Boulder, Colo. - Most Americans knew JonBenet Ramsey only in death, as the blonde-haired little girl in the ruffled pink cowgirl outfit, bouncing across the stage with a million-dollar smile.

This undated family handout photo shows JonBenet Ramsey. A former schoolteacher was arrested Wednesday August 16, 2006 in Thailand in the slaying of 6-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey, a surprise breakthrough in a lurid, decade-old murder case some feared would never be solved.  [AP Photo]

"I want to be a cowboy sweetheart," she sang, with a white hat atop her moussed, golden curls.

The performance captured on video was played around the world after the 6-year-old beauty pageant competitor was found strangled and beaten on December 26, 1996. The images persisted on TV talk shows for years afterward, helping feed theories about her killer.

On Wednesday, authorities in Thailand arrested a man suspected in her slaying. The district attorney disclosed no details, but the Ramsey family's attorney in Atlanta said the suspect was a schoolteacher who once lived in nearby Conyers, Ga. The family attorney, Lin Wood, refused to say if the Ramseys knew him.

JonBenet was born in Atlanta on August 6, 1990, to John Bennett Ramsey, a successful business executive, and his second wife, Patsy, a onetime Miss West Virginia. The family lived in the suburb of Dunwoody for several years before moving to Colorado in 1991. The couple moved back to Atlanta after their daughter's slaying.

JonBenet was named after her father, with the name pronounced in a French-inspired manner as "zhawn-ben-AY," and spent most of her life in the liberal mountain town of Boulder.

JonBenet made the honor roll at her elementary school the month before she died, and attended a local Episcopal church. Family and friends described her as an inquisitive, giving child who loved Shirley Temple movies.

In the last year of her life, JonBenet followed her mother's footsteps into beauty pageants. After her death, the world took a closer look at the children's beauty pageant circuit, where youngsters parade in makeup and elaborate hairstyles, sometimes when they are barely out of diapers.

She learned how to walk, gesture and perform, and collected a wardrobe of elaborate costumes, including that of a Las Vegas showgirl and a cowgirl. Although JonBenet loved to perform, family and friends said the competitions did not rule her life.

In her last months, JonBenet charmed judges into awarding her numerous beauty pageant titles, including Little Miss Colorado, America's Royale Miss and National Tiny Miss Beauty.

As they traveled to competitions, mother and daughter would sing their favorite song, a tune from "Gypsy," a musical and movie about a mother obsessed with making her daughter a star.

"Wherever we go, whatever we do, we're gonna get through it together," they would sing, a minister told mourners at JonBenet's funeral.

JonBenet was buried in Marietta, Ga., next to the grave of her half sister, Elizabeth Ramsey, 22, who died in a car crash in Ohio in 1992. In the coffin, she was dressed in a beauty pageant dress and tiara, with a stuffed toy animal in her arms.