Episode 175: Nathaniel Bar-Jonah
Nathaniel Bar-Jonah was born David Paul Brown on February 15th, 1957, in Worcester, Massachusetts. He was the youngest of three children, and his parents Philip and Tyra Brown were thrilled to have another baby boy. Nathaniel was a very difficult newborn and infant who was described as crying incessantly and having an insatiable appetite, and he would scream and shriek all the time and would only stop when he was being fed. As a result, Nathaniel gained a significant amount of weight and was not able to move, and this caused very weak muscle tone and strength. He was difficult to carry due to this, and he was also described as seeming like he was averse to any kind of touch or physical contact. He remained overweight throughout the rest of his life and used his weight and size against the small children he abducted and attacked.
Nathaniel was often enduring beatings from his father, who would beat him with a thick leather belt “to keep him from becoming gay” and as a result of him stealing, which he did frequently from a young age. He also developed a habit of picking off old scabs and then grotesquely sucking the blood from them in a way that greatly disturbed his teachers and classmates. This behavior also continued throughout the rest of his life.
In late July of 1964, Nathaniel, who was 7 at this time, lured a 5-year-old neighbor into his basement. He had gotten an ouija board as a birthday gift and he told the young girl that he could predict the future with it. The girl was intrigued by this, but instead of getting to play with the board, Nathaniel started to wrap his hands around her throat and choke her. She fought and screamed, and Tyra heard the commotion and pulled her son off of the girl. Tyra barely scolded or punished Nathaniel for this, and his behaviors continued to escalate.
At the age of 13, he lured a 6-year-old boy from the neighborhood to a hill outside so they could go sledding, but once they got there Nathaniel raped him. At the age of 15, Nathaniel cut letters and words out of magazines to put together a ransom note that he used to try and lure two young boys to a cemetery. The note said he would give them $20 and a surprise. Thankfully the mother of the boys apprehended this and didn’t want to press charges as she instead requested he receive psychiatric treatment. Nathaniel never received this, and the following year in May of 1974, Nathaniel attempted to abduct a 9-year-old girl named Mary Patrone in Woodstock, Connecticut. He let her go after she screamed and fought back.
At the age of 17 in March of 1975, Nathaniel dressed as a police officer and tricked 8-year-old Richard O’Conner, who was on his way to school. Nathaniel abducted him and the abduction was witnessed by a neighbor who happened to be looking out her window. Police searched for Richard and Nathaniel and found a car that matched the description of the car used to abduct Richard. Richard was miraculously still alive but on the brink of death after he had been choked and brutally sexually assaulted. Just days before his high school graduation, Nathaniel drove to Hartford, Connecticut and once again impersonated a police officer to abduct a child. The 9-year-old girl he kidnapped was so traumatized from his assault that she was vomiting and began convulsing. He threw her out of the car onto the sidewalk and drove off, but was seen by a witness. This assault was never relayed back to Nathaniel’s probation officer and he was released in May of 1976.
On September 24th, 1977, Nathaniel pretended to be an FBI agent and approached two young boys leaving a movie theater in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts. He got them to get into his car where he drove them to a secluded area, handcuffed them and tortured them. Nathaniel, weighing 375 pounds at this time, repeatedly jumped on the chest of one of the boys until he thought he killed him before throwing the other boy into the trunk of his car and driving away. The boy who was left for death actually pretended to be dead and ran and got help, saving his friend who was still alive in the trunk of the car. Nathaniel was convicted of attempted murder and was sentenced to the maximum sentence of 18-20 years at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution. He was later moved to Bridgewater State Hospital for a psychiatric evaluation after he told a prison psychologist his violent and twisted sexual fantasies.
On March 22nd, 1984, Nathaniel, who was still David Paul Brown, legally changed his name to “Nathaniel Benjamin Levi Bar-Jonah.” Nathaniel told several friends and relatives that he wanted to know what it was like to be persecuted and discriminated against as a Jewish person, so he picked a Jewish name, despite not actually being Jewish.
Despite continued comments to his psychiatrists about his violent thoughts of abducting, assaulting, violently murdering and then eating children, Nathaniel was deemed no longer a danger to society and was released from Bridgewater State Hospital in July of 1991. Less than a month later, he was found sitting on top of and attempting to smother a 7-year-old boy sitting in a car by himself outside of a post office in Oxford, Massachusetts. The responding officer recognized the description of the perpetrator as Nathaniel from an arrest prior to his stay at Bridgewater, and Nathaniel was apprehended. For the attack, Nathaniel was given permission by the Worcester County District Attorney to enter a guilty plea for assault and battery in exchange for a two-year probation and that he would promise to move out to Great Falls, Montana where his mother now resided.
Once there, Nathaniel began obsessively collecting children’s toys and Star Wars memorabilia and selling them at yard sales that attracted large amounts of kids. In December of 1993, he was accused of molestation by an 8-year-old boy who he was babysitting. Nathaniel’s defense was that he would have killed the boy if he had really molested him. His lawyer argued that his right to a speedy trial had been violated and the case was dropped.
On February 6th, 1996, 10-year-old Zachary Ramsay left his apartment where he lived with his mom to walk to school. He left at around 7:34 a.m. in the direction of Whittier School in Great Falls, Montana, but never arrived. He was last seen taking the route he always took: through an alleyway near the 400 block of north Fourth Street. A witness reported seeing Zach standing in the alley, and someone else saw him crying and an obese adult male following him at around 7:45 a.m. Another witness recognized now 38-year-old Nathaniel as he knew him personally, and he saw Nathaniel dressed in a jacket that looked like what a police officer would wear and standing beside a dumpster in the alley at 7:15 a.m. Detective Bill Bellusci was put in charge of the case and attempted to get search warrants to investigate Nathaniel’s home, but was denied twice. He was finally successful when police were called to an elementary school where Nathaniel had been waiting outside and watching children dressed as a police officer three times in one week.
The warrants were to his apartment as well as his mother’s home he had recently moved out of, and police found two police jackets, two fake badges, a stun gun, a baseball cap with text on it that said “Security Enforcement,” a knotted rope hanging from the ceiling of his kitchen, two albums with cut-out images of children, a paper about knots and bondage and an article on autoerotic asphyxia, which was what the rope in the kitchen was for. Two days after the searches of the home and apartment, Detective Bellusci was finally granted a second search warrant for any documents and pornographic material again for both properties.
While searching the apartment, detectives found a list titled “Lake Webster” of 54 boys names that were identified mostly as boys that Nathaniel knew or interacted with growing up, three of whom he had attempted to abduct and the name “Zackary Ramsey”. Next to Zach’s name he had written “DIED.” Police also found dozens of newspaper clippings about Zach’s disappearance as well as over 3,500 photos of children and film that hadn’t been developed yet that contained sexual images of Nathaniel and three boys who were not identified. Investigators also found notebooks with characters and stories that were believed to be in code. The FBI worked for months on decoding the stories and discovered that Nathaniel was writing about torturing and then eating children. They also found recipes that he wrote about preparing children’s body parts, some of which were titled “Little Boy Pot Pie,” “French Fried Kid,” “Sex A La Carte,” “My Little Kid Dessert.” Phrases were also written with the recipes such as “Lunch is served on the patio with roasted child" and "Barbecue bee sum young guy." He wrote that he fed meat from children that he cooked to his neighbors, and multiple neighbors had commented at cookouts that the meat they were eating tasted odd or even repulsive. Nathaniel told them it was venison, but never hunted and didn’t have hunting gear or a license.
On July 5th, 2000, Montana police charged Nathaniel Bar-Jonah with kidnapping and sexual assault of three other boys and the murder of Zach Ramsay. Prosecutors reported that they were seeking the death penalty. He was prosecuted for the abduction and sexual assault of the three boys and convicted of kidnapping, aggravated assault and sexual assault, and charges were brought up for torturing one of the boys and hanging him from the rope from his ceiling. Nathaniel’s defense team pushed Zach’s mom and used her grief to get her to testify that she thought that he was still alive. This key testimony resulted in jurors not convicting Nathaniel for Zach’s murder.
Nathaniel was sentenced to 130 years in prison in 2002 and maintained his innocence. It was revealed that Montana authorities were unaware of Nathaniel’s extensive record in Massachusetts.
On April 13th, 2008, 51-year-old Nathaniel Bar-Jonah was found unresponsive in his prison cell. Postmortem examination found that he had significant levels of cholesterol in his arteries and he had had a massive heart attack.
Although he was never convicted for the murder of Zachary Ramsey, it is majorly suspected that he was responsible. Zachary was declared legally dead in 2011. Nathaniel traveled frequently to Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Massachusetts, Michigan, Washington, and Wyoming and he was also investigated for possible crimes in the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Alberta where he lived in the 90’s.
Several other cases may be linked to Nathaniel Bar-Jonah such as:
The disappearance of Janice Pockett, who was 7-years-old when she disappeared on July 26th, 1973 from her Tolland, Connecticut home when she went to ride her bike to look for a butterfly. Police believe she was abducted after both her bicycle and the butterfly were found without a trace of her. Nathaniel lived in Webster, Massachusetts, about 20 miles away at that time, and while he was only 16-years-old this was just ten months before his assault on Mary Patrone.
During the investigation of Zach Ramsey’s disappearance, Nathaniel’s garage was sprayed with a phosphorus chemical compound that revealed the word “Tita.” Authorities immediately linked this to the murder of 15-year-old James Teta from Massachusetts. On August 23rd, 1973, James left his Revere, Massachusetts home at about 11:30 a.m. to hitchhike to Boston. He was last seen two hours later near Government Center. His body was found two days later on August 25th in the woods off of Route 119 in Rindge, New Hampshire. He had been strangled and sexually assaulted and his case remains unsolved.
4-year-old Andrew Amato lived in a mobile home with his family in Webster, Massachusetts and was playing with his sister and their cousin on September 30th, 1978 in the woods behind the Ash Street Trailer Park. Andrew and his cousin, who was 6-years-old, walked off into the woods when Andrew tripped and fell. He dropped his favorite toy in the process and got very upset, crying and running in circles trying to find it and refusing to leave. His cousin told him to stay where he was and went to get help, but when his cousin came back with grown ups, Andrew was gone. His disappearance is unsolved.
On October 13th, 1997, 14-year-old Amanda Dawn Gallion left her Gillette, Wyoming home at 7:15 a.m. on her bike to head to school. Nathaniel had arrived in Gillette just the night before and was staying at a motel, and was back home in Montana the next night. Amanda’s bicycle was eventually discovered along the side of the road off of Interstate 90. She has not been seen or heard from since.
During a search at one of his previous homes in Great Falls, authorities dug up the garage and had to dig through almost two tons of dirt where they found 21 fragments of human bones. The bones were found to belong to an unidentified black male between the ages of 8 and 13. Police attempted to examine the sewer pipes under the home, but the owner said that they had been replaced because they were constantly getting clogged.
Image sources:
allthatsinteresting.com - “Nathaniel Bar-Jonah: The 300-Pound Child Murderer and Suspected Cannibal”