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.
As an infant, Bar-Jonah was described as being inactive and having an insatiable appetite, which resulted in him crying incessantly when he was not being fed. This caused him to gain so much weight as a baby that he became practically immobile due to his undeveloped muscle tone, and his parents struggled to carry him. Bar-Jonah also appeared to be strongly averse to being touched, and at three weeks old experienced hydrocephalus.
Shortly after Bar-Jonah's birth, his family moved to Lantana, Florida, and stayed there for six years when his father worked for McDonnell Douglas. In 1964, the family moved back to Worcester when Bar-Jonah's father became a heavy equipment mechanic at a local construction firm. According to Bar-Jonah, his father was a strict disciplinarian who frequently beat him with a thick leather belt, due to his fear that his son would grow up to be homosexual and because Bar-Jonah was a kleptomaniac who frequently stole from his siblings and other children.
In late July 1964, before the move back to Massachusetts, a then seven-year-old Bar-Jonah lured a five-year-old female neighbor into his basement, telling her that he had received a Ouija board for his birthday that could predict the future. Once in his basement, Brown attempted to choke the girl. The child's screams attracted the attention of Bar-Jonah's mother, who came to her rescue, but he got off with little to no punishment.
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. The following year, in May 1974, Bar-Jonah attempted to abduct nine-year-old Mary Patrone in Woodstock, Connecticut, but released her when she screamed and resisted.
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."
On September 24, 1977, Bar-Jonah, claiming to be an undercover FBI agent, convinced two boys coming out of a movie theater in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, to enter his vehicle. He then transported the boys to a secluded area, where he handcuffed and tortured them. After jumping repeatedly on the chest of one of the boys, the Bar-Jonah believed he had killed him, then drove off with the other boy still alive in his trunk. However, the first boy regained consciousness and managed to find help, leading shortly thereafter to Bar-Jonah's arrest; the other boy was found, still alive, in the trunk. For this crime, Bar-Jonah was convicted of attempted murder and received the maximum sentence of eighteen to twenty years at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution – Concord, but was later transferred to the Bridgewater State Hospital for observation after sharing his violent sexual fantasies with a prison psychologist. 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."Suspected Cannibal Linked to Youth Group" , Hartford Courant. Accessed October 5, 2022
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, and ordered him released on February 12, 1991. Administrative issues prevented his release until July of that year. During this time, Bar-Jonah confided in psychiatrists that he fantasized about abducting, murdering and cannibalizing children. A psychiatrist at Bridgewater was apparently informed by Bar-Jonah that his interest in torture had long existed and that his primary means of sexual arousal came from the violent thoughts he entertained.
On August 9, 1991, just a month after being released from Bridgewater, Bar-Jonah observed a seven-year-old boy sitting alone in a car outside of a post office in Oxford, Massachusetts. Bar-Jonah, who weighed at the time, entered the vehicle and sat on the boy's chest. Some witnesses, along with the boy's mother, observed the event and ran to the boy's rescue, causing Bar-Jonah to flee. An officer recognised Bar-Jonah's description from over fifteen years earlier, and he was later arrested for the attack. At first, Bar-Jonah claimed that he entered the car to get out of the rain, but later admitted that he intended to kill the boy. For the attack, Bar-Jonah was given permission by the Worcester County District Attorney to enter a guilty plea to assault and battery in exchange for a two-year probationary period and the promise that he would move to Great Falls, Montana, to live with his mother.
Arrest and discovery On February 6, 1996, ten-year-old Zachary Xerxes "Zach" Ramsay left the apartment he shared with his mother at around 7:34 a.m. to attend Whittier School, taking his usual route through an alleyway near the 400 block of north Fourth Street in Great Falls. He never arrived at school. Ramsay was wearing a blue denim jacket with green sleeves, a blue football jersey with his last name imprinted on the back in gold letters, stonewashed jeans and black high-top sneakers. A family of three who lived in an apartment overlooking the alleyway reported seeing Ramsay there that morning, and also reported seeing an off-white, four-door car nearly run him over.
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.
Somewhere in the alley between Sixth Street and Seventh, Ramsay disappeared and he was never found. School officials contacted his mother when he failed to report for classes that day. His mother filed a missing person's report later that afternoon. Detective Bill Bellusci was given a list of local registered sex offenders by the FBI, but focused his suspicion on Bar-Jonah, who was not on the list. Bellusci requested a search warrant for the house where Bar-Jonah and his mother lived after police made an unsuccessful attempt to access the property, but he was denied. Bellusci unsuccessfully solicited a new search warrant. Shortly afterward, Bar-Jonah moved out of his mother's house.
On December 13, 1999, Bar-Jonah was seen outside an elementary school for the third time in a week. He was wearing a dark-blue jacket and a knit cap, and was carrying two cans of pepper spray, a toy gun and badge. Bellusci and the Montana attorney general charged Bar-Jonah with impersonating an officer and for carrying a concealed weapon. A judge approved a search warrant on December 15, for impersonation objects in both Bar-Jonah's new apartment and his mother's house. Police found two coats, one with a toy badge in the pocket, a second toy badge, a stun gun, and a baseball cap reading "Security Enforcement". They also found a pulley on the ceiling of Bar-Jonah's kitchen, two albums with cut-outs of children, a document about knots and bondage and an article on autoerotic asphyxia.
Police investigations conducted years after Ramsay's disappearance determined that Bar-Jonah had access to his mother's off-white, four-door 1978 Toyota Corolla the day Ramsay vanished, and that his mother and brother were out of town for a funeral. It was moreover determined that Bar-Jonah did not work on the day of the disappearance, nor on the days immediately preceding.
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.