10 Skin-Crawling Facts About Cannibal Child-Killer, Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

6 /10 First Conviction

On the 24th of September 1977, Bar-Jonah persuaded two boys coming out of a Cinema to enter his vehicle. He had decided to switch it up. This time he impersonated an FBI agent. Nathaniel drove the boys to a remote area and began to assault them.

He handcuffed, strangled, and flicked cigarette ashes on his victims. Then, he jumped severally on the chest of one of the boys and left him for dead. Bar-Jonah weighed 375 pounds.

Thankfully, the boy regained consciousness and found help. 

The authorities later caught up with Bar-Jonah and found the other boy in his trunk, still alive. Bar-Jonah was sentenced to eighteen to twenty years in prison for attempted murder.

5 /10 His Time In Prison

Bar-Jonah spent a short time in prison before he was transferred to the Bridgewater State Hospital. There, he was put under psychiatric evaluation. He regaled his psychiatrists with his fantasies of capturing, murdering, and cannibalizing children.

He was surprisingly well-behaved in prison, even went to the lengths of taking a Jewish name. Yes, he wasn’t born Nathaniel Bar-Jonah. He was David Paul Brown up until March 1984. He claimed he wanted to “know what it was like to be discriminated against and persecuted as a Jew.”

4 /10 His Release From Prison

Bar-Jonah was released from prison in 1991 by Superior Court Judge Walter E. Steele. According to the judge and two other psychiatrists, the state had not proven that Bar-Jonah was dangerous. They seemed to completely overlook the fact that Bar-Jonah was in prison for attempted murder. 

Despite the judge’s convictions, he got a promise from Nathaniel. A promise that he would leave Massachusetts. To this, Bar-Jonah agreed wholeheartedly. 

The judge probably let out a deep breath at that point. The man was Montana’s problem now. Good luck to them.

3 /10 Flea Market Jonah

Bar-Jonah moved to Great Falls, Montana, with his mother. There, he became the sort of grown-up kids flocked to. He turned his garage into a children’s paradise. It was filled with toys, dolls, and games children liked. It was like a flea market for kids. 

He also became active in a local church group. Bar-Jonah managed to stay on the right side of the law until 1999 when he was arrested again. This run-in with the law spelled his downfall.

2 /10 Beginning Of The End

In 1996, a ten-year-old boy went missing in Great Falls, Montana. Zachery Ramsay had been on his way to school before he vanished. 

Some witnesses reported seeing “an obese adult male” following the boy. The detective on the case, Bill Bellusci, knew about Bar-Jonah’s previous crimes and suspected him. However, the witness accounts were not sufficient to get a search warrant.

In 1999, Bar-Jonah was arrested for (you guessed it) impersonating a police officer. He had been loitering suspiciously outside an elementary school, and the teachers had called the authorities. Due to his previous knowledge of Bar-Jonah, Detective Bellusci was assigned the case. 

He quickly got a search warrant for Bar-Jonah’s house. This warrant was the first nail in Nathaniel’s figurative coffin.

1 /10 Cookouts And Recipes

The search turned up mountains of evidence were found. Evidence that suggested that Bar-Jonah had abducted and tortured underage boys in his house.

The police also found notebooks filled with coded writing. And with some help from the FBI, they succeeded in decoding the script. It contained grotesque recipes that involved children’s body parts. Some of them were titled “Little boy pot pie” and “Barbecue bee sum young guy.”

Bar-Jonah had been holding cookouts and inviting neighbors, including Ramsay’s mother. He had made barbecues, pot pies, and many other meals in the notebooks in these cookouts. 

When the neighbors complained that the meat was weird-tasting, Bar-Jonah had replied that the meat was venison. He said that he had “hunted, killed, butchered and wrapped the meat himself.” Meanwhile, Bar-Jonah had neither a rifle nor a hunting license.

The investigators believed that Bar-Jonah had abducted Zachery and served the boy’s corpse to unsuspecting neighbors. 

The officers also found lists of children’s names. After talks with some children on the list, they discovered that Nathaniel had molested three boys. He even went as far as hanging one of them from a lighting fixture by the neck.

That clinched the case for the detective, and Bar-Jonah was taken to court. There he was given a 130-year sentence, which he served in the Montana State Prison till his death in 2008.

Nathaniel Bar-Jonah was the worst sort of human you could ever allow near your child. Unrepentant, he never showed remorse or any inclination towards change. His reasons for committing those crimes aren’t known and will probably never be.

We can only look in horror at his deeds and hope. I hope that no monster of his caliber walks the earth again.