Telling Untruths

By Kathleen Kingsbury

If it turns out that John Mark Karr didn't kill JonBenet Ramsey, he won't be the first to confess voluntarily to a crime he didn't commit. The motivation for these phony admissions, says criminologist Jim Fisher, author of Fall Guys: False Confessions and the Politics of Murder, can be "mental illness or extreme guilt over another crime, or they're just yearning for the attention a big case brings, the chance to be in the history books."

That quest for notoriety has fueled legions of false confessions to high-profile crimes. After Charles Lindbergh's infant was kidnapped and murdered in 1932, more than 200 people stepped up to say they were the culprit. Over the years, 500 or so have confessed to Hollywood's 1947 "Black Dahlia" slaying.

Others may lie for more practical reasons. In 1965, when handyman Albert DeSalvo told police he was the Boston Strangler, he confessed to having brutally murdered 13 women. Some experts now suspect that DeSalvo, who at the time was in custody on lesser charges, hoped the lavish claims would bolster his rep in prison and save him from execution via an insanity plea.

Convicted arsonist Ottis Elwood Toole twice confessed to abducting Adam Walsh, 6, whose 1981 disappearance inspired his father John's advocacy for missing children. But Toole also twice recanted. Some believe he wanted to cash in on book and film deals.