JonBenet suspect heads to Colorado

LOS ANGELES -- John Mark Karr waived extradition Tuesday and agreed to be sent to Colorado to face first-degree murder charges in the slaying of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey.\nKarr, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit and handcuffed to a chain around his waist, spoke calmly and quietly to affirm his decision.\n"Yes, sir," Karr said when asked if he waived extradition.\nKarr, represented by a public defender, kept a blank expression as the judge read the charges of first-degree murder, felony murder, first-degree kidnapping, second-degree kidnapping and sexual assault on a child. He slowly closed his eyes when he heard the murder charge.\nThe two-minute hearing before Superior Court Commissioner James N. Bianco means Karr could return to Colorado as early as Tuesday afternoon.\nThe Boulder County sheriff's office said Monday it would not share any plans for the transfer.\n"Normally, once an inmate being held in another jurisdiction has waived extradition," Sheriff Joe Pelle said Monday, "we will be contacted by that agency and notified to pick the inmate up."\nEarlier, two other attorneys who spoke to Karr in jail described him as "extremely lucid" but exhausted and concerned.\n"There is nothing crazy about this man," attorney Jamie Harmon said on NBC's "Today" show.\nHarmon and Patience Van Zandt, who represented Karr when he was charged in 2001 with possessing child pornography in Northern California, said they spent a total of seven hours with him on Monday. Their role representing Karr hadn't been clearly defined.\n"What I found was an incredibly bright, intelligent, well-spoken, thoughtful human being," Harmon told ABC's "Good Morning America." She said he seemed bewildered by the attention.\nOn the "Today" show, Van Zandt declined to discuss anything Karr said to her about the case.\n"He's been through a lot this past week, and it shows. He's exhausted. He's terrified," said Van Zandt.\nThe 41-year-old teacher was arrested in Bangkok Aug. 15 and was brought to the U.S. aboard a Thai Airways flight Sunday. He has told reporters he was with the 6-year-old beauty pageant princess when she died and that her slaying in the basement of her Boulder home on Dec. 26, 1996, was an accident. Little is publicly known, however, about what evidence Boulder officials have.