Angry in the Great White North

Thai prisons are a nightmare:

In the late 1970s, author Warren Fellows and two of his friends had the perfect scheme: they would traffic heroin between Australia and Thailand, concealing it flawlessly in high-tech, invisible compartments in suitcases. The money was there, and the process seemed foolproof--especially because they hadn't gotten caught in all their prior attempts at smuggling. But in 1978, all that would change, and Fellows would spend the next twelve years of his life enduring violations of his human rights of unimaginable hideousness.

Fellows, convicted in Thailand, spent these twelve years in Bangkok's infamous Bang Kwang prison, witnessing atrocities committed by both prison officials and his fellow inmates. He survived countless torturous beatings, was forced to eat rats, and endured solitary confinement under terrifyingly inhumane conditions. On a daily basis, Fellows also witnessed the torture and execution of those around him, their screams as common as the insects and vermin in his cell. Many of the prisoners in Bang Kwang turned to heroin--the vice that landed Fellows there in the first place--to escape their daily nightmares, and the prison guards often helped feed this deadly addiction.

Wouldn't you do just about anything to avoid that fate?

Legal and law enforcement experts have begun to express outward skepticism about claims by a teacher that he killed JonBenet Ramsey.

John Mark Karr told reporters in a press conference last night in Thailand he was with the 6-year-old beauty queen when she died nearly 10 years ago. He said the death was accidental, as part of a botched kidnapping effort. When asked how he entered the family’s Boulder home, he declined to comment.

But investigators in Thailand have told the Associated Press that Karr has made several other statements to them, including claims that he picked JonBenet up from school the day she was killed and that he drugged her. JonBenet was on Christmas vacation at the time, so school was not in session, and there was no evidence of drugs found in JonBenet’s body during the autopsy.

Remember, that Karr was picked up for sexual assault and then blurted out his Ramsey "confession":

He was being held on an unrelated sexual assault charge when he confessed to the JonBenet murder.

I have to wonder whether he had the "Ramsey confession" in his back pocket, as it were, ready to be used when, inevitably, he would be facing Thai justice for whatever kinky stuff he was up to. A hastily arranged trip to the US where the case falls apart, perhaps a short stint on a mischief charge, and then he is a free man.

Sounds like a plan.