The reason for Karr's confession

http://www1.pressdemocrat.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060819/NEWS/608190306/1033/NEWS01

Petaluma woman reveals e-mails, taped calls with Karr

By KATY HILLENMEYER
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

[snip]

The statements Karr made this week are similar to those in the e-mail accounts and taped conversation that Hutchens attributed to him.

In a copy of an e-mail to Hutchens dated March 12, 2001, the author describes his feelings for Polly Klaas:

“I love Polly and want contact with all who touched her life — Richard (Allen Davis) is of great interest to me because he is forever connected to her.â€

[snip]

This is the reason John Mark Karr's confessed to JonBenet's murder. He wants to be "forever connected" to JonBenet.

I said this a couple of days ago on another thread - that Karr wants his name, and his identity, to be forever linked with JonBenet's. It's his twisted way of "being with" or "marrying" JonBenet, his obsession.

Karr's request to Tracey asking him to read a self-penned poem to JonBenet in the house where she died shows him desperate for any type of contact with her.

 

Chero, I went to one of CNN. MSNBC or Fox's websites yesterday (can't remember which one it was) and there was a link to a video about Why people make false confessions. Except I couldn't get it to work.

I would love to have seen or read this. Has anyone seen any articles on this that they could provide a link to?

 

I saw that same link, but didn't have time yesterday to open it. I've already read on the subject in the past, so I just skipped that one. I'll try to find it for you.

 

Here's a good article. Haven't found the video yet, but I will.


http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/nation/4127478.html

Confession not always the way to close case

JonBenet ordeal has experts looking at the psychology of false admissions

Aug. 19, 2006, 10:26AM
By MATT CRENSON
Associated Press

It's rare, but not unheard of, for some people to confess to notorious crimes they did not commit — and suspicions have been raised that John Mark Karr was one such false confessor.

Picked up by police in Thailand on Wednesday, Karr readily admitted that he is guilty in the slaying of JonBenet Ramsey. But aside from his confession there is little public evidence linking him to the 1996 crime, leading some experts to speculate that he is either lying or delusional.

"Many high-publicity crimes have these people coming out of the woodwork," said Elizabeth Loftus, director of the Center for Psychology and Law at the University of California-Irvine.

More than 200 people confessed to the 1932 kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh's infant son. The 1947 "Black Dahlia" murder — the slaying of aspiring actress Elizabeth Short, who was found naked and sliced in half in a vacant Los Angeles lot — attracted numerous spurious confessions.

Lawyers for the Ramsey family said Friday that a number of people have confessed to the killing of JonBenet, none of them with enough credibility to attract the attention of law enforcement.

"Often you're looking at a pathological need for attention," said Saul Kassin, a psychology professor at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass.

There are other reasons that people confess to crimes they never committed. Some people are tricked by police interrogation tactics. Sometimes people confess to take the rap for friends or relatives. Others relent under questioning and agree to anything that will end the ordeal.

There is the story of Nazi commander Heinrich Himmler who lost his pipe while visiting a concentration camp; he found it later in his car, but six people had confessed to stealing it.

It is even possible for people to convince themselves that they have actually committed a crime they would have considered unimaginable.

In 1988 Richard Ingram, a sheriff's deputy in Olympia, Wash., confessed to the ritual sexual abuse of his daughters after being convinced by leaders of his church that Satan had compelled his actions and then erased his memory of them.

"People can come to believe that they did things, saw things, experienced things that they didn't do or see," said Loftus, who is known for implanting false memories in subjects' minds.

Psychoanalysts have suggested that some false confessions can be motivated by a subconscious psychological need to be punished for something a person wants to do but hasn't. Karr has been convicted on child pornography charges and has expressed fascination with young girls in general.

Kassin said police can usually see through false confessions by asking a few questions about the crime that only the culprit could answer. Tracey and others have said Karr knows details he could not have gleaned from press reports and other sources, but so far no specific examples have been given.

 

That could have been the one I was trying to access. Thanks.

I am ROFLing at this:-

 

He's a fraud.