On Aug. 16, 2006, ten days after what would have been JonBenet Ramsey's 16th birthday, a man was arrested and charged in the 1996 slaying of the child beauty queen.

John Mark Karr, 41, described as an American schoolteacher with a history of child pornography arrests, was taken into U.S. custody in Bangkok, Thailand. He had been arrested there on an unrelated sex charge.

Karr has lived in Conyers, Ga., and Petaluma, Calif., according to news reports. His relatives said he was a decent man who had inadvertently gotten into trouble because he had done research for a book on sex crimes against children.

JonBenet was 6 when she was reported kidnapped from her wealthy family's home in Boulder, Colo., on the day after Christmas 1996. She was found dead in the basement of the home later that day, showing signs of strangulation and a fatal blow to the head.

Footage of her brief participation in child beauty pageants, combined with wild speculation about family involvement in the death, helped ruin the reputation of her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey. Some sensationalistic news outlets labeled them pedophiles, child pornographers, child abusers and killers, though none of these claims were ever proved and some were conclusively disproved. Some writers attempted to tie the killings to Mrs. Ramsey's history as a former Miss America contestant. The parents fought to rehabilitate their reputations and most of all to persuade authorities to focus on the possibility of an intruder.

In recent years, officials in Colorado had expressed a belief that the intruder theory was correct, but the Ramseys' names were already besmirched before the public. Patsy Ramsey, who had a history of battles with cancer, died of the disease in July 2006, knowing that authorities were closing in on a suspect.

Look for a PNB editorial in coming days on what this tragic case has to say about pageants and the American media.