This creepy revelation was especially horrifying for Marc Klaas, Polly’s father, who, for the last decade, had devoted his life to keeping the likes of Karr away from children. A well-known children’s lobbyist and founder of the KlaasKids Foundation, the latest developments in the JonBenet case this week stirred up a lot of painful memories for him. After an emotional week, he speaks with NEWSWEEK about what it’s like to be a parent accused, and what role the Ramsey case has played in his own life. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: What has this news brought back for you?
Marc Klaas: The thing for me that’s the most disturbing is to find out that this guy had such an obsession for my daughter’s situation that it prompted him to move his entire family from the Deep South to Petaluma, Calif. That makes my skin crawl in and of itself. But then to find out this guy is an elementary-school teacher, sort of heaps injury on insult. I don’t know what this guy did, but he [reportedly] obsesses about little dead girls, and he was arrested in [one of] the [largest] child-sex-trafficking destinations on the face of the globe. Whether he had anything to do with JonBenet’s murder or not, I think it’s very important he be put away for a very, very long time.
What would you say to JonBenet’s family or the media right now?
I think we just have to sit back and see what happens here. Certainly the last chapter has not been written on this case … I’m skeptical still, I’m sorry. There’s more evidence suggesting this guy didn’t do it than there is suggesting he did do it.
In cases like these, people often suspect the spouse or parent. What is your opinion in that regard?
I’ve often thought, and I’ve always thought, in fact, from the days of our own situation, that in these kinds of situations where children are either abducted or murdered that you oftentimes can find the perpetrators in the families themselves. The statistics bring you back there, the scenarios bring you back there, and oftentimes the evidence brings you back there. Therefore, it’s in everybody’s best interest for family members to do everything they can to clear themselves from suspicion, so law enforcement can then move toward what actually happened.
That doesn’t appear to have happened in the Ramsey case.
No, that never happened in this case, and it’s always been a problem to me. And I understand [John] Ramsey’s situation, and only wish he’d been more cooperative up front so that all of us, including law enforcement, could have gotten past looking at him and his wife. Because quite frankly, if you look at the evidence made available to the public, as well as the conduct of the parents, i.e. refusing in most respects to cooperate with the cops, not give independent interviews with law enforcement, not take polygraphs, to hire a PR firm to handle your image, it seems self-serving. It doesn’t seem to me that that helps JonBenet, or it doesn’t help find who killed JonBenet.
And you faced a similar situation with your own daughter’s investigation.
I’ve been there. I have to wake up with the memories of my own dead child every day of my life. But I knew early on that the best way to help bring justice to Polly’s situation was to be as transparent as I possibly could be with the cops and with law enforcement. And I believe I made the right decision, because justice has been brought to Polly.
How did you get past those accusations?
I put my daughter at the forefront. She was missing for 65 days. All I wanted was to bring Polly home. I told the cops everything. I told them everything they wanted to know, and I was completely open with them. I was completely open with the media, and I took a polygraph. And it’s frightening. I mean, you hear the stories from the defense attorneys, that polygraphs can be manipulated, etc. But I had to put all that aside, because the only thing that mattered was bringing my child home. And the only way that was going to be accomplished, in my mind, was to eliminate myself from suspicion. So that’s what I did.
What did it finally feel like for you when you saw Polly’s murderer brought to justice?
Well, it was anticlimactic … When we got our daughter back dead, I spent the next decade in mourning and grief. So everything that happened during that period, including the prosecution and subsequent death sentence of Polly’s killer, it was a good thing, but it didn’t bring closure, it didn’t bring finality, and it certainly didn’t bring her back.
Was your case handled more competently than the Ramsey case?
We know the huge errors that were made in the JonBenet case. That the crime scene was never secured. That the father was allowed to conduct his own on-site search, and that he then compromised the crime scene to the point of almost negating it … Our case was handled professionally from the beginning.
What has your experience taught you about how these types of errors can be avoided?
We need to be paying more than lip service to these types of crimes, because quite frankly they seem to be escalating. But you can’t fix this problem with legislation alone, and I think we all have to understand that. Laws are great, but if they were really that good we wouldn’t have to keep tweaking and changing them and adding to them. We have to get serious as mothers and fathers, as neighbors, as business leaders, as law enforcement, and if we all work toward these goals then maybe we can start getting a real grip on this issue.
It’s been more than a decade since your daughter’s killing, and nearly 10 years since JonBenet’s. How has modern technology and the Internet changed the threat?
That’s a great question, because quite frankly, child pornography seemed to be on the way out prior to the Internet. But now with the Internet, and the anonymity provided by the Internet, we see this proliferation of not only child pornography but a proliferation of these online predators. Just like everything else, what we have to do is find better ways to control and maintain these guys, we have to find better ways to deal with them, and we have to find a way to hold the Internet service provider’s responsible, because they’re very much a symptom of the problem. No media outside the Internet could ever get away with posting the content that the Internet has been getting away with for a long, long time. We have to have some accountability at all levels.
How can people be aware?
I think [the media] just needs to keep doing these exposés. I think we’re getting an understanding of who these guys are, what they’re capable of, and only through that kind of awareness and education will we really be able to get our arms around the problem itself. But it’s huge, it’s as bad as anything we’ve ever seen.
