Intruder Alert!

By Michael Roberts Tue., Oct. 24 2006 at 10:45 AM

Categories: Follow That Story

Years before the goofy pen-pal relationship between CU journalism professor Michael Tracey and phony confessor John Mark Karr blossomed into headlines of the sort explored in a recent Westword cover story, Tracey was pushing the theory that someone like Karr was responsible for the 1996 murder of JonBenet Ramsey. The groundwork was laid in Tracey's second Ramsey documentary, Who Killed the Pageant Queen?, which airs on the Women's Entertainment network tonight at 8 p.m. MST (Comcast cable channel 502 in Denver).

The program, first aired in the United Kingdom in 2002, takes viewers on a tour of the Ramsey house with investigator Lou Smit, who explains how an intruder might have slipped into the house, zapped the six-year-old sleeping beauty queen with a stun gun, strangled her in the basement and fled. (And left behind the baffling ransom note, but that's another issue.) Our expose of Tracey's dubious documentaries and his collaboration with Karr calls the flick "as balanced as a fatwa."

You can see why tonight; then check out the original script for the program here. The program airs again at 11 p.m., followed by a WE staple, Secret Lives of Women: Married to Cross Dressers. And no, that's not the upcoming Tracey documentary about Karr. -- Alan Prendergast

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