Ramsey suspect
visited Thai sex-change clinic

With its large, open transgender population, Bangkok, Thailand, is a haven for foreigners in search of acceptance and gender reassignment surgery at a cheap price. The latest to reportedly inquire about a sex-change operation was John Mark Karr, the American schoolteacher who says he killed 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey in 1996. Karr, 41, had a consultation at the downtown Pratunam Polyclinic, according to Thep Vechavisit, one of the doctors there. He declined to provide additional details but confirmed Sunday that Karr was "one of my patients." A staffer at the dingy clinic said Karr had talked with the doctor about sex-change surgery. She declined to give her name because she was not authorized to speak to the media. The clinic, which cosponsors a popular transsexual beauty contest, specializes in sex-change operations and advertises a large menu of plastic surgery procedures in the English-language Bangkok Post. Breast implants cost $1,125, liposuction costs $625, and sex-change surgery is $1,625, a bargain compared with U.S. prices, where male-to-female reassignment surgery typically runs in the tens of thousands of dollars. Thep said mostly Thais and other Asians, especially Vietnamese and Japanese, came to him for gender reassignment surgery. Occasionally he also gets foreigners from America or Europe. He said he performs about one sex-change surgery a week. Each procedure takes about two to three hours, and patients are typically able to return to their hotels a day after the operation. He said most patients have been living as women, dressing and taking hormones for years before appearing at the Bangkok clinic. His cramped office is stuffed with boxes of papers and photos of before-and-after breast enlargement, the most sought-after procedure. He has been performing sex-change surgeries for 10 of the 20 years he has worked as a plastic surgeon. "I'm pretty popular," he admitted Sunday. (AP)