FLORENCE, Ala. -- While seeking a degree from University of North Alabama, Ann Stutts remembers a fellow student in the childhood education program asking her to join him for lunch one day in 1999.

The classmate was John Mark Karr, and at the time Stutts didn't mind sharing a seat.

The next year in January, Kaley Davidson, like any other fifth grade student, trusted her new student teacher at Kilby Laboratory School.

When Karr started asking strange questions and making certain comments to her and the other girls in the classroom, Davidson didn't think much about it.

However, when both Stutts and Davidson found out that Karr had been linked to the brutal slaying of 6-year-old JonBenet Ramsey in Boulder, Colo., they looked back at their moments spent with Karr and questioned them.

"When I saw his face on the news (Wednesday) night, I screamed," Stutts told the Florence, Ala. Times Daily newspaper. "I was just sick. I could not sleep last night. I was lying there counting back, and I said to myself if he had anything to do with it, it had already been done by the time we were in class together."

After watching a newscast Wednesday night, Davidson also got a "very creepy feeling," according to the newspaper.

"I remember how he would call me out in the hall and ask unnecessary questions, like what I wanted to be when I grew up and what I did with my friends for fun. I didn't think a lot about it because he was a teacher, and kids are supposed to trust teachers," Davidson told the newspaper.

"I believe had he stayed, something bad would have happened," Davidson also told the Times Daily.

Karr enrolled at UNA during the spring of 1998 and had an internship at Kilby Laboratory School in Florence, but Karr quickly withdrew from the university in February of 2000 when Kilby Laboratory began reporting some problems, said the Times Daily.

"He was paying too much attention to the young girls. I had a meeting with him and gave him some fatherly advice about when a man is teaching in elementary school he's got to make sure he keeps his distance from the girls he's around. The second meeting I had with him was not nearly as nice as the first. When his actions continued, I set up a meeting (with UNA officials) to address our concerns. We were sitting there waiting, but (Karr) never showed up," Jim Hope, then-principal, said to the newspaper.

The topic of being close to young girls also came up during lunch with Stutts.

"We just talked about the profession and our love for children," she told the newspaper, "I remember him asking me if I saw anything wrong with a teacher hugging a child or if a child sat in his lap."

In December 1999, Stutts graduated from UNA, a month before Karr's internship at Kilby.

Stutts came by the school to visit one day after she graduated and was greeted warmly by the students, according to the Times Daily.

She also saw Karr.

"He asked me later, 'How do you make those children love you so much? They'll never love me that way.'" Stutts said to the newspaper.