The Karrs

The many faces of John Mark Karr

Alexis Valoran Reich; Delia Alexis Reich; Daxis das Verdammte; Caelitus, Dark Prince of the Immaculates; John Mark Karr, Freak of Nature, et cetera, et cetera

There is something poetic in the the life and times of John Mark Karr. Gentle readers will perhaps remember Karr as the bizarre personality who stepped forward in 2006 to take credit for the kidnapping and murder of JonBenet Ramsey. After a short investigation, police determined that he had in fact done nothing wrong, was kurbashed for annoying everyone for a few hours, and sent on his irrelevant way. Then, we knew him as a bent individual obsessed with the 6-year-old beauty queen--twisted and disturbing as that is in itself. Now he has emerged as a certified freak of nature. The man, and I use the term loosely, has built a resume most of us only dream about, usually after a blurry night in the vomit runnels of Old Cancun. He helps us to define life's elusive quality of "afictivity," that is, being too strange to operate as fiction. Here, then, are a few articles detailing his rich exploits:

John Mark Karr Re-Emerges to Form a JonBenet Cult

Search Warrants Issued for JonBenet Lookalike Cult Leader John Mark Karr

I mentioned a poetic quality in all of this--assembled fragments of the very strange reportage read almost like found poetry:

John Mark Karr, 46 * reputed pedophile * falsely confessed to murdering JonBenet Ramsey 2006 stirs international sensation * has had a sex change operation in the past two years * now goes by various names * "Alexis Valoran Reich," occasionally "Delia Alexis Reich" * married a 13-year-old and later a 16-year-old in the 1980s * has been trying to create a cult of JonBenet Ramsey lookalikes he calls "the Immaculates" * may be armed, seeking shelter from followers * blond girls 4 - 6 years old with small feet * internet aliases Daxis das Verdammte, Drk Prnz, Caelitus, F.O.N. (Freak Of Nature) * rules the only place on the Web that tells the truth about him * written in third person and called Lei Sussurra (Latin for "I murmur") * Occupation: Nanny, teacher, tutor, child care giver, computer repair and instruction * threatened 19-year-old Samantha Spiegel * met Karr when she was 9 and he was a teacher's aide at elite Convent of the Sacred Heart Catholic School in San Francisco * he taught her fourth-grade class * voluntarily surgically castrated in 2006 * Karr demanded that she recruit young girls into The Immaculates * Alexis was last seen in a metropolitan Seattle, WA shelter * "If you deceive me," he replied, "I will kill you. I know where you live" * "Reich" has as many as 30 "minions" * Principius Caelitus Immaculatae * often lives in homeless shelters and uses Craigslist to find rooms for a few days at a time * "If you cost me my little girls I will hunt you down and kill you" * lei sussura * "He checks my website 80 times a day" * Reich failed to respond to e-mail messages from Fox News * refused to comment * he was trying to look younger * last seen living in a shelter for battered women in Seattle * In one of his last messages, Karr wrote: "I want to hurt you..." * I murmur * "The life he leads is purely speculative."

Losing Face

In Japanese, "I dreamed that..." is expressed literally as "saw this kind of dream" (こんな夢を見た). This phrasing implies that one has experienced not a specific series of images, but a pattern or template that plays out from time to time and from place to place. It makes me wonder whether dreams are unique to the dreamer. Jung did not think so. According to him, all dreams, especially those involving nudity, or game shows, or both, are almost certainly not original.

I have a bad habit, borne of a hubris in which I imagine myself some prophetic Belteshazzar, of trying to find the deeper meaning in dreams, as if something were being desperately encoded to me during sleep. Or worse, in assuming that it presaged actual events, and only my mental thickness prevented me from seeing revealed truth. I mention hubris for, let us face it: not all those you meet at parties who claim to be psychic are frauds, but all are annoying.

And so... where was I? I had this kind of dream.

A surgical team had fitted me with a prosthetic face. Whether my natural face had been lost in an auto accident, or by consequence of some awful disease, was not known. I was simply in need of a face. Inexplicably, they fitted me with the face of an anatomical mannequin of the kind used to demonstrate musculature. The exposed muscle, tendons, and exposed eyeballs, albeit false, were disturbing. The point of using such a device was lost on me, but they made up for this deficiency by adding yet another mask to fit rather clumsily over the first--the exterior mask being the kind used at masquerade parties, made of white plastic.

I resolved to venture into public only when necessary, and to avoid people at all costs. I had little reason to be out in crowded places, and only one activity lured me outside--walking my dog Fritz. This worked well enough, and I was happy to be out and about with him again, almost forgetting my predicament.

But then he wandered off as he is wont to do, sniffing and marking various patches of ground, posts, and logs. He began to wander too near to a group of people, and I was worried that my appearance would alarm them. Somehow I could not stop him from forging toward this group of people. I became very annoyed at him and finally had to pick him up bodily and whisk him away. I remember trying to avoid a young girl lest my false face frighten her. I felt isolated and could not even bring myself to look in a mirror and see the mask over the mask.

Later, a day or two later after this dream, I took my four-year-old daughter H to the office. I had a few tasks to follow up on, and N wanted to go swimming that evening. H behaved well at first but increasingly grabbed things and wandered around. I suppose I wasn't paying attention to my own annoyance level, but it was the sort of situation in which you think you can finish up in a few more minutes--though you never can with computers.

Before we left, I had to print some documents and pick them up. After the usual delay with the printer, I told H to come with me down the hall to the printer, and she did, but then wandered off when my back was turned. She hadn't gone very far, but it set me off that she'd slipped off in just a few seconds and after I'd been clear in telling her to stay in the copy room. I pulled her back to the office and this made her stubbornly want to go wherever the hell she had been off to. We're very alike in this way--stubborn about what to do next and hair-trigger tempers. It escalated very quickly from there. I tugged, she cried, then I dragged, and she screamed. So I had to exit the building hastily while carrying a shrieking child upside down. Embarrassing at best, and at worst incriminating--it occurred to me that I could be seen as a kidnapper.

Only later did it occur to me that what I had feared in my dream had actually happened--that I lost face. In particular, my carefully groomed outer persona (a word which, after all, originally meant mask) was peeled off quite easily--by an escalation of minor events and ultimately my own loss of control.