Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, the ogre suspected of cannibalism

Nathaniel Bar-Jonah was an American criminal sentenced to 130 years in prison for attacks on several children, and suspected of being a cannibal killer.

Note: in this article I do not describe the sexual abuse suffered by the victims, all of them children. Suffice it to say it was the most serious part of his crimes.

Nathaniel Bar-Jonah’s first crimes

Nathaniel was born on February 15, 1957 in Worcester, Massachusetts, as David Paul Brown, the youngest of three children. Even as a baby he was strange: he had an insatiable appetite and could not bear being touched. According to him, his father was a very strict man who often beat him with a leather belt.

Nathaniel tried to kill as a child, just like Godino or Pomeroy. In July 1964, aged seven, he persuaded the neighbors’ five-year-old daughter to follow him into the basement, telling her he had received a Ouija board for his birthday that could predict the future.

Once in the basement he tried to strangle the girl. Her screams brought Nathaniel’s mother, who rushed to save her, but the boy got almost no punishment.

At 15 he cut letters and words out of magazines to write a note with which he tried to lure two boys to a cemetery, promising them $20 and a surprise. The boys’ mother did not press charges, thinking he needed psychiatric treatment. The following year, in May 1974, he tried to abduct a nine-year-old girl, Mary Patrone, who screamed and struggled until he let her go.

In March 1975, at 18, he dressed as a police officer and abducted an eight-year-old boy, Richard O’Conner, on his way to school. He attacked and strangled him. A neighbor saw everything from her window and called the police, who found the car and saved the boy when he was close to death.

A few days before graduation, again posing as a police officer, he abducted a nine-year-old girl in Hartford, Connecticut, and threw her out of the car when she started to feel ill. A witness took down the plate, but the news never reached his probation officer, and in May 1976 his probation for the first abduction ended normally, complete with a letter thanking him for his “co-operation”.

On September 24, 1977, posing as an FBI agent, he persuaded two boys coming out of a cinema in Shrewsbury to get into his car. He took them to an isolated spot, handcuffed and tortured them. He jumped repeatedly on the chest of one of them and, believing him dead, drove off with the other locked in the trunk. But the first boy regained consciousness and got help, and the other was found still alive.

For this crime he was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 18 to 20 years in prison.

Prison

In prison Nathaniel told a psychologist about his violent fantasies and was transferred to Bridgewater State Hospital, a psychiatric hospital, for observation. In the end he was committed there indefinitely.

He confided to psychiatrists that he fantasized about abducting, killing and eating children, and that his interest in torture had always been there.

On March 22, 1984 he legally changed his name to Nathaniel Benjamin Levi Bar-Jonah. He told friends and relatives he wanted to know what it was like to be discriminated against and persecuted as a Jew, and years later, in a TV interview, he claimed to be Jewish. In fact his family was of Scandinavian descent and his parents were Pentecostals.

That same year two psychologists testified he was no longer a danger to society and a judge ordered his release, which because of administrative problems only happened in July 1991.

Just a month later, on August 9, 1991, Bar-Jonah saw a seven-year-old boy sitting alone in a car outside a post office in Oxford, Massachusetts. He got into the car and sat on the boy’s chest. Some witnesses and the boy’s mother rushed over and he fled.

Arrested, he admitted he intended to kill the boy. But he was allowed to plead guilty only to assault, in exchange for two years’ probation and a promise to move to Great Falls, Montana, to live with his mother. The Montana authorities were never informed of his record.

The disappearance of Zachary Ramsay

On the morning of February 6, 1996 Zachary Ramsay, 10, left home in Great Falls to go to school, walking as usual through an alley. He never arrived at school and was never found.

Some witnesses said they had seen him in the alley, crying, followed by a very fat, upset man. An acquaintance of Bar-Jonah said he had seen him that morning by a dumpster in the alley, wearing a blue “police-like” jacket.

Detective Bill Bellusci immediately suspected him, but was twice denied a search warrant. Later investigations established that Bar-Jonah was not working that day, had access to his mother’s car while she was out of town for a funeral, and that for almost a month after the boy’s disappearance he made no significant grocery purchases, even though he weighed over 140 kilos.

The arrest and the cannibalism

On December 13, 1999 Bar-Jonah was seen for the third time in a week outside an elementary school, wearing a blue jacket and carrying two cans of pepper spray, a toy gun and a fake badge. He was arrested for impersonating a police officer and carrying a concealed weapon.

In his homes police found fake badges, a stun gun, a pulley hanging from the kitchen ceiling, albums of cut-out photos of children and a list of 54 boys’ names, including three boys he had abducted in the 1970s, and a “Zackery Ramsey” followed by the word “DIED”.

After months of work, with the help of the FBI, some notebooks written in code were deciphered. In them Bar-Jonah described torturing and eating children, with real macabre recipes, and hinted that he had served them to his neighbors.

After Zachary’s disappearance, in fact, he had started throwing cookouts where he served burgers, spaghetti, chili, meat pies and casseroles. Many guests noticed the meat tasted strange, and he replied that it was venison he had hunted, killed and butchered himself. But he owned neither a rifle nor a hunting license, and no one had ever seen him go hunting.

A former roommate said he had found clothes in his apartment similar to those Zachary was wearing the day he disappeared, along with bloody gloves. Another said Bar-Jonah had told him the boy would never be found, because he had been chopped up and the parts scattered in different places.

At one of his former homes police dug up the garage and sifted through almost two tons of soil, finding 21 fragments of human bone. They belonged to an unidentified Black child, aged between 8 and 13, but DNA showed they were not Zachary’s, nor did they match the human hair found in his kitchen.

Trial and death

In July 2000 Bar-Jonah was charged with kidnapping and assaulting three Native American boys and with Zachary Ramsay’s murder. The charge for Zachary, however, fell through: the boy’s mother, persuaded by the defense, testified that she believed her son was still alive.

Bar-Jonah was convicted of kidnapping, aggravated assault and sexual assault of three boys, and sentenced to 130 years in prison without parole. During the trial Mary Patrone, by then 36, also recognized him as the man who had tried to abduct her in 1974, but that crime was past the statute of limitations.

On April 13, 2008 he was found dead in his cell. He died of a heart attack, always claiming to be innocent.

In 2011, despite his mother’s objections, a judge declared Zachary Ramsay legally dead. Bar-Jonah is still suspected of other child murders, both in Montana and in New England, and his case led many activists to call for mandatory public registers of sex offenders.

Sources

• Nathaniel Bar-Jonah – Wikipedia