On August 9, 1991 Nathaniel Bar Jonah (a.k.a. David P. Brown) was arrested in Webster after getting into a stranger’s car and sitting on a 7-year-old boy’s lap while the boy's mother was running errands. Later that month District Attorney John Conte allowed Bar Jonah to take a plea bargain under which he avoided jail on the condition that he moved to Montana with his mother. Conte made this deal in spite of the fact that Bar Jonah had a long criminal history that included attempted murder and kidnapping. A month before he was arrested in Webster Bar Jonah had been released from the Bridgewater Treatment Center for the Sexually Dangerous. Once in Montana Bar Jonah stalked and molested young boys for a decade culminating in a conviction for murdering and cannibalizing one of his victims. Conte claims he had little choice but to let Bar Jonah go in 1991. The people of Montana know better and the people of Worcester should too. Conte must be held to task for his reckless disregard for public safety in this matter. He has yet to give a full explanation of why he let such a dangerous person go on the condition that he leave the state. If Montana sent us their pedophiles and murderers we would be outraged, as we should be. Conte must explain himself on this.

April 14, 2008

Sex offender’s death leaves local questions

By Kim Ring TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

The death of a former Massachusetts sex offender, who Montana police believe killed and cannibalized a boy in Montana in 1996, has left one of his local victims wondering what secrets Nathaniel Bar-Jonah may have taken to his grave.

Mr. Bar-Jonah, 51, a former resident of Dudley and Webster, was found dead in his Montana State Prison cell early yesterday. The cause of his death has not been determined, though a prison spokesman said he had been in ill health. The convicted sex offender was serving a 130-year sentence for kidnapping, sexually assaulting and choking a teenage neighbor boy.

In 2000, Montana authorities also charged Bar-Jonah with murder in the 1996 disappearance of 10-year-old Zach Ramsay. They said they had evidence suggesting Mr. Bar-Jonah had butchered the boy and disposed of his body in meals served to neighbors; they were later forced to dismiss the murder charge after the boy’s mother said she would testify she believed her son was still alive.

Alan Enrikaitis of Shrewsbury said he remembers well the day in 1977 when he and a friend accepted a ride from Mr. Bar-Jonah, who at that time used his given name, David Brown.

“I remember he said he had a trailer in the woods and he was going to take me and my friend there separately,” Mr. Enrikaitis said. The boys were handcuffed and Mr. Enrikaitis’ friend was locked in the trunk of a car that looked like an unmarked police cruiser. They’d been told their abductor was a police officer and that they were under arrest.

“We kept walking down a path until there wasn’t much of a path left. Then, all the noises you hear in the woods just stopped and he grabbed me from behind and started choking me,” Mr. Enrikaitis said. He struggled, then played possum as Mr. Bar-Jonah kicked at him and flicked ashes from a cigarette on him. When he had the chance, the boy ran for help.

Police later apprehended Mr. Bar-Jonah and he pleaded guilty in Worcester Superior Court to charges of kidnapping, attempted murder and impersonation of a police officer.

He spent less than two years in prison before being transferred to Bridgewater State Hospital, where he spent 11 years.

A judge ordered his release in 1991. A short time later he was arrested in Oxford, where he had assaulted a boy sitting in a car outside a post office. Under a plea agreement that would become controversial as details of the suspected crimes in Montana materialized, Mr. Bar-Jonah received a suspended jail sentence, on the condition he move to Montana with his mother.

As news from Montana reached Mr. Enrikaitis in 2000, he wondered if his abductor would finally begin to talk.

“When he abducted us, when he was choking me, he seemed like he was experienced, like he’d done this before,” Mr. Enrikaitis said.

And in fact, he may have. Mr. Bar-Jonah allegedly choked a schoolmate in 1963 when he was 6 years old; in 1974 he violently assaulted another boy.

“I just always hoped that he’d eventually talk and say what he’d done with other bodies, where he’d put them, so some other families could have some peace,” Mr. Enrikaitis said.

But there is no evidence that Mr. Bar-Jonah ever killed anyone in Massachusetts, said former Webster Police Sgt. John A. Bolduc Jr., who, with Sgt. Michaela Kelly, spent countless hours reviewing a list of names found among Mr. Bar-Jonah’s things in Montana. The list was titled “Lake Webster” and police were never able to confirm that any of those listed were murder victims, though some had been assaulted by Mr. Bar-Jonah.

“It wasn’t any sort of hit list,” Mr. Bolduc said. He and Sgt. Kelly looked for links to the cases of several missing or murdered people but most often found none.

While he never spoke with Mr. Bar-Jonah, Mr. Bolduc would have liked the chance. Still, he’s not sure what, if any, information he might have gained.

“From what I understand, he’s never been forthright. He always played games and spoke in riddles.”

Material from The Associated Press was used in this report.

Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2002

First trial - Great Falls, Montana                                                          

I asked Nathan for his reaction as to how the trial was conducted: "I thought that the judge was very bias toward me and my attorneys. In almost every case with motions and all he sided with the prosecution." Nathan Bar-Jonah - 3/6/02

Nathan received the maximum sentence of 130 years without parole.

March 31, 2002

Questions raised in Bar-Jonah case

Martin Luttrell, Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)

Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, accused of killing a 10-year-old Montana boy, left Massachusetts in 1991 after authorities failed to prosecute him for being in a car with an unattended 7-year-old boy in Oxford, alleges the lawyer for the Oxford boy's family.

The fact that Mr. Bar-Jonah was arrested less than two months after being released from Bridgewater State Hospital, where he had been incarcerated 11 years and classified as a sexually dangerous person, should have been sufficient warning that he posed a danger to the community, lawyer John W. Towns said.

Mr. Towns said a plea bargain agreement was thrust on the boy's family by then-Oxford Police Chief James Triplett and a prosecutor in Dudley District Court little more than a week after Mr. Bar-Jonah's arrest in August 1991. He said the prosecution failed to tell the judge or the boy's family that there were signed witness statements, or even that Mr. Bar-Jonah had signed a statement admitting that he got into the car with the boy.

In addition, Mr. Towns alleges that at no time on the day of the plea agreement were Mr. Bar-Jonah's records of conviction and incarceration shown to the judge, which he argues would be standard in such a case.

The judge, Sarkis Teshoian, was not informed that the previous day Judge Milton H. Raphaelson, sitting in the same courtroom, had ordered that Mr. Bar-Jonah undergo a psychiatric exam.

Judge Teshoian found sufficient facts for a finding of guilty on charges of assault and battery and breaking and entering into a motor vehicle with intent to commit a felony, placing a person in fear. He orally agreed to the plea agreement, said Mr. Towns, who was in the courtroom. But the judge also wrote on the docket sheet that Mr. Bar-Jonah be given an indefinite sentence to Concord State Prison, to be suspended for two years, with probation to begin immediately. Mr. Bar-Jonah was also to receive counseling, the handwritten order said.

Mr. Towns contends that instead of being taken downstairs by a court officer to the Probation Department, Mr. Bar-Jonah was allowed to leave the courthouse, and no probation file was opened.

Had his record been introduced in court, or a probation case opened that day, Mr. Bar-Jonah would not have been allowed to move to Montana with his mother, Mr. Towns argues.

``He never would have been allowed to leave the state if he had been put on probation,'' he said. ``If he had been assigned a counselor, they would have seen his record of assaults and incarceration. With that in place, he would have gone nowhere.

``He walked out because he was permitted to. He was never placed on probation. That is a fair and reasonable conclusion.''

Neither Chief Triplett nor District Attorney John J. Conte returned telephone calls seeking comments.

Mr. Bar-Jonah was convicted last month in a Montana court of kidnapping and sexually assaulting a 14-year-old boy in his Great Falls apartment in 1999, and of assaulting an 8-year-old boy with a weapon -- a rope and pulley with which he choked the youngster.

The jury found him not guilty of sexually assaulting a 5-year-old and were deadlocked on whether he sexually assaulted the 8-year-old.

Mr. Bar-Jonah is slated to stand trial in May for the February 1996 kidnapping and murder of 10-year-old Zachary X. Ramsay in Great Falls, Mont. Prosecutors contend Mr. Bar-Jonah abducted the boy as he walked to school, butchered the boy's body, cooked parts and fed them to unsuspecting neighbors.

No remains of the boy have been found.

Montana authorities investigating the Ramsay case discovered skeletal remains of a child buried at one of Mr. Bar-Jonah's previous addresses. Those remains have not been identified.

Montana authorities say they did not know anything about Mr. Bar-Jonah until he showed up at a probation office asking that his case be supervised. Cascade County Attorney Brant Light said it appeared that Massachusetts probation officials did not know who he was when Montana officials contacted them. Mr. Light's office prosecuted the recent case against Mr. Bar-Jonah and is preparing for the May murder trial.

``We still have the same questions we did back then. How did this happen?'' he said. ``I've talked to the probation officer in this, and they had no idea who he was.

``Massachusetts eventually sent stuff on him, and our probation people were horrified. We never would have agreed to take him. What could we do?''

He agreed with Mr. Towns' assertion that Montana would have had to agree to supervise Mr. Bar-Jonah's probation in advance. With no conviction in Montana he could not be incarcerated, Mr. Light said.

A probation official at Dudley District Court referred questions to the state commissioner of probation's office, where spokeswoman Coria Holland said that Mr. Bar-Jonah was placed on probation on Aug. 22, 1991. She said probation records in the case are not public.

But an Oct. 15, 1991, memo from Dudley court Probation Officer Paul Simone to lawyer Richard Boulanger, who earlier represented Mr. Bar-Jonah, indicates that there is no record of a psychiatric evaluation and that Montana officials had not yet agreed to supervise Mr. Bar-Jonah, who was already living there.

Mr. Boulanger could not be reached for a comment.

With Mr. Bar-Jonah's record in Massachusetts in the 1970s, Montana authorities were dumbfounded that he was ever allowed out of jail and free to move to Montana with his mother. Mr. Bar-Jonah's first known victim was a 6-year-old female playmate he tried to choke in 1963, when they were both 6.

Born David P. Brown, he changed his name to Bar-Jonah in 1991 after being released from Bridgewater State Hospital. He is now 45.

In December 1974, while driving a car, he pretended he was a police officer and abducted and choked Richard O'Connor, 8, in Webster. He was also driving when he again passed himself off as a police officer and abducted, choked and tried to murder two teen-age Shrewsbury boys in 1977.

When he was 15, in 1973, he tried to lure two Webster boys to a cemetery with a note composed of words cut out of magazines, offering a surprise and $20. The mother of the boys decided not to press charges so that the boy could receive psychiatric help, she said.

Mr. Bar-Jonah had undergone state-ordered treatment at Bridgewater State Hospital for more than a decade as a ``sexually dangerous person.'' At the time, he had been convicted of violent assaults on the three boys in 1974 and 1977. He won his freedom from the center in 1991, after Suffolk County Superior Court Judge Walter E. Steele ruled that he no longer was a ``sexually dangerous person.''

Yet, five weeks after his release, an Oxford woman walked out of the post office and found the 245-pound man partially sitting on her 7-year-old boy inside her Hyundai Scoop. That incident should have been used as evidence to return Mr. Bar-Jonah to Bridgewater, Mr. Towns said.

``It is not a quantum leap to see that the object of his interest was the little boy sitting alone in the car,'' he said.

Mr. Bar-Jonah, who ran from the scene when confronted by the mother, went home a few blocks away and changed clothes, but was arrested a short time later and identified by witnesses, police records show. The mother, who was traumatized by the incident and still upset when police brought him back to the scene, could not identify him, Mr. Towns said.

In his signed statement to police, Mr. Bar-Jonah said he got into the car to get out of the rain and that he planned to ask the driver for a ride. At no time was he accused of sexually assaulting the boy.

Police had enough testimony to try the case, Mr. Towns contends, but the prosecutor and Chief Triplett went along with Mr. Bar-Jonah's mother to allow him to move to Montana with her, he said.

He said the boy's mother was called eight days after the arrest and told to be at court in a few days because the case would go to trial. But when the case was about to come up, the chief outlined the plea agreement, which she agreed to, thinking the case would be difficult to win.

``They said it was a difficult case, an uphill battle,'' Mr. Towns recalled, saying that he only learned of the witness statements and police report later. ``He said it was her word against his.

``The essential part of the plea agreement was that Bar-Jonah go to Montana and his case be put on file for two years and then dismissed,'' he said.

``There was no testimony at this trial, and there was no introduction of records. The issue of probation was not mentioned in the courtroom. He, in fact, was never placed on probation. The file is to be handed to the clerk, and then it goes to probation,'' explained Mr. Towns.

``In this case, Nathaniel Bar-Jonah was allowed to leave the courtroom. He was never put on probation.''

The psychiatric exam ordered the previous day was not conducted, he added. A handwritten entry on the back of the docket sheet said that Judge Teshoian's stay-away order as part of Mr. Bar-Jonah's sentence ``superseded'' the order for an exam the previous day.

``What are we doing the very next day being buttonholed by a chief and a district attorney for a plea?'' Mr. Towns asked. ``We were never told that a psychiatric exam was ordered the previous day.

``How do you supersede the order of a judge? You don't. You can appeal.''

He said it is up to the prosecutor to update the judge on the status of the case, and added that Chief Triplett and the prosecutor were aware of Mr. Bar-Jonah's background.

``This is something that has not been explained,'' Mr. Towns said. ``They didn't even try to put the case together. ... What happened in Montana would not have happened had he been prosecuted in Massachusetts. He was not placed on probation. He was simply drop-kicked to Montana.'' 

Address as of June 6, 2002

Nathaniel Bar-Jonah AO#31569
Montana State Prison
700 Conley Lake Road
Deer Lodge, MT 59722

March 4, 2001

UNRESOLVED QUESTIONS ACCOMPANIED RELEASE