Karr Waives Extradition to Colo.

LOS ANGELES, Aug. 22 -- John Mark Karr agreed to waive his extradition to Boulder, Colo., on Tuesday, appearing pale and stoic as a judge in Los Angeles Superior Court told him he faces formal charges in the decade-old killing of child pageant star JonBenet Ramsey.

According to an arrest affidavit from Boulder authorities that the judge read in open court, Karr faces charges of first-degree murder, first-degree murder after deliberation, sexual assault and kidnapping. He could be transferred to Colorado within the next 10 days, though the Boulder County district attorney's office declined to say exactly when and how he will be transported, citing security.

Karr wore orange jail scrubs, and his hands were cuffed to his waist during a two-minute proceeding in the Los Angeles courtroom. When Judge Luis A. Lavin asked Karr if he agreed to waive extradition, he answered softly, "Yes, Your Honor."

Haydeh Takasugi, Karr's court-appointed public defender, asked that her client be allowed to wear street clothes when he is sent to Boulder to avoid tainting potential jurors who might see television images of him arriving. The judge denied her request.

It was Karr's first court appearance since Boulder authorities arrested him in Thailand last week. In Bangkok, where he had been living in a hotel, the 41-year-old teacher told reporters that he was with JonBenet when she died. The 6-year-old was found strangled in her Boulder home the day after Christmas in 1996.

Yet Lara Knutson, one of Karr's former wives, has said that he never missed a family Christmas celebration or left on a trip soon afterward. And Gary C. Harris, a lawyer for Karr's father and brothers, has said that they recall the same thing.

Harris said the suspect "has some emotional problems." On Tuesday, another relative shed light on a history of mental illness in his family. Karr's mother, Patricia Elaine Karr, who is deceased, was hospitalized at Central State Hospital in Milledgeville, Ga., and later lived in a group home, according to her stepmother, Shirley Adcock.

Adcock, 70, of McDonough, Ga., said in an interview that Patricia Karr suffered from "flashbacks." At times, she refused to eat, and she would tell her father, "Daddy, I'm dead, and the boys are dead." Adcock said that her stepdaughter loved her sons but that they went to live with their paternal grandparents in Alabama when their parents divorced because Patricia Karr was not well enough to take care of them.

In e-mail correspondence with a University of Colorado journalism professor, obtained by the Rocky Mountain News in Denver, Karr insinuated that his mother tended to raise him as a girl.

Also yesterday, a lawyer for Knutson, who lives in Petaluma, Calif., said that she had met with investigators from the Boulder district attorney's office. Michael L. Rains said in a prepared statement that Knutson believes that Karr "never absented himself from her or their three children for a period of time long enough to travel to Colorado on or around any Christmas period during the marriage."

Rains said that his client is continuing to look for photographs and documents to bolster her memory.

In 2001, Karr was living with his wife and three sons in Petaluma when he was arrested on child pornography charges. He was jailed for six months and fled the country shortly after his release. He recently had been hired to teach second grade in Bangkok, and a doctor at a sex-reassignment clinic confirmed that he was a patient there.

After being flown from Bangkok to Los Angeles on Sunday night, Karr was placed in an isolation cell at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility.

Patience Van Zandt, who represented Karr in the 2001 child pornography case and met with him Monday, said Karr was bruised from being jostled in the media mob in Thailand. She said he was "upset and anxious" about the capital murder charges he faces and also about the frenzy of recent days.

"He's been taken out of his familiar environment and transported across the world, and the media is taking everything he says and does and eats and drinks and spinning it in the worst possible way," Van Zandt said. News outlets reported that Karr ate crab and drank champagne on the flight from Thailand to Los Angeles. "It's not he who is choosing what he eats and drinks," she said.

Van Zandt said she is not Karr's lawyer now but may represent him in Colorado. She would not comment on Karr's whereabouts on Christmas in 1996.

Karr is eager to travel to Colorado, said Jamie L. Harmon, Van Zandt's legal associate. "Mr. Karr has been portrayed by the media as of late as being mentally unstable, attention-seeking, unwell," she said. "He is none of those things. He is anxious to have an opportunity to address those things."

Staff writers Anne Hull and Amy Goldstein in Washington contributed to this report.