BOULDER, Colorado – The Boulder District Attorney's office said it spent $23,656 investigating John Mark Karr, including nearly $6,000 for business class tickets to fly the former suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey case and an investigator back from Bangkok, Thailand.
An outline of expenses released Thursday shows the 15-hour flight from Thailand, on which Karr sipped champagne, dined on fried king prawns and roast duck, cost the county $5,925.
A message left at District Attorney Mary Lacy's office was not immediately returned. A message left for Boulder Sheriff Joe Pelle, whose office also incurred expenses, was not immediately returned.
The second largest expense in the DA's investigation was $10,010 in hourly wages paid to an investigator.
Karr was cleared last week in the 1996 murder of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey and remained jailed in Boulder, Colorado, awaiting extradition to California to face child porn charges. A Boulder judge ruled last week that authorities had until Wednesday to return Karr to Sonoma County.
The DA's office said it has spent $40,755 on the unsolved slaying since taking the case from Boulder police and reopening the investigation in December 2002.
That figure includes more than $16,000 spent in 2003 when Lacy endorsed a federal judge's declaration that an intruder, not JonBenet's parents who had been under suspicion, killed the child.
Get all the stories you need-to-know from the most powerful name in news delivered first thing every morning to your inbox