John Mark Karr [UPDATED]
If I would just turn my TV off, I wouldn't have to occupy my brain with this case. But I'm watching this guy confess and I'm hardly believing him. He's obviously screwed up, and by all accounts, including essentially his own, a pedophile. But they better have more on him than that. Any grown man that admits to having been in love with a 6-year-old girl (and can we please think twice about these child beauty pageants?) is capable of god-knows-what as far as I'm concerned. But, as eager as he is to pronounce to the media his involvement in the case, he's not answering any questions about how he did it, etc. And his ex-wife (seriously, how do these disturbed men find women?) says he couldn't have done it, that she was with him on the other side of the country when the murder took place. Maybe she's wrong about timing; maybe she's lying (to protect her ex-husband that she divorced because she found his child pornography?). Maybe maybe maybe. All I know is they had better have some seriously good evidence before blowing this case up all over my TV. Otherwise the entire legal-media corporate enterprise, the one that makes its money by keeping pseudo-news from MSNBC to CourtTV to CNN knee-deep in your-beautiful-white-daughter-is-in-danger national scandals, has just been had thanks to the gullibility of a Colorado prosecutor and the deranged mind of a troubled man who's obviously guilty of something...but who knows what.

Don't get me wrong - I hope he's the guy and they got him, to release the family from wrongful suspicion and to save what would surely be future victims - but this whole thing just doesn't pass the smell test yet. I don't doubt his obsession with the girl. But I woudln't be shocked if 3 weeks of 24/hour-a-day news coverage after her death facilitated that. Who knows - there are probably hundreds of creeps out there right now that are infatuated with her, and probably dozens that could easily convince themselves that they killed her. I haven't followed this case closely, but I'll bet someone who is sufficiently obsessed would have no trouble finding so much information about the evidence that it could sound like he was right there at the time of the incident.

Of course, if there's all kinds of DNA evidence (DNA, not "fiber evidence" or lame shoe-size evidence), then that's another story and there must be an answer to those questions. But if there's not already some kind of DNA match, then somebody's got alot of 'splainin to do.

[UPDATE: oh.my.gosh. Listening to the DA's much-anticipated news conference right now. Sounds like they have nothing...still investigating...lots of reasons to arrest someone before the investigation reaches its optimal level of completion...blah blah blah. this is all just a big show....CNN's screen right now says "there is a presumption of guilt"...wonder how long that will stay up.]