Nearly a decade after the body of the child beauty queen was found in the basement of her family's sprawling Colorado home -- setting off a media sensation and years of speculation regarding her killer -- authorities on Wednesday had announced they had arrested a suspect halfway around the world.

A law enforcement official identified the suspect as John Mark Karr, 41, a former schoolteacher and an American citizen. A U.S. government source in Bangkok, Thailand, said Karr was arrested there Wednesday and was in Thai police custody.

According to CNN, Karr was arrested at his apartment in Bangkok, said Thai Immigration police Maj. Akkrapong Sunthornvipak. He spent Wednesday night at Bangkok's Immigration Detention Center.

Read full report in http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/08/17/ramsey.arrest/index.html

Lt. Gen. Suwat Thamrongrisakul, chief of Thai immigration, said Thai police have a three-count U.S. arrest warrant charging Karr with first-degree murder, first-degree kidnapping and sexual child abuse. While not directly tying Karr's arrest to the Ramsey case, he said all of the alleged crimes took place in the United States in 1996 -- the same year JonBenet was killed.

Suwat said Thursday that Karr had confessed to killing JonBenet Ramsey.

According to Suwat, Karr's visa has been revoked and he is being interrogated by Thai and U.S. authorities.

The arrest was made after a tip from a U.S. agency working closely with Thai officials, Akkrapong said. Karr was undergoing questioning Thursday by Thai police "to find the ground for extraditing him," he said. There was no evidence Karr had committed a crime in Thailand, he said.

Mary Lacy, the district attorney in Boulder, Colorado, said in a written statement the suspect was arrested "following several months of a focused and complex investigation." Lacy's statement did not identify the suspect.

Law enforcement officials said the suspect will be brought back to the United States. The investigation was being led by the Boulder County District Attorney's Office, along with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the officials said.

Two law enforcement sources told CNN the man was under investigation for an unrelated sex crime when information led to his arrest in the Ramsey case.

Law enforcement officials said the suspect was not known to investigators at the time. A warrant for his arrest was issued Tuesday night.

A horrific slaying

The arrest will likely dispel the cloud of suspicion that has hung over JonBenet's parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, ever since the girl's death on Dec. 26, 1996 in their Boulder home. (Watch John Ramsey react to news of the arrest -- 2:17)

It was John Ramsey who found his 6-year-old daughter's body. Earlier that morning, the girl had been reported missing, and Patsy Ramsey reported finding a three-page ransom letter demanding $118,000 on a staircase in the home.

Autopsy results showed JonBenet had received a massive blow to the head and was strangled with a rope that the killer tightened by twisting an attached paint brush handle.

The Ramseys maintained an intruder killed their daughter, but they remained the subject of suspicion and speculation in the case, which provided years of fodder for news networks and tabloids. Though no one was ever named as a suspect, at one point the Boulder police said the Ramseys were under "an umbrella of suspicion."