The Local newsletter is your free, daily guide to life in Colorado. For locals, by locals. Sign up today!
When we last checked in on John Mark Karr, who was famously arrested in Thailand in 2006 and brought to Boulder as a suspect in the 1996 killing of JonBenét Ramsey, he had allegedly undergone extensive treatments to become a woman, changing his name to Alexis Reich. Now, Karr is allegedly trying to form a cult of little girls to have sex with him, according to Samantha Spiegel, who appeared on NBC’s “Today” show (via CBS News). The cult even has a name: “The Immaculates.” Spiegel, 19, claims—in paperwork for a restraining order against Karr—that she has received “ongoing death threats” and “threats of sexual exploitation to children” in e-mails and instant messages, according to The Associated Press. Spiegel says she has known Karr since she was nine years old, when he was a teacher at her school in San Francisco. She alleges she had reached out to him to reconnect with him, and he soon began trying to contact her hundreds of times each day, asking her to recruit children. At one point, she thought about letting Karr meet her niece, but now says she was brainwashed and is speaking out to help any other potential victims. Authorities are searching for Karr to serve him with a restraining order, but he has not yet been found.