It was one of the year's most bizarre stories - a previously unknown teacher named John Mark Karr coming out of the woodwork to confess to murdering child beauty-queen JonBenet Ramsey. Was this, at last, a break in the case that had baffled investigators, and compulsive viewers of sleazy Court TV specials, since the story first captured the public's imagination back in 1996? Er, no. Because, as it turned out, John Mark Karr was not the murderer of JonBenet Ramsey - he was just a pathetic, celeb-obsessed pedophile who decided, what the fuck, might as well take a shot at fame and confess to murdering this child. Now, we here in celeb-gossip land come up against a whole lot of publicity-grubbing, media-whoring and general attention-grabbing (frankly, about ninety percent of what happens falls into one of those categories), but seldom does one encounter a case of groping for the spotlight this shameless and rank. Britney Spears may flash cooch, Paris Hilton may call someone a name, Lindsay Lohan may write a crazy e-mail that just happens to get leaked to the press, but nothing any of these attention-junkies has ever done comes close to being as reprehensible and sickening as what John Mark Karr perpetrated. So congratulations, sicko. You are officially a lower form of life than Paris Hilton.
