'I am so sorry for what happened to JonBenet'

After ten long years of searching, finger-pointing, accusations and trails gone cold, the search for the killer of the six-year-old beauty queen from Boulder, Colorado, appears to have ended. But it has done so thousands of miles away, amid the ignominious surroundings of a low-rent dormitory-style hotel called The Blooms, in a Bangkok neighbourhood of massage parlours which cater to sex tourists.

Authorities had been on Karr's trail for some months, in what Boulder's District Attorney Mary Lacey called "a focused and complex investigation". JonBenet's mother, Patsy, who died from cancer in June, was informed shortly before her death that police were closing in on a suspect.

"She would no doubt be as pleased as I am with today's development," her husband, John Ramsey, said after Karr's arrest. "It's certainly a day we have been waiting for... I hope this is a first major step in really drawing it to a conclusion, but it also opens up old wounds."

There appears to be no doubt in the Thai authorities' minds that they've got the right man. General Suwat Tumrongsiskul, head of Thailand's immigration police, told reporters Karr had confessed and had said he tried to kidnap JonBenet. His plan had gone wrong and he had strangled her to death.

And there was more. Retrieving his belongings from the dingy guesthouse where he awaited extradition to the US, to face charges of first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping and sexual assault on a child, Karr took the opportunity to apologise for his alleged actions to a waiting reporter, having claimed that he drugged and had sex with the girl before accidentally killing her. "I am so very sorry for what happened to JonBenet," Karr said. "It's very important for me that everyone knows that I love her very much and that her death was unintentional and that it was an accident." Asked about the events leading to the murder, Karr said haltingly: "It would take several hours to describe that. It's a very involved series of events. It's very painful for me to talk about."

Disturbingly, he also said he had made "several efforts to communicate with Patricia before she passed away", referring to Mrs Ramsey, "it is my understanding that she did read my letters".

The trail to Karr evidently revealed itself through Michael Tracey, a documentary-maker who exchanged hundreds of e-mails with the teacher. "He had a whole bunch of things that didn't come out before," he said. "It wasn't part of what the media [could] get at before."

IT WAS AT 5:52am on Boxing Day 1996 that JonBenet Ramsey first became part of America's public consciousness. Her mother Patsy, coming downstairs 20 minutes earlier to prepare the family for an early morning flight to Michigan on their private plane, found a three-page ransom note - handwritten on notepaper from the Ramseys' kitchen - at the foot of the stairs.

"Mr Ramsey. Listen carefully!" it started. "We are a group of individuals that represent a small foreign faction. We respect your bussiness [sic] but not the country that it serves. At this time we have your daughter in our possession. She is safe and unharmed and if you want her to see 1997, you must follow our instructions to the letter."

It went on to demand a ransom of $118,000, the exact amount that John - a wealthy businessman - received for his Christmas bonus that year. It ended: "Don't try to grow a brain John. You are not the only fat cat around so don't think that killing will be difficult. Don't underestimate us John. Use that good southern common sense of yours. It is up to you now John! Victory! S.B.T.C".

The Ramseys panicked. At 5:52am, they called the police. What happened next has, over the years, been described as inept, botched and downright disastrous. Police tramped in and out the Ramseys' house, as did family friends who were eager to help the couple.

Potentially crucial evidence was contaminated; normal procedure ignored. No crime scene was sealed off and only a cursory search of the house was conducted, as a police force unused to dealing with serious crimes struggled to cope. At 1:05pm John, searching the basement with family friend Fleet White, found the body of his daughter wrapped in a blanket. Her skull had been fractured, her mouth covered with duct tape. She had been sexually assaulted. There was a nylon-cord garrotte around her neck and her wrists were tied.

He ran up the stairs with JonBenet in his arms, where her body was moved several times by family members and police. Eventually, Patsy collapsed over her daughter's body crying: "Jesus, you raised Lazarus from the dead, please raise my baby!"

The only murder committed in Boulder that year, but one of 800 child murders across the US, JonBenet's brutal killing captured the public imagination.The bizarre circumstances, the Ramsey's wealth, pretty little JonBenet herself, all became meat and drink to America's scandal-hungry supermarket tabloids. Pictures emerged of her pageant appearances, showing a grotesquely over-made-up infant in sparkly, revealing clothes, a lipsticked smile plastered on her tiny face.

There was footage, too, of the little girl wearing a red cowgirl outfit and singing "I want to be a cowboy sweetheart". It was transmitted on American TV news channels relentlessly.

JonBenet was as close to a professional beauty pageant queen as a six-year-old could be. Her titles included America's Royal Miss, Little Miss Colorado, Little Miss Sunburst and, in a tragic irony, Little Miss Merry Christmas. Had she lived, she would now be 16 and probably a minor celebrity, winning teenage pageants. But it would have been nothing compared to the notoriety her name gained after death.

THEORIES RAGED OVER her murder, most of them pointing the finger of blame at the Ramseys themselves. Speculation was rife: Patsy had murdered JonBenet in a fit of rage after a bed-wetting incident; John had been abusing his daughter and killed her to cover his tracks. Even the Ramsey's son, Burke, then aged nine, came under suspicion.

For many, things did not quite add up. Under advisement from their lawyers, John and Patsy refused to take a polygraph test. Handwriting analysis on the ransom note said that, while John had not written it, results were inconclusive about Patsy. Local police had their own theories and in April 1997 Alex Hunter, the district attorney, told reporters that the family was under an "umbrella of suspicion". There were lesser charges too, including one that Patsy had over-sexualised her child by entering her in beauty pageants. But in 2000 the Ramseys showed they had passed lie-detector tests which proved they were not attempting deception.

The Ramseys, meanwhile, held on to what became known as the "intruder theory". Two dissimilar footprints were found in the basement that did not match any shoes in the house, while a third footprint of an unknown person on the outer part of the window of the room by the basement was also found. A rope not belonging to the Ramseys was found on the bed of a guestroom, near JonBenet's room. A blood sample was found on JonBenet's underwear that did not match any known suspect. The family refused to stay silent. A book, The Death of Innocence, protests their own blamelessness while advancing a number of alternative theories, pointing the finger at several friends and neighbours. The couple also gave a number of high-profile interviews, while their lawyer, Lin Wood, went on TV shows such as Larry King Live to do the same. They also made a huge number of defamation claims against everyone from Court TV to Time magazine.

Meanwhile, the trail grew colder. John Douglas, a former head of the FBI's Behavioural Science Unit hired by the Ramseys to examine the case, concluded in 2001 that it was unlikely anyone would solve the case. In the Boulder police department, a number of detectives involved in the initial investigation resigning over claims of incompetence. There were rumours the FBI fed false information to the press in an attempt to pressure the Ramseys into confessing.

In 2003, a federal judge in Atlanta said that the weight of the evidence was more consistent with the intruder theory than with the belief that Patsy Ramsey killed JonBenet.

In 2005, as Patsy's health deteriorated, DNA evidence conclusively ruled out JonBenet's parents as suspects.

And what of the little girl who lost her life so brutally, ten years ago?

Her name has become synonymous with violence and murder, her image forever associated with the strange world of toddler beauty pageants. Referenced throughout popular culture (animated show South Park is just one example), known often by her first name alone, she has become an icon. Of what, nobody is quite sure.

Karr, it turns out, is a southerner. He comes originally from Georgia, where the Ramseys lived before JonBenet's murder and to where they returned after it.

He was living in Boulder at the time of her death, but since then has apparently travelled the world, working as an English teacher in LA, Seoul, Costa Rica and, finally, Thailand.

Hopefully, after a decade-long trail that has led to a seedy hotel in downtown Bangkok, JonBenet's name may finally be allowed to rest in peace.