UPDATE 2: Is Karr falsely claiming to to be the killer?
UPDATE: Thai police say he’s confessed.
CNN:
A suspect was arrested in Bangkok, Thailand, Wednesday “for the December 26, 1996, murder of JonBenet Ramsey,” the district attorney in Boulder, Colorado, said Wednesday.
A law enforcement source identified the suspect as 41-year-old John Mark Karr, a one-time schoolteacher and American citizen who has lived in Conyers, Georgia.
It is the first arrest in the decade-long investigation of the 6-year-old beauty pageant contestant’s slaying. The case was the subject of suspicion and speculation and provided years of fodder for the news networks and the tabloids.
Karr had been communicating with someone in Boulder and that online communications played a key role in leading authorities to him, law enforcement sources said.
Karr has confessed to some elements of the crime and is under investigation for an unrelated sex crime, the sources told CNN.
Reuters provides more info on the suspect:
BANGKOK – Thai police said on Thursday they had arrested an American in connection with the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey, a child beauty queen whose grisly death triggered a U.S. media frenzy.
They did not name the man, identified in U.S. media as primary school teacher John Mark Karr, 41, but said he was arrested in conjunction with FBI officers after being followed for three weeks as he sought a job teaching English in Bangkok.
“We arrested him yesterday at an apartment not far from my office after having followed him for 21 days,” immigration police chief Lieutenant General Suwat Tumroungsiskul told Reuters.
“During the arrest, we were accompanied by American officers. He has been in and out of Thailand a couple of times and the arrest warrant was issued just a couple of days ago.”