Hyatt said:
Well, I see that the e-mails were removed as I figured they would be and I was not able to finish reading them.
However, I found a number of things interesting aside from the fact that John Ramsey really resisted Karr's request to speak to him.
The link between the case and John's "Mommy Dearest" who attempted to kill him is rather interesting. As others have said, I think that he entertained the thought that Patsy had been responsible, in spite of his other meanderings.
Karr also says that Tracey has changed in the communications and I couldn't but help wondering if Tracey adopted a different discourse once he began to pass on the emails to LE. If so, how had he been talking to Karr prior to that, I wonder. And why would he have changed?
According to Karr, Tracey stopped responding to anything "deep" and this seems to be linked with his more intimate details of his relationships with girls. Karr keeps trying to get Tracey to respond to those "deep" things. At one point, I started thinking: who's chasing whom, here?
He says: "You stopped responding to my mails as you should have right after you sent a letter from me to John Ramsey."
He mentions that he is not young anymore and that it hurts him to be getting older. I couldn't help but think of Patsy, here.
He apparently knows about technology and could tell that Tracey was using an Apple. Is that easy to do?
Can anyone else who read the whole thing add anything else for those of us who didn't manage to get to the end?
JMO
I read the whole thing and have listened to several of the phone calls. I have to say the phone calls are more important. Some of them are horrific though. However for someone who wants the answers to all the questions we had about Karr, or wants to see what makes him tick, it's all there. Well almost all. At times he says "I'm not going to ever say that" and gets defensive. It's those times that I think it's because he didn't do it and doesn't have a good explanation for certain things. Yet for other things he goes on in detail. He plays cat and mouse about various clues in the house like the note and why he did this or that. Michael Tracey asks him and sometimes he answers. Other times he argues that it's not important and people are lucky he's giving them 200 pages of details. Other times he tells Michael more details than anyone ever wanted to know.
I can write some of the things I recall off hand. There's so much. If you have questions just ask and it will jog my memory.
In the calls you get more of a sense of how intense Karr is. He talks on and on, pretty much gossipy and complaining, very talkative; at times they are talking at the same time as neither one wants to shut up. At times Tracey is amazingly stupid and dull in his comments or replies, interrupting even though the point of the calls is to catch a killer. He is supposed to be leading Karr on... but sometimes he upsets him by not giving long enough replies. The phone calls were to talk about the emails, and also so Karr could tell the story "in his own voice" so he could tell John Ramsey he heard the story from the killer's own voice and not just written down.
At one odd point, Tracey says he has a headache, and also his computer crashed. This is probably a lie, overkill, he just doesn't want to write an email because he's so sick of Karr...in some of the emails to the police who he is working with as an informant, he tells them how sickened he is...also he lies about a date for a weekend, things like that, to avoid Karr, and Karr always believes him. It's incredible that Karr could really believe this sleazy character at all. Another reason I now think Karr is insane. Tracey is so transparently a police informer...yet Karr is so desperate to talk to him.
The main theme throughout the emails and calls is that Karr is eager to have Michael give his responses to the chapters of the book Karr is writing. It's so hard for him and he spends hours revising and editing so he can present his book to the world, through Tracey. However, we are not given the book ...the DA only released the emails and phone calls. They're gone from the site now after 2 days but I saved them all to my hard drive, knowing that would probably happen. No one could possibly have gotten through all of them in two days. I've read/listened so much with barely a break and still didn't finish. And don't want to...it gets too horrible....last night I swore I won't listen to the rest of the calls. But I did a bit today, and it wasn't as bad. The accounts of the murder are beyond horrible, nothing will prepare you for how upsetting they are whether true or not. The way he gets so upset describing it all too. Knowing he is a psycho and this is him confessing. It is draining to hear but once you do, you'll never need to ask another question about him again.
In the more normal chats, as I was about to say, when Michael said his computer was broken, Karr chides him for owning a Mac, and also chides him for downloading *advertiser censored*, because that ruins any computer. And he says all this in a British accent. He's very mocking, and Michael laughs and laughs. There are very few light moments on the tapes but this is one of them. The rest is just super serious, tragic, desperate or sick. Oh, also Michael asks him to do his voice impersonation of that guy on Biography..I forget his name. He says he won't but he talks about how weird it must be to be married to that guy and have him come home and talk like that. Anyway we hear one of Karr's voices, a British accent. remember in the 1984 home video he does a weird voice and in the other informer tapes he says he was playing with JBR doing his funny voices. So it seems that was one of his talents - impersonations.
During the confession, which takes about 4 phone calls, it's very hard to bear, and Michael has to just listen and pretend not to judge Karr, but just act like he's interested in it. His comment is that it was extraordinary to hear that; he says it will sell books if Karr adds more details...he keeps asking leading questions like what did you do next. I mean I don't know what I'd say if I was the informer, but Karr was very disappointed at times by Michael's bland responses. Anyway..
Karr tells this incredible lie, (well, unless you can find me some proof right now) that his family was wealthy and owned 5 to 6 mansions that he could choose from; that he grew up in Tara (he explains what Tara was in case Michael doesn't know); his grandmother taught him to be a Southern gentleman with the finest manners and that is how he learned to charm little girls.
He hates adults, and he swears a lot about how much he hates them, especially fathers who kept him from their daughters. He likes mothers, and claims most every mother allowed him or approved of him molesting their daughters. But he's not attracted to women, just little girls, so he has to turn down women who go after him. But most mothers totally trusted him with their kids as they were charmed by him. He seemed to do a lot of child care in Europe. But he talks a lot about a girl he knew, age 7, in the US the year after JBR was killed. She was apparently the same age, born in 1990 (he says).He lived in a basement with her. So this indicates he and his wife were not so happily married in 1997. We were told they divorced in 2001 after the *advertiser censored* charges. The fact that he seemed to be a boarder living in the basement of a house, in 1997, is a clue that he could have been separated in 1996 too and his family is just protecting him.
He talks about his dad a lot, but you've got to just listen. I can't do a transcript, it would be as long as an encyclopedia, and to get the full impact of the way he talks you have to hear it. But he had a nice childhood, after he left his mother who was very dark, and after his grandmother raised him. He had a happy life, but then it all crashed and he lost everything in 2001 when he was arrested and had to leave the country. He compares himself to a man on the run, to the Bourne Identity and Catch Me If You Can (2 movies he says are like his life). He talks about how he is nothing, has no life, and all he wants is to make Daxis known (this is his name for himself) and have his book published anonymously (with Michael's help), and make enough money to be able to pay for JBR's funeral and buy a nice house for John Ramsey. And he wants to talk to John and have John read his manuscript or part of it. He talks a lot about how much he wanted to talk to Patsy before she died and apologize to her and everyone prevented him. When MIchael calls with the news that Patsy died, Karr breaks down and cries. He also cries and sobs at times while talking about the murder (or in his mind the accident).
He mentions a time when the police suspected him of molesting or killing a 12 year old and he was laughing inside because 12 is too old for him; his favourite age is 6. He details how he gets little girls to love him. He claims he never touched anyone without asking their permission. He quotes everything he and JBR said on the final night, but you know, since he wasn't there, and the dna proves it, this is all made up and all wishful thinking on his part; he claims she said she loved him. It's pretty clear these things happened with other girls. Not the killing but the method of molesting. I won't go into the details of that stuff, but he does claim he strung up a rope above the actual window he came in, that was the one with the grate, with the suitcase under it in the crime scene photo. He says the suitcase was his stepladder to attach the rope, which he used in his attack, he suspended her that way and she was up that way when she died and when he smashed her head with his flashlight.
He talks of being so poor between jobs, always being fired for being inappropriate with children, that he sometimes had to eat from people's tables in restaurants when they left food behind.
He talks of how his family loves him and would always stand up for him, even if he was imprisoned; they'd lie for him and do anything for him. (as we see, he was right, they did defend him in the press).
Yet he doesn't seem all that close to anyone but his grandmother, though we don't hear anything about her. We hear that his mother was very dark, we don't get to read his account of her in his life up to age 5 but we know from other accounts that is when she tried to kill him, and molested him.
He says he was a golden boy and had to be perfect, and was spoiled.
He repeats himself a lot. Sometimes he repeats a sentence three times in a row. He's very dramatic. It's fascinating because he has such a huge ego at the same time feeling like he's become nothing and the world hates him and will imprison him. He knew he could remain in hiding forever and he said he is good at disappearing (yet it's odd, in my opinion, that he kept using his real name for all those teaching jobs in foreign countries). But being on the run makes him lonely.
An example of an innocuous chat is when they talk about middle names and how Tracey doesn't have one and working class people in England don't have them... and then they chat about Prince Andrew. Karr imitates a British interviewer's accent asking Prince Andrew "Isn't it boring...".
He says he liked everything about Princess Diana, and lists all the reason why. Then they talk about her a while. When he lived in Paris he left notes to Diana in the place where she died. One day a camera man filmed him and got a closeup of his letter.
Then he talks about teaching people drama, and teaching someone to talk like Katharine Hepburn. He can do any voice known to man, he says. He says it's like music, voices are musical, since he was a child he could speak with a British accent perfectly. He said his mom was British, then he says she wasn't, but someone in his family was.
(I know for a fact his mother's maiden name is British - Adcock, so this could be true).
He says imitating Katharine Hepburn is like a car starting up on a cold morning.
This chat with Michael is totally not about crime at all. It's as if he was really just a teacher talking about his interests.
He says he can never teach teens because he can't be cool or mean enough. He can only teach little children. Then he goes on about a little 5 year old girl he's attracted to...
So anyway that is some of the stuff in the letters and tapes.