09-11-2020, 07:55 PM
I was a graduate student at the University of Colorado, working towards a master’s degree in print journalism in 2004, and that August I signed up for a media-studies class, taught by Tracey, whom I’d heard was one of the program’s most charismatic instructors. I arrived at his classroom on that first day expecting guidance on journalistic ethics, figuring Tracey would take us through the moral quandaries and professional responsibilities wrapped up in benchmark works like All the President’s Men and found in cautionary tales such as Janet Malcolm’s The Journalist and the Murderer. From the murkiness of journalism, I expected, Professor Tracey would reach in and extract for us some clarity. Instead, he immediately led us into his JonBenét house of mirrors, launching into a seemingly endless diatribe about the case. No one had paid any attention to that story in more than five years. Yet, that fall marked the release of Tracey’s third documentary—the Gigax “metaphor.” And unbeknownst to any of us seated before him, Tracey had already struck up a conversation with a guy who called himself “Daxis,” the man who would be unveiled to the world as John Mark Karr, another prime suspect.
The first time Tracey saw live footage of Karr was the same moment the rest of America did. It was on television, during that bizarre, impromptu press conference in Thailand where Karr, then in custody after “confessing” to JonBenét’s murder, feigned surprise that he’d been caught—even as his body language screamed that he loved the attention. “I am so very sorry for what happened to JonBenet,” he said sheepishly, as if he himself were a child. “Her death was an accident.” Then he was swept away in the churning sea of reporters and popping camera flashes.
In the days that followed, as Karr was extradited and made the trek from Thailand to Boulder for the DNA test that would clear him of the crime, the media industry thrived on Karr like he was oxygen. Cable news networks and local talk-radio stations filled their 24-hour schedules with handwriting analysts, speculating whether Karr could have written the ransom note found at the crime scene, and psychologists guessing whether Karr’s past could have driven him to this kind of behavior. Journalists on the plane with him from Thailand gave reports on what Karr ordered for dinner and how many times he used the bathroom. Papers across the country, bumped other, “less important” news stories, like President Bush’s wiretapping program or the Israel/Lebanon conflict, to page two, to make room for this breaking news. Newspaper sales and broadcast news ratings soared.
Tracey met Karr via e-mail, back in April 2002. Writing from an undisclosed foreign country and using the name “D” (later “Daxis”), Karr used a handful of peculiar e-mail addresses, including December1996@hushmail.com. In his early e-mails to Tracey, Daxis wrote that he was interested in the case and admired Tracey’s documentaries. Tracey heard from these whack jobs all the time. But then Daxis hinted he had something to reveal about how JonBenét was killed. Tracey started forwarding the e-mails to Lou Smit, who’d been asked back on the Ramsey case by the new Boulder DA, Mary Lacy.
Because Daxis hadn’t given any concrete information on the murder, nor revealed his name or location, the DA’s office couldn’t do anything. Smit told Tracey to hang in there and keep talking to Daxis, just in case something came up. “Personally, [Karr] was not at the top of my [suspect] list,” Smit says, “but when you have a lead you have to follow it…. If you have a man confessing to a murder, you need to get law enforcement in this.”
During the next three years, Daxis’ e-mails came more frequently, and Daxis, as Tracey puts it, became more “needy.” When Daxis hinted that he might show up at the Ramseys’ vacation home in Michigan, Tracey interpreted it as a threat. With the help of the Ramseys’ attorney, in May 2006, he got these e-mails into the hands of Lacy, who then started her investigation. “We believed we had to look into Mr. Karr when he started stating that it was he who committed the murder,” Lacy wrote in a recent e-mail statement.
Over the course of the next three months, Karr and Tracey e-mailed or telephoned on a daily basis, with Boulder investigators monitoring and sometimes coaching on Tracey what to say. They told him to do anything it took to keep Daxis on the phone so he didn’t disappear, so they could find out who he was. They advised him to draw out Daxis with conversation that excited him until he eventually confessed.
Sensing that the graphic exchanges and the mental chess of it all might be taking a toll on Tracey’s mental health, the DA’s office offered to take him off the case and replace him with an agent. Tracey resisted. “I knew [Daxis] would spot that in a second,” he says. “We were so much in each other’s heads.”
The e-mails between the two men would total about 1,400 pages. There were more than 10 hour-long telephone calls, too. Both are full of contradictions and red flags. Tracey’s critics have accused him of “grooming Karr into confession,” not in pursuit of justice but in chasing fame and book deals. One of the most memorable details from JonBenét’s crime scene was the blanket draped over her body, but in the e-mails it appears that Karr didn’t remember it. After Tracey jogged his memory, saying, “You did cover her with a light coloured blanket,” Karr wrote, “Thank God. I couldn’t quite remember that.”
The morning of Aug. 17, 2006, Boulder DA Mary Lacy held a press conference announcing the arrest of John Mark Karr in Thailand. While her words cautioned the media that this was still an ongoing investigation, there was an air of self-congratulatory backslapping among the Boulder authorities, the media, and Tracey. Wearing a sport coat and an enormous grin for his triumphant moment, the journalism professor gladly fielded questions from the swarming media. Then came the DNA test, the science proving Karr did not kill JonBenét, along with the testimony putting Karr with his relatives the night of JonBenét’s murder.
The first time Tracey saw live footage of Karr was the same moment the rest of America did. It was on television, during that bizarre, impromptu press conference in Thailand where Karr, then in custody after “confessing” to JonBenét’s murder, feigned surprise that he’d been caught—even as his body language screamed that he loved the attention. “I am so very sorry for what happened to JonBenet,” he said sheepishly, as if he himself were a child. “Her death was an accident.” Then he was swept away in the churning sea of reporters and popping camera flashes.
In the days that followed, as Karr was extradited and made the trek from Thailand to Boulder for the DNA test that would clear him of the crime, the media industry thrived on Karr like he was oxygen. Cable news networks and local talk-radio stations filled their 24-hour schedules with handwriting analysts, speculating whether Karr could have written the ransom note found at the crime scene, and psychologists guessing whether Karr’s past could have driven him to this kind of behavior. Journalists on the plane with him from Thailand gave reports on what Karr ordered for dinner and how many times he used the bathroom. Papers across the country, bumped other, “less important” news stories, like President Bush’s wiretapping program or the Israel/Lebanon conflict, to page two, to make room for this breaking news. Newspaper sales and broadcast news ratings soared.
Tracey met Karr via e-mail, back in April 2002. Writing from an undisclosed foreign country and using the name “D” (later “Daxis”), Karr used a handful of peculiar e-mail addresses, including December1996@hushmail.com. In his early e-mails to Tracey, Daxis wrote that he was interested in the case and admired Tracey’s documentaries. Tracey heard from these whack jobs all the time. But then Daxis hinted he had something to reveal about how JonBenét was killed. Tracey started forwarding the e-mails to Lou Smit, who’d been asked back on the Ramsey case by the new Boulder DA, Mary Lacy.
Because Daxis hadn’t given any concrete information on the murder, nor revealed his name or location, the DA’s office couldn’t do anything. Smit told Tracey to hang in there and keep talking to Daxis, just in case something came up. “Personally, [Karr] was not at the top of my [suspect] list,” Smit says, “but when you have a lead you have to follow it…. If you have a man confessing to a murder, you need to get law enforcement in this.”
During the next three years, Daxis’ e-mails came more frequently, and Daxis, as Tracey puts it, became more “needy.” When Daxis hinted that he might show up at the Ramseys’ vacation home in Michigan, Tracey interpreted it as a threat. With the help of the Ramseys’ attorney, in May 2006, he got these e-mails into the hands of Lacy, who then started her investigation. “We believed we had to look into Mr. Karr when he started stating that it was he who committed the murder,” Lacy wrote in a recent e-mail statement.
Over the course of the next three months, Karr and Tracey e-mailed or telephoned on a daily basis, with Boulder investigators monitoring and sometimes coaching on Tracey what to say. They told him to do anything it took to keep Daxis on the phone so he didn’t disappear, so they could find out who he was. They advised him to draw out Daxis with conversation that excited him until he eventually confessed.
Sensing that the graphic exchanges and the mental chess of it all might be taking a toll on Tracey’s mental health, the DA’s office offered to take him off the case and replace him with an agent. Tracey resisted. “I knew [Daxis] would spot that in a second,” he says. “We were so much in each other’s heads.”
The e-mails between the two men would total about 1,400 pages. There were more than 10 hour-long telephone calls, too. Both are full of contradictions and red flags. Tracey’s critics have accused him of “grooming Karr into confession,” not in pursuit of justice but in chasing fame and book deals. One of the most memorable details from JonBenét’s crime scene was the blanket draped over her body, but in the e-mails it appears that Karr didn’t remember it. After Tracey jogged his memory, saying, “You did cover her with a light coloured blanket,” Karr wrote, “Thank God. I couldn’t quite remember that.”
The morning of Aug. 17, 2006, Boulder DA Mary Lacy held a press conference announcing the arrest of John Mark Karr in Thailand. While her words cautioned the media that this was still an ongoing investigation, there was an air of self-congratulatory backslapping among the Boulder authorities, the media, and Tracey. Wearing a sport coat and an enormous grin for his triumphant moment, the journalism professor gladly fielded questions from the swarming media. Then came the DNA test, the science proving Karr did not kill JonBenét, along with the testimony putting Karr with his relatives the night of JonBenét’s murder.