By Colleen Slevin
DENVER (AP) — He envisioned Johnny Depp playing him in a movie about how he killed JonBenet Ramsey, which he thought would make $1 billion. He explained that he liked little girls as long as they were no older than 10.
In his long e-mails with a University of Colorado professor and producer of documentaries about the Ramsey case, John Mark Karr expressed irritation when Michael Tracey didn't write back or spend enough time deconstructing his messages. He called himself Daxis and sometimes referred to himself in the third person.
And though he eventually provided a detailed confession, it was all a lie, authorities said.
Prosecutors abruptly dropped their case Monday against Karr after DNA tests failed to put him at the crime scene, despite his insistence he sexually assaulted and strangled the 6-year-old beauty queen.
Karr's supposed confession said he killed her with a flashlight after the strangulation and that he carried her, covering her with a blanket he put over his left shoulder.
During a July 15 telephone conversation, he was irritated when Tracey interrupted him as he explained how he placed a "special necklace" — a garrote — around JonBenet's neck. Tracey, a journalism professor, wanted to know if Karr used a paintbrush to make a handle for the rope, as investigators say the killer did.
"I'm not going to get into how I tied it," Karr responded. "I don't want to use terms like 'rope' around her neck. I certainly don't want to talk about what you just mentioned."
He viewed JonBenet as a "goddess" and said she agreed with just about everything he asked her to do the night she died.
"I said, Oh JonBenet, you're more powerful in death. I must partake of you, I must partake of you, some way I must partake of you. I must drink you."
Karr lashed out at those who don't understand him, especially adults.
"I told you the last time we talked that I'm very strange but I don't think I should say that. I'm just very unique. I want to worship little girls like they're goddesses and that's just me," Karr said in the July 15 call, before giving his account of killing JonBenet.
Karr also sent Tracey a four-page essay about a 5-year-old girl he was attracted to at the school where he worked, apparently convinced that she was attracted to him.
He was offended at questions about his sexuality, writing "I'm not gay, damn it. I am attracted to female children."
On July 31, he wrote of his plans to undergo a sex change.
In his last email to Tracey on Aug. 15 — the day before he was arrested in Thailand — Karr wrote that he could go back to Europe as a nanny once he becomes a woman. He said he was depressed, worrying about his new job at school and a book he was writing about JonBenet's death.
"The memory of JonBenet is killing me at times. I can't close the book — I have to live it day in and day out. And that takes its toll on me. Thank you for your closeness. I wonder what will happen to Daxis? I think his time is coming soon. I'm just not sure if he is rising or falling. Probably a combination of both which has been the story of my life."
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