Convicted molester maintains innocenceFiled Under: Press

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By KIM SKORNOGOSKI

Tribune Staff Writer

Hoping for help in finding abducted children, a Florida woman spent three days talking to Nathan Bar-Jonah in Montana State Prison in Deer Lodge.

The convicted child molester, who is serving a 130-year sentence, talked about growing up in Massachusetts and his dream to run a halfway house for sex offenders. He also gave advice to parents on how to protect children from sexual predators.

But throughout the conversations, Bar-Jonah maintained he had nothing to do with the disappearance of 10-year-old Zachary Ramsay from Great Falls in 1996. Although Bar-Jonah was never convicted in that case, police allegations that he kidnapped, killed and cannibalized the boy captured international media attention.

Dinora Perry, the founder of Missing Children International Ministries, talked with Bar-Jonah in July. She videotaped the interview and recently shared the tape with the Tribune.

Prison spokeswoman Linda Moodry said despite the interest in the gruesome crime, Bar-Jonah has done only a few interviews.

“People have requested interviews of him, but he has not wanted to do them,” she said.

In December 2004, Bar-Jonah agreed to talk to the Tribune for a fee. No interview took place because the newspaper’s policy is not to pay for access to news sources. Perry said she was not asked to pay fees to Bar-Jonah and he placed no restrictions on what they could discuss.

Though the Ramsay charges were dropped, police still suspect Bar-Jonah abducted the boy.

The 48-year-old has been in Montana State Prison since April 2002, sentenced to 130 years without parole for kidnapping, sexual assault and assault with a weapon. Those charges stemmed from abusing a Great Falls teen and his 12-year-old cousin.

Bar-Jonah hasn’t had any disciplinary problems in prison and hasn’t been involved with any assaults in prison, Moodry said.

He has a cell to himself in maximum security and doesn’t have a job in the prison.

“He gets out for an hour to exercise and he has TV to watch in his cell,” she said. “He tends to himself and kind of stays low-key.”

Before that, Bar-Jonah spent years in the Cascade County regional jail after police spotted him dressed like an officer near Lincoln Elementary and arrested him in December 1999.

During his years in jail, Bar-Jonah has collected and reviewed police reports to come up with his own theories explaining Zach Ramsay’s disappearance.

He is working on a book about the case, tentatively titled “Who Done It or Did ZR Runneth?”

“Because we just don’t know what happened to him,” Bar-Jonah said in the videotaped interview with Perry.

“There’s just so many different ways it could have gone,” Bar-Jonah said. “I mean, through all the police reports I have, I even came up with a thing where he could have possibly run away.”

Bar-Jonah said he has signed an exclusive contract with an East Coast communications company for movie rights to his life story.

Perry said in all her off-camera conversations with Bar-Jonah, he never waivers in his innocence.

“Out of all the missing children I showed and discussed with Nate, his heart only went out for Zach Ramsay,” she said.

Bar-Jonah asked her to contact Zach’s mother, Rachel Howard, and recruit her to join the ministries’ group Parents Against Kidnapping. Perry said he gave her Howard’s name and hometown along with her relatives’ names and where they could be found.

“For some reason, he is very concerned about Zach’s mother,” she said.

Howard’s insistence that her son is alive was among factors that led prosecutors to drop the homicide charge against Bar-Jonah in October 2002.

Investigators also lacked physical evidence to link Bar-Jonah to Ramsay. The child’s body was never found. Although officers dug up Bar-Jonah’s garage and found crushed bones buried there, DNA tests showed they weren’t Ramsay’s.

Perry did not question Bar-Jonah about the bones fragments, and their source remains a mystery.

Bar-Jonah never said Ramsay’s name throughout the interview, saying his initials once, but usually referring to him as the “missing boy I was charged with.”

Other theories

He said police didn’t investigate links between Ramsay’s disappearance and other missing children around that time.

One man who admitted to kidnapping and tying up a boy in Alberta was particularly suspect, Bar-Jonah said.

He did note that Ramsay would have graduated from high school by now and showed sympathy to Zach’s mother.

“I feel so bad for her,” Bar-Jonah said. “I mean, the police just dragged her through the coals so bad. She bent over backwards to help them and they just treated her like crap.”

Bar-Jonah also said the only way to find missing children like Ramsay is by accident.

“You could offer money, but a lot of (sex offenders) are probably thinking if I give up a child they might put me to death,” he said.

The only way to get them to talk is if they feel guilty or through prayer, he said. And as long as psychiatrists are required to report new crimes, many children will remain missing.

“Maybe that sex offender that committed a murder doesn’t remember he did it,” he said.

“You mean he has amnesia?” Perry asked him.

“Or it’s been so long that he doesn’t remember exactly where he hid it,” Bar-Jonah said. “It could be over a 50-mile radius.”

Help for parents

Bar-Jonah spent much of the interview giving advice to parents to protect their kids.

He said parents should start early telling their kids not to take money or toys from strangers. If he had children, Bar-Jonah said he wouldn’t let anyone baby-sit without references.

Parents should suspect if adult neighbors and friends want to spend time with their children.

“I personally wouldn’t go to a person’s house, even if I’ve known them for 10 years and ask them if I could spend time with their kids,” he said.

While living in Great Falls, Bar-Jonah was known to frequently befriend his neighbor’s children. He baby-sat the children he was convicted of molesting and assaulting. And he sold toys out of his garage.

Bar-Jonah also said he supported the Missing Children International Ministries program that got parents to patrol bus stops.

He was convicted of dressing like a police officer and grabbing two boys outside a Massachusetts movie theater. He was charged with getting into a car with another Massachusetts boy whose mother had run into the post office.

Ramsay vanished walking a few blocks to school.

Bar-Jonah suggested that parents could use the same technology used to track criminals who are out on parole to monitor their own children.

“Children should have a device planted inside their skins, in their hats or in their jewelry to track them down in case they go missing,” he said. “Train them at age 2 about the dangers of child abductions, just like you would teach them how to ride a bike or how to swim.”

Bar-Jonah said sex offenders target kids because they’re easier to control.

He also said children who are abducted should never give up hope for escape, even if they are tied down and gagged.

“Have you ever tried catching a child? Kids wiggle. There’s a possibility they can wiggle out of tape. Some kids cowardly sit in a corner and other kids create ways to get out of things.”

Growing up

Bar-Jonah said he was a victim as a child.

As early as age 8, a strange man pushed him into a contaminated river near his home.

When he was 10, he was playing ball with a 7-year-old friend when a group of eight neighborhood boys attacked them, he said.

Six people held him down, while the others poured gasoline on his friend and threw matches at him. Bar-Jonah said he broke free and started beating up one of the other boys.

That’s when the boys attacked him and raped him.

“At age 10, I started acting like a teenager,” he said. After that he would go fishing by himself and was unruly.

Bar-Jonah said he beat up one of the younger boys who attacked him and when his father found out, he beat Bar-Jonah — then known by his given name of David Brown — with a belt.

“That was the first time that my father spanked me that I didn’t cry,” he said.

Bar-Jonah said he didn’t tell anyone what happened to him for 22 years. That was when eight prison guards back East raped him on a bloody mattress, he said.

He also shared a few fond memories of climbing through rocky crevices near his home and of working with young kids as a teenager in a Christian scout group.

Bar-Jonah spoke with disdain about his deceased father, but said he stays close with his mother, who lives in Massachusetts with his sister.

He calls her once a month, giving her money for the collect phone calls.

Helping sex offenders

The 14 years he spent in prison and in a mental hospital for kidnapping and choking two Massachusetts boys helped him develop a sixth sense for spotting sex offenders.

“The only way I survived is I could identify people if they were going to be aggressive,” he said.

Bar-Jonah said in his estimation one in five sex offenders will always be dangerous and need to stay locked up.

He excludes himself from that group.

When asked if he would hurt anyone if could walk out of jail, Bar-Jonah said, “No. Absolutely not. But there’s no way I could ever be in normal society. They’d have to find a deserted island where nobody knows me.”

Though his sentence is without parole and he’s lost his appeals to the Montana Supreme Court, Bar-Jonah said his dream is to run a halfway house exclusively for sex offenders.

Perhaps a church, or several churches, could buy an old downtown building, he said, and make it secure so no one could escape.

The sex offenders could work in a restaurant attached to the building, never interacting with the public. That way they could make a little money to buy things, but they’d have to shop with a buddy to stay out of trouble.

“That would be dynamite.”

Perry asked Bar-Jonah if he had anything to say to sex offenders. He faced the camera directly and told them to “stop it.”

“All you have to do is say where the body is. That way at least you have a clearer conscience,” he went on to say. “You guys need to get help. There are plenty of psychiatrists to talk to. You need help.”