The suspect in the JonBenet Ramsey case emailed a British academic asking him to visit the house where she was found murdered and read aloud a poem professing the man's "love" for the six-year-old, it was reported today.
The sensational arrest of John Mark Karr earlier this week came after journalism professor Michael Tracey, of the University of Colorado, alerted authorities in May to a message the teacher sent him.
The pair had exchanged hundreds of emails about the murdered child beauty queen over the past four years after Mr Karr saw a documentary the academic had made about the case.
Details of those often disturbing messages began to emerge today, after the Rocky Mountain News obtained some of them from a source close to the investigation.
In one message, the man authorities believe to be Mr Karr told Prof Tracy he had been the subject of a child murder and child molestation investigation in four US states, the newspaper reported.
In another, he wrote: "I will tell you that I can understand people like Michael Jackson and feel sympathy when he suffers as he has."
In a message said to have been sent the day before Christmas Eve on 2005, Mr Karr asked Prof Tracey to visit the Ramsey family's old house in Boulder, Colorado, and read aloud a poem titled JonBenet, My Love.
It read: "JonBenet, my love, my life. I love you and shall forever love you. "I pray that you can hear my voice calling out to you from my darkness — this darkness that now separates us.
"We shall meet again and laugh together once more as we once did in this life. "If there is to be a life for me after this one, I pray that it will be with you — together forever with you and other little girls who are gone now from my life forever: this would be my Heaven."
JonBenet was found beaten and strangled in the basement of the family's home on Boxing Day in 1996.
At another point, Prof Tracey wrote to Karr: "I'm also curious as to why you feel that talking to me is dangerous and that you have shared too much."
Mr Karr replied: "I was the subject of a four-state federal investigation for child murder and child molestation."
He also wrote on one occasion: "Sometimes little girls are closer to me than with their parents or any other person in their lives.
"When I refer to myself as JonBenet's Closest, maybe now you understand." Prof Tracey told reporters yesterday there was "one particular thing" that prompted him to go to the authorities, but refused to elaborate on what that was.
The academic, who did not know Mr Karr's name until this week, has made three documentaries about JonBenet and is writing a book about the 10-year-old investigation.
Mr Karr was arrested in Thailand on Wednesday and is said to have admitted accidentally killing JonBenet.
But in Colorado prosecutors warned the public against jumping to conclusions, and commentators were quick to question the reliability of Mr Karr's confession.
The Boulder Daily Camera reported today that Prof Tracey told his students about a mysterious correspondent who sent him emails about the case months before he went to the authorities.