have seemed shocking if this had been any other case. But in the context of the Ramsey case -- an investigation beset from its earliest stages by gross misjudgments by investigators -- it struck many observers as not only expected, but also grimly fitting.
"If there's a single mistake they haven't made, I'm not sure what it is," said Philip Jenkins, a professor of history at Pennsylvania State University who has written on both child molestation and serial murder. "It fits, but it makes the existing record worse."
The decision to drop the charges against Karr completes a 12-day arc that echoed many of the themes that have characterized the case. It was made all the more ironic because Karr's arrest earlier this month came as the nation appeared almost to have forgotten the case.
Any hope of that ended on Aug. 16, when police in Thailand arrested Karr and brought him before reporters, where he professed his guilt, saying he had been with JonBenet at the time of her death.
Pressed, he would not, or could not, describe just what had happened. But there was enough about his persona -- a creepy narrative that included Karr's flight from child pornography charges in California -- to whip the media and the public into a frenzy.
"Solved!," the Daily News of New York proclaimed across its front page on the morning after Karr's arrest. Its competitor, the New York Post, described Karr as a "pasty-faced, peripatetic kiddie-porn collector."
The Associated Press and other news organizations placed teams of journalists on Karr's flight from Bangkok to the US and chronicled his dining experience: champagne, fried king prawns and roast duck.
Coverage of the case -- once again featuring photos of the little princess dressed for pageant competition, now alongside photos of a gaunt and sallow Karr -- flooded back onto cable TV.
For Clay Calvert, it offered a reminder of a 2001 interview he and a colleague had conducted with John and Patsy Ramsey, JonBenet's parents, for an article about press coverage of the case.
"One of the big things she said when we interviewed her is that there shouldn't be such a rush to judgment. She really focused on the media's scoop mentality, of getting the news first and the truth be damned," said Calvert, a professor of communications and law at Penn State. "That's the irony now -- that the media didn't go slow this time around and look what's happened."
Crowds in Bangladesh are flocking to snap photographs with an unlikely social media star — an albino buffalo with flowing blond hair nicknamed “Donald Trump” that is due to be sacrificed within days. Owner Zia Uddin Mridha, 38, said his brother named the 700kg bull over its flowing helmet of hair resembling the signature look of the US president. “My younger brother picked this name because of the buffalo’s extraordinary hair,” he said at his farm in Narayanganj, just outside the capital, Dhaka. Mridha said that a constant stream of curious visitors — social media fans, onlookers and children — have come throughout
It began as a satirical online project. Now millions of young people in India are flocking to it as an outlet for their frustration. A parody political party called the Cockroach Janta Party, with the insect as its symbol, has exploded across India’s social media by turning absurdist humor into protest. Memes and short videos mocking corruption, joblessness and political dysfunction have flooded social media sites, where millions of users are embracing the cockroach — known for its ability to survive harsh conditions — as a tongue-in-cheek symbol of endurance. The online movement’s rise has been unusually rapid. The Cockroach Janta Party (CJP)
HOTTER: While Indians are accustomed to summer heat, climate change has caused northwestern India to warm faster than other parts of the country, an academic said Roads and markets have emptied during afternoons and some farmers have switched to nighttime work to avoid scorching temperatures as a heat wave grips large parts of India. The India Meteorological Department forecast maximum temperatures for yesterday of about 45°C in the capital, New Delhi, where authorities have opened temporary “cooling zones” to help people cope. The weather department warned that conditions would likely persist across several northern regions in the coming days, with temperatures staying well above seasonal averages. Authorities urged people to stay indoors during the hottest hours and take precautions against heat-related illnesses. India declares a heat wave whenever maximum temperatures
BIGGER ROLE: Beijing has said it maintains an impartial stance on the war in Ukraine, but by training Russian troops, China is far more involved than previously known China’s armed forces secretly trained about 200 Russian military personnel in China late last year, and some have since returned to fight in Ukraine, according to three European intelligence agencies and documents seen by Reuters. While China and Russia have held a number of joint military exercises since Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Beijing has repeatedly said that it is neutral in the conflict and presents itself as a peace mediator. The covert training sessions, which predominantly focused on the use of drones, were outlined in a dual-language Russian-Chinese agreement signed by senior Russian and Chinese officers in Beijing on
RSS