WE NAME REAL JONBENET KILLER!

And it’s NOT the wacko who confessed

September 11, 2006 - EXAMINER

EXAMINER story

WE NAME REAL JONBENET KILLER! And it’s NOT the wacko who confessed

September 11, 2006 EXAMINER

By Rafe Klinger

THE twisted sicko who molested, battered and strangled little JonBenet Ramsey has been brought to justice - and he's not the goofy-looking pedophile John Mark Karr, whose sensational confession has the nation buzzing.

The 6-year-old beauty queen's murderer is Michael Helgoth - a 26-year-old convicted pedophile who collected Barbie dolls and was obsessed with young girls, guns and violence.

But Helgoth, who covered himself with tattoos - including one of the Grim Reaper and

another of a blood-dripping skull - committed suicide just weeks following JonBenet's murder on December 25, 1996.

He apparently shot himself on Valentine's Day 1997 - the DAY AFTER a threatening statement was issued by Boulder, Colo., district attorney Alex Hunter.

"I will say something to the person or persons who took this baby from us - the list of suspects narrows," Hunter said.

"Soon there will be no one on the list but YOU!"

The unsettling message was carefully constructed by FBI experts and designed to put

immense psychological pressure on the killer, to make him sweat and hopefully turn himself in.

Instead, Helgoth, who ran a Boulder-area salvage yard, seemed to take the cowardly way out, knowing that cops were closing in.

His pal John Kenady had previously gone to police telling them of Helgoth's sadistic love of shooting stray dogs, how he threatened people with guns - and some bizarre coincidences involving the JonBenet case.

When Kenady learned that JonBenet's skull had been severely cracked from a vicious

blow, chills ran down his spine.

Kenady told police that Helgoth loved to talk about killing people and once said to

him: "I wonder what it would be like to crack a human skull?"

But the most chilling link to JonBenet came in November, the month BEFORE she was killed.

"Mike was pretty happy around late November about him and a partner making a killer

deal," recalls Kenady. "They were each going to make $50,000 or $60,000.

"Then Christmas comes and he's really depressed and there's no money."

The total amount of money Helgoth and his secret partner would have collected would come close to $118,000 - the odd sum demanded in the bizarre ransom note left at the Ramsey home.

And following Helgoth's death, police discovered more damning evidence in addition to the money amount, the "cracked skull" remark, his prior conviction for sexually molesting a child and the charge by his former girlfriend that she'd caught him naked in bed with her young daughter.

Cops searching Helgoth's home after the suicide found a pair of Hi-Tec work boots - the soles of which would make prints like the one found in the Ramsey basement where an intruder was believed to have broken in.

They also found a Taser stun gun. JonBenet’s autopsy revealed marks on her body similar to those made by a Taser, leading investigators to believe that the killer used a Taser to render the Little Miss Colorado helpless.

“his friends say he was a stun gun nut and that he used to break into people's houses just for the thrill of doing it," says Ollie Gray, an investigator hired by the Ramseys.

And cops found a shirt with the mystery letters"S.B.T.C.” on it and pants with the word

"Victory" on them. Amazingly, the ransom note found at the Ramsey home was signed -

"Victory! S.B.T.C."

Police also discovered pictures of young girls and a newspaper clipping about the unsolved case of a 5-year-old girl who had been kidnapped and murdered five

years before JonBenet.

Cops tested Helgoth'S DNA with that found in JonBenet's underpants and believed to have been left by her killer.

It didn't match. But private eyes Gray and John San Augustin believe the DNA belonged to Helgoth's unknown partner.

They also believe the secret partner may have murdered Helgoth and made it look like

suicide to cover his own tracks.

"If he's one of two people involved in a major, major death of a small girl, what's the best way to eliminate the word getting out that you had any involvement?" says Gray. "You eliminate your partner."

The evidence pointing to Helgoth as JonBenet's killer is overwhelming next to the ridiculous statements made by Karr, who sources say has been a mental mess since his deranged mother tried to set him on fire when he was an infant. She was locked away in a psycho ward shortly after.

Family friend George McCrary says Karr has always been "paranoid" and "needs a psychiatrist worse than anyone I've ever met."

Here's why experts believe Karr didn't do it:

--- Neighbors and Karr's ex-wife Lara say he was at his Hamilton, Ala., home on Christmas 1996 - and not in Boulder where he claims he "accidentally" killed JonBenet.

"I know it was Christmas of 1996 because that was when I had my house remodeled," says neighbor Vemell Green Duncan. "John Karr came and helped me move some furniture."

--- Karr also claimed he got into the Ramsey house by attending a Christmas party and then hiding in a bedroom until everyone was gone. The Ramseys did have a party - but on December 23, two days before the murder.

--- Karr says he was invited to the party by his brother Nate, who worked for John Ramsey's computer firm. But the firm has no record of Nate Karr as an employee and John Ramsey says he never heard of him.

--- There's no record of Karr ever being in Colorado.

--- Karr claims the child's violent death - she was strangled and her skull was nearly shattered by a ferocious blow - was an "accident."

"This confession is nonsensical and it appears to be delusional," says Denver lawyer and former prosecutor Craig Silverman, who has been close to the JonBenet case.

"It's hard to imagine a more intentional, deliberate murder than hitting a girl with sufficient force to split her skull open and to fashion a garrote and twist it until she stops breathing."