SACRAMENTO ? The strange saga of John Mark Karr, the man who put himself at the heart of the JonBenet Ramsey case, took another sharp turn Thursday when a Bay Area judge dismissed child pornography charges against him.

For the second time in nearly two months, Karr walked away from criminal charges involving young children. This time, as he walked out of the Sonoma County Jail, he declined to talk to reporters. But the dismissal of charges was so sudden and unexpected that his lead attorney text messaged a colleague, “Find him a place to stay tonight.”

Jury selection was to have begun Tuesday on five misdemeanor child pornography charges stemming from a 5-year-old-case in Petaluma, Calif. Karr, 41, who had been working as a teacher, vanished after the charges were filed but was extradited to Sonoma County last month from Boulder after a DNA test convinced prosecutors there that Karr’s confession he killed JonBenet in 1996 was bogus.