Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

Nathaniel Benjamin Levi Bar-Jonah (born David Paul Brown; February 15, 1957 – April 13, 2008) was an American convicted child molester and suspected cannibalistic serial killer who was sentenced to 130 years in prison without the possibility of parole after being convicted of the kidnapping, aggravated assault and sexual assault of various children.

Early life and criminal history Nathaniel Bar-Jonah was born David Paul Brown in Worcester, Massachusetts, on February 15, 1957, the youngest of three children to Phillip and Tyra Brown, an aircraft mechanic and a housewife. When Tyra was three months pregnant with Bar-Jonah, she was involved in a serious car accident when another driver slammed into the back of her vehicle while she was sitting at a red light, resulting in her having to wear a neck brace for the last six months of her pregnancy.

At age 15, Bar-Jonah cut letters and words out of magazines and composed a note that he used to attempt to entice two young boys from Webster to a cemetery, offering them $20 and a surprise. In that case, the mother of the two boys declined to press charges against Bar-Jonah, thinking it would be best if he received psychiatric treatment.

In March 1975, now aged 18, Bar-Jonah impersonated a police officer in order to abduct eight-year-old Richard O'Conner on his way to school, proceeding to sexually assault and choke the boy. A neighbor, looking out of her window, observed the abduction and notified authorities, who began searching for O'Conner. A patrol car later observed a vehicle matching that used in the abduction parked far away from others in a parking lot, and after calling for backup, ordered Bar-Jonah out of the car. A bloodied O'Conner was found inside the car, having defecated and urinated on himself from the sexual assault, and was near the point of death.

A few days before his high school graduation, Bar-Jonah drove to nearby Hartford, Connecticut, and, again impersonating a police officer, abducted a nine-year-old girl. However, after the child began vomiting and convulsing from the assault, he drove up to a sidewalk and threw the girl out of the car. A nearby witness saw the incident and got Bar-Jonah's license plate, leading to his arrest. News of this assault never reached Bar-Jonah's probation officer, and he was released from parole in May 1976 for his earlier abduction and sexual assault of O'Conner. When Bar-Jonah's probationary period was over, he received a letter thanking him for his "co-operation." At the conclusion of the observation period, Bar-Jonah was sentenced to an indefinite term at Bridgewater.

Incarceration and release On March 22, 1984, David Paul Brown legally changed his name to "Nathaniel Benjamin Levi Bar-Jonah." He gave several reasons for changing his name; he told friends and relatives that he wanted to know what it was like to be discriminated against and persecuted as a Jew. During a later 2008 interview with Dr. Michael H. Stone for the television show Most Evil, he claimed he was Jewish and wanted his name to reflect that. In fact, Bar-Jonah's ethnic ancestry was Scandinavian and his parents were both active in the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal sect, and he did not pursue any further connection to Judaism other than the name change.

Later in 1984, Bar-Jonah, along with two psychologists that had evaluated him, won a parole hearing after the psychologists testified that he was no longer a threat to society. Superior Court Judge Walter Steele ruled that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had failed to prove that Bar-Jonah was dangerous,

Another witness reported seeing Ramsay standing in the alleyway. Yet another witness, who lived near the end of the alleyway, reported seeing Ramsay crying with an upset obese adult male following him a few feet behind at about 7:45 a.m. A witness who personally knew Bar-Jonah reported seeing him standing beside a dumpster in the alleyway at 7:15 a.m. while taking out the trash; he was wearing a navy-blue "police-like" jacket. The same witness also reported seeing Ramsay enter the alleyway later and that Bar-Jonah was still standing beside the dumpster.

Two days after the property searches, Bellusci was granted a second search warrant for any documents and photographic material. While searching Bar-Jonah's apartment, detectives found a list of fifty-four boys' names called "Lake Webster," which were later identified as boys from Bar-Jonah's youth in Massachusetts, including three of whom he had been convicted of abducting in the mid-1970sand a "Zackery Ramsey," followed by the word "DIED." Furthermore, dozens of newspaper clippings were found in Bar-Jonah's apartment following the Ramsay case. Hundreds of thousands of photographs of children, and undeveloped film containing sexual images of Bar-Jonah and three Native American boys, who later testified against him, were also recovered. as well as the kidnapping and sexual assault of three other boys, and the murder of Zach Ramsay. Bar-Jonah was held at the Cascade County jail in Great Falls. He pleaded innocent to all of the charges. Prosecutors announced they would be seeking the death penalty. Bar-Jonah was sentenced to 130 years in prison. He maintained his innocence up until his death.

Montana authorities were unaware of Bar-Jonah's criminal record in Massachusetts, a fact that was cited by activists campaigning to force former sex offenders to register. Bar-Jonah was found unresponsive in his prison cell on the morning of April 13, 2008. He had been in poor health. His postmortem found significant levels of LDL in his arteries and myocardial infarction was the determined cause of death.

Further investigations Suspected victims Although Bar-Jonah was never convicted of Ramsay's abduction and murder, he is still widely believed to have been responsible and is also suspected to have committed additional homicides in Montana because of the findings made in his residences. Evidence shows Bar-Jonah frequently traveled to Massachusetts, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Wyoming, Michigan and Washington State. He was also investigated for possible crimes in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, where he lived at times during the 1990s, but police found no links between him and any unsolved cases.

Janice Kathryn Pockett, aged 7, vanished on July 26, 1973, at 3:00 p.m. after leaving her Tolland, Connecticut, home to look for a butterfly she had left under a rock in a wooded area on Rhodes Road. A road less than a mile from their house is where her mother discovered her bicycle a half-hour later. After discovering the butterfly, the authorities assumed that Pockett had been kidnapped. Investigators believe Bar-Jonah may have been involved in her case after it was discovered that he lived twenty miles away, in Webster, at the time she disappeared. He would have been only sixteen years old when Janice vanished, but Pockett's disappearance occurred only ten months prior to his attempted abduction of Patrone. When detectives sprayed Bar-Jonah's garage with a phosphorus chemical while investigating the Ramsay disappearance, the word "Tita" appeared, which led authorities to believe that he may have been responsible for the abduction of 15-year-old James Teta, a Massachusetts youth. At 11:30 a.m. on August 23, 1973, Teta left his home on Suffolk Avenue in Revere, Massachusetts, to hitchhike to Boston. He was last seen two hours later near Boston's Government Center. Teta's body was discovered on August 25, in woodland near a desolate stretch of roadway in Rindge, New Hampshire, off of Route 119. His body was nude and an autopsy revealed that he had been raped and strangled. His case remains unsolved. Four-year-old Andrew John Amato resided in a mobile home on Richards Avenue in Webster, Massachusetts. On the morning of September 30, 1978, Amato spent the day playing with his sister, aged 7, and their cousin, aged 6, in the woods behind the neighboring Ash Street Trailer Park. Without his sister, Amato and his cousin ventured further into the woods. Amato eventually fell and hurt himself, dropped and misplaced his favorite toy, and then started sobbing and running in circles. Amato refused to leave without the toy. By 10:30 a.m., Amato's cousin advised him to remain where he was and went back to the house to get help. Nevertheless, by the time they got back to the woods, Amato had disappeared. He has not been seen or heard from since. About fifty yards from Road 52, which is now Interstate 395, the boy vanished. Some people theorize that he wandered over to the road and was picked up by a passing motorist. Bar-Jonah was investigated for possible involvement in Amato's case. Another case tentatively linked to Bar-Jonah was the unsolved disappearance of 14-year-old Amanda Dawn Gallion.

Allegations of cannibalism Bar-Jonah's earliest interest in cannibalism can be traced to his childhood. Beginning at about the age of 6, he would pick at his scabs until they bled, then proceed to suck on the blood from the wound. School authorities would call his mother numerous times to notify her that his habit was upsetting to the teachers and students. When he was incarcerated in Montana State Prison, many of the staff and prisoners observed him perform the same habit. One guard reported that once Bar-Jonah had a scab in his mouth that he "appeared to be having sex." One therapist noted that his "sexual fantasies, bizarre in nature, outline methods of torture [and] extend ... to dissection and cannibalism" and that he "express[ed] a curiosity about the taste of human flesh."