Confessing Sams

BY Dylan Rainforth and Bunny Banyai

A cripple throws a Molotov cocktail through a bakery window and London burns. A joke right? A song by The Clash? Presumably Robert Hubert wasn’t laughing, though, when he was hanged in 1666 after being found guilty of starting the Great Fire of London. During his trial it was established that Hubert had arrived in England two days after the fire had started and was too crippled to throw anything much at all. Oh, and the bakery had no windows. Bob stuck to his story, though, and, since he was a foreigner and a Catholic to boot, they were happy enough to march him to the gallows.

Michael John Karr is unlikely to face the same grisly end after falsely confessing to the murder of that peculiarly named, primped and painted child-princess JonBenet Ramsey. Karr shared the same predilection for eyeliner and lip gloss as his alleged victim, and undoubtedly had middle America convinced of his guilt by virtue of this fact. It turns out, however, that Karr is guilty of nothing more than harbouring a mind-warping crush on JonBenet, marrying barely legal teenagers and writing poetry that reads like Britney Spears channelling Humbert Humbert.

Criminal psychologists call people like Karr and Hubert ‘Confessing Sams’, and for most high profile murder cases in the US one or two innocent hands will shoot up to lay claim to the crime. Some Confessing Sams will admit to just one infamous crime reported in the media. Others happily volunteer their guilt to whatever’s hot right now. Confessing Sams will often continue to maintain their guilt long after police rule them out as suspects. But how could anyone be so wilfully stupid?

In the 1920s one John Hart told whoever would listen that he was Jack the Ripper. He would have been three years old at the time of the first killing but insisted his entire life that he was the man with the knife.

Nor is Karr the first to put himself forward as Ramsey’s killer. Her murder has attracted 20 false confessions. The notorious Black Dahlia murder, involving the careful dismemberment of a flop-house floozie, beats this with 50. Earlier in the century, 200 people vied for the chance to be thrown in jail for the kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s infant son.

Experts believe that motives for false confessions include mental illness or retardation, extreme guilt over another crime, a bid for fame and notoriety or any combination of the above. Karr is a prime example, and looks a promising contender for the title of most infamous Confessing Sam of this decade. Were the bizarre emails to Professor Michael Tracy, who alerted police to Karr’s possible guilt, a deliberate ploy to be recognised as JonBenet’s killer? He was certainly preternaturally calm confessing to her murder before a throng of photographers and reporters as he was escorted to jail in Thailand. Whatever the case, he is now a part of the twisted story that so fascinated him.