In the late 1990s, Nathaniel Bar-Jonah was accused of murdering a 10-year-old boy named Zachary Ramsay. Then, his neighbors remembered the strange meat he served them years earlier.
Warning: This article contains graphic descriptions and/or images of violent, disturbing, or otherwise potentially distressing events.
Police PhotoNathaniel Bar-Jonah kidnapped and sexually assaulted numerous children between the 1970s and 1990s, but his total number of victims is unknown.
Nathaniel Bar-Jonah’s life of crime began at an early age. He tried to strangle his first victim when he was just seven years old — and his attacks only escalated from there.
By the time he was 20, Bar-Jonah had kidnapped and assaulted multiple children in Massachusetts and Connecticut. In 1977, he was arrested and committed to a facility for the criminally insane, where he remained until 1991. But just a month after his release, he struck again. This time, he was allowed to remain free if he agreed to move to Montana with his mother.
Then, in 1996, 10-year-old Zachary Ramsay vanished in Montana. He was never found, but when police officers searched Bar-Jonah’s apartment for an unrelated crime three years later, they uncovered chilling evidence that suggested Bar-Jonah had played a role in the boy’s disappearance — and may have even cannibalized him.
Nathaniel Bar-Jonah was arrested once again in 2000, and he was sentenced to 130 years in prison for kidnapping and sexual assault. He died behind bars in 2008, and while he was never convicted of Ramsay’s murder, he’s remembered today as a 300-pound child molester with a taste for human flesh.
The Disturbing Early Life Of A Future Criminal
David Paul Brown was born in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1957. He legally changed his name to Nathaniel Bar-Jonah in 1984, allegedly because he wanted to know what it felt like to be discriminated against as a Jewish person — even though he wasn’t Jewish.
Even during his earliest years, there were chilling signs that Bar-Jonah wasn’t a normal child. When he received a Ouija board for his seventh birthday, he lured a five-year-old girl into his basement to see it. He then tried to strangle her, but her screams alerted his mother, who quickly intervened.
At age 15, Bar-Jonah once again attempted to lure two children into a cemetery. And in 1974, he tried to abduct a little girl. Neither of these attacks resulted in any serious harm, but by 1975, Bar-Jonah had grown bolder.
Concord Police DepartmentOne of Nathaniel Bar-Jonah’s mugshots from his numerous arrests in Massachusetts.
That March, he disguised himself as a police officer to kidnap and sexually assault an eight-year-old boy. A witness called the police, but by the time they arrived, the little boy was covered in blood and clinging to life. He ultimately survived, and Bar-Jonah was sentenced to probation in exchange for pleading guilty.
However, the looming threat of imprisonment didn’t stop him. In 1977, 20-year-old Bar-Jonah kidnapped two boys in Massachusetts while impersonating an FBI agent. He handcuffed them, drove them to a remote location, and then repeatedly jumped on the chest of one child. He weighed more than 300 pounds at the time, and he left the boy for dead as he drove away with his second victim in the trunk of his car.
After Bar-Jonah left, the boy regained consciousness and went for help, allowing the police to save the other child. Nathaniel Bar-Jonah was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to at least 18 years in prison. He was ultimately transferred to Bridgewater State Hospital, a facility for the criminally insane. But his disturbing crime spree had only just begun.
Nathaniel Bar-Jonah’s Life In Montana
While at Bridgewater, Nathaniel Bar-Jonah reportedly admitted that he fantasized about cannibalism. According to a New York Times article from 2001, a caseworker noted in 1980 that Bar-Jonah “expresses a curiosity about the taste of human flesh.”
Despite this, in 1991, a judge in Massachusetts agreed with two psychologists who had determined that Bar-Jonah was no longer a danger to the public. He was released from Bridgewater that July — and just one month later, he saw a seven-year-old boy sitting alone in a car outside a post office. He climbed into the vehicle and sat on the child, but bystanders intervened before he was seriously injured.
Bar-Jonah was arrested again, but he was permitted to plead guilty to assault and battery on the condition that he moved in with his mother, who was living in Great Falls, Montana.
YouTubeAfter Nathaniel Bar-Jonah’s Montana crimes came to light, authorities criticized the Massachusetts court system for letting him walk free.
Unfortunately, the change of scenery didn’t stop Bar-Jonah. He was arrested once more in 1994 for molesting a young boy, but the charges were dropped when the child’s mother refused to let him testify.
Then, in 1999, Nathaniel Bar-Jonah was spotted outside of a local elementary school on three separate occasions. He seemed to be impersonating a police officer, as he was wearing a blue jacket and carrying pepper spray and a fake gun and badge.
Investigators obtained a search warrant for Bar-Jonah’s home and uncovered more toy badges, a stun gun, and a hat that read “Security Enforcement.” But that wasn’t all.
According to court records, they also found photos of children alongside a handwritten “victim list.” The list included Bar-Jonah’s previous victims in Connecticut and Massachusetts, but one name stood out to investigators: Zachary Ramsay.
Ten-year-old Ramsay had vanished on Feb. 6, 1996, while walking to school. There had been no sign of him for more than three years, and detectives had seemingly just discovered why. Next to Ramsay’s name, Bar-Jonah had scrawled the word “DIED.”
Did Nathaniel Bar-Jonah Cannibalize Zachary Ramsay?
Nathaniel Bar-Jonah was swiftly arrested for kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder. The subsequent investigation turned up even more chilling evidence that suggested Bar-Jonah’s time in Montana had been more sinister than it seemed.
The police found encrypted notes in Bar-Jonah’s home with recipes for “little boy pot pie,” “french fried kid,” and “barbecue bee sum young guy.” They also uncovered a meat grinder clogged with human hair, blood-stained gloves, and even bone fragments. While the remains weren’t a match for Ramsay, these discoveries convinced investigators that Bar-Jonah was behind the boy’s disappearance.
This belief was strengthened by testimony from Bar-Jonah’s neighbors. As the Washington Post reported in 2001, around the time that Ramsay vanished, Bar-Jonah made several strange dishes for his neighbors, including chili and spaghetti sauce.
National Center for Missing & Exploited ChildrenZachary Ramsay, the 10-year-old boy who may have been killed and cannibalized by Nathaniel Bar-Jonah in 1996.
One woman recalled that the meat was “strange-tasting,” and Bar-Jonah told her that he’d butchered it himself. She assumed it was venison — but it may have been Zachary Ramsay.
Nathaniel Bar-Jonah’s trial began in 2002. He was found guilty of kidnapping and sexual assault, but he wasn’t convicted of murder because Ramsay’s mother testified that she believed her son was still alive.
Bar-Jonah was sentenced to 130 years in prison, but he died from a heart attack behind bars in 2008.
No additional mysteries have been solved in the years since his death, though he’s been tentatively linked to the disappearances of at least four additional victims in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Wyoming. For instance, while searching Bar-Jonah’s garage, detectives found the word “Tita” on the wall. This may have referred to James Teta, a 15-year-old boy who was raped and murdered in Massachusetts in 1973.
So, while Nathaniel Bar-Jonah wasn’t a convicted murderer, his crimes continue to haunt his victims and their families. And if the cannibalism allegations are accurate, he is every bit as disturbing as serial killers like Jeffrey Dahmer — but we may never know the grisly truth.
After reading about the crimes of Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, go inside the chilling story of Issei Sagawa, the cannibalistic killer who was caught and then walked free. Then, learn about James Jameson, the whiskey magnate who once bought an enslaved girl just to watch cannibals eat her.