Bar Jonah:
The media's making of a Monster

A local reporter’s tale of the media frenzy surrounding
the case of accused cannibal Nathaniel Bar-Jonah

By Kim Skornogoski

Courtesy of The Montana Standard Nathaniel Bar-Jonah listens to testimony by clinical psychologist Janet Hossack during his trial in Butte District Court in February on charges of kidnapping and sexually molesting boys in Great Falls.

The first time I heard about Nathaniel Benjamin Levi Bar-Jonah, police requested I write a story warning parents to watch out for a pudgy man in a navy jacket walking by a Great Falls elementary school. With no charges and no details why Bar-Jonah was considered dangerous, I refused.

The next day, he was arrested after police learned the stun gun he was carrying was considered a concealed weapon. That was the first front-page story about the odd man from Massachusetts.

I’ve been writing about him ever since. In two years, the Tribune has published more than 180 stories and editorials about Bar-Jonah, with endless angles to keep local readers interested.

Dating back to age 17, Bar-Jonah was repeatedly convicted of dressing as a police officer to lure young boys into his car, then choking and molesting them. Yet, he slipped through the system, serving months, not years in jail. Weeks after he was released from a mental hospital for sexual predators, he reoffended. Instead of going back to prison, he was sent to Montana to live with family.

Local police suspected Bar-Jonah abducted Great Falls 10-year-old Zachary Ramsay, who vanished walking to school one February morning. That story emblazoned our front page but was buried inside other papers across the state. Few papers outside Great Falls were interested when police found bone fragments belonging to an unknown child buried in Bar-Jonah’s garage.

But when accusations of cannibalism surfaced, the story captured the attention of journalists worldwide. Police charged Bar-Jonah with homicide Dec. 19, 2000, saying they will never find Zachary Ramsay’s body because Bar-Jonah disposed of it in chili and stew served to family and neighbors.

My editors — with the Montana Freemen and Unabomber media frenzies fresh in their minds — warned me of the barrage of national press to come. The Massachusetts and international media caught on right away. A TV crew from Germany flew to Montana, and the British Broadcasting Company aired stories about the case on its radio show. The story was so widespread that some friends of my family were asked during a visit to China if they knew Bar-Jonah.

Courtesy of The Montana Standard Cascade Deputy County Attorney Susan Weber listens intently to a prospective juror's answer in District Court in Butte during the first day of Nathaniel Bar-Jonah’s trial in February. He was later found guilty of kidnapping, assaulting and molesting two Great Falls boys and sentenced to 130 years in prison.

A Washington Post reporter came to town for Bar-Jonah’s arraignment, seeing him for only two minutes on a jail TV monitor. The two Boston papers flew out reporters and photographer teams to spend a week touring Great Falls and interviewing neighbors.

One week, Canadian journalists dove into the story after hearing Bar-Jonah once crossed the border, fearing a missing child could be linked to him. The next week, it was Arizona reporters who were interested after 20 Great Falls women were sent prank letters from someone pretending to be Bar-Jonah. The return address was the home of a Mesa, Ariz., state senator who had nothing to do with the letters.

CNN, Fox News, the New York Post, a Japanese wire service, National Public Radio and the TV shows Extra and America’s Most Wanted all did stories about Bar-Jonah. Others, including the Spokesman-Review, picked up Associated Press stories.

Within weeks of each other, Dateline NBC and CBS’s 48 Hours sent crews to Great Falls. Dateline dedicated an hour to Bar-Jonah and the loose release policy at the Massachusetts state mental hospital, while 48 Hours spent roughly 12 minutes focusing on the Great Falls case. As airdates approached, producers from both networks called me to see what I knew about the other newsmagazine’s story and when it would run. CBS pushed up its airdate a week to broadcast before Dateline, which in turn pushed their project back a month.

For Bar-Jonah’s first trial on sexual assault, kidnapping and assault with a weapon charges in Butte, reporters from the Denver Post, CBS and the Los Angeles Times ventured through Montana. The spotlight will probably shine brightly again for the homicide trial expected to begin late this summer in Missoula. Boston papers, Court TV and other national and regional outlets are expected to come knocking.

With all this attention came the typical stereotypes of Montana — a place where wackos and Old West justice thrive. Great Falls was depicted as the perfect small town, with orderly streets and little crime. To create this picture, reporters universally noted that it is rare to have more than one murder a year in Cascade County and that no one questioned the Ten Commandments chiseled into stone slabs at the steps of the courthouse.

In a story titled “Outrage in Big Sky Country: Montana miffed at Massachusetts for release of accused cannibal killer,” the Boston Herald described Great Falls as: “Tucked between majestic mountain ranges and surrounded by miles of wheat and cattle farms, this cowboy outpost on the Missouri River is no stranger to violence. But neither the old fashioned drunken shoot-’em ups nor the crystal meth madness of recent years could have prepared anyone in Montana’s second-largest city for Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, the hulking child molester from Massachusetts who arrived in 1991 with his own twisted brand of sinister sadism.”

The Boston Globe said Great Falls is an orderly town, its residents having a deeply embedded sense of independence and clear definitions of right and wrong. “And normal still means that when somebody crosses the line, they may get put back in their place with the business end of a hunting rifle.” A local dentist was then quoted saying someone would surely shoot Bar-Jonah if he were ever let out of jail.

After a few days, headlines dropped the accused in front of cannibal and serial killer. One story in a Boston paper said Bar-Jonah frequently returned to the Bay State possibly to kill children and “feed his sadistic sexual appetite.” Of course, he also could have flown back to visit his mother and sister.

Sadly, this wasn’t much of a stretch from what the National Enquirer wrote about Bar-Jonah. Quoting a “police insider,” the tabloid compared “that sicko” to fictious character Hannibal Lecter and notorious Minnesotan Jeffrey Dahmer. Of course, none of the Great Falls investigators had talked to the National Enquirer.

Fearing more stories would further contaminate potential jurors, the county attorney quickly silenced Great Falls police. Desperate for a face and a voice to go on air, national reporters turned to local journalists for information. Like other local journalists covering the case, I was greeted day after day with pink messages from various media sources when I arrived at work. Generally, I talked to people who did their homework and were fact checking and sent the others to the Tribune’s Web page.

Often reporters would offer a quid-pro-quo — I help them now and down the road they would help me. Some would ask for sources’ phone numbers, a description of Bar-Jonah’s home or basic information about Great Falls. Almost always, they wanted to know how local residents reacted to the allegations of cannibalism and an opinion on Bar-Jonah’s guilt. I wanted to be polite and helpful, but after several rude requests and the constant insistence to supply all the background material in the 82-page affidavit, my patience wore out.

“Tell me about that guy who kidnapped all those kids and fed them to the people of your town,” demanded a producer with the Sally Jesse Raphael show. After repeatedly telling her Bar-Jonah’s name, I tried to set her straight, saying he is accused of killing one boy. I directed her to our Web site and even gave her the office number for the county attorney.

In the next few days, she called repeatedly, never remembering Bar-Jonah’s name or any of the case background. She asked me to explain the lists filled with children’s names found in Bar-Jonah’s apartment and wanted to know the names of the investigators and prosecutors.

It escalated from there.

The day before the show was to air, the woman offered to pay me (while I was on the clock working my own stories on Bar-Jonah for the Tribune) to track down Zachary Ramsay’s mother Rachel Howard, who lives in Choteau. When I didn’t take the bait, she begged me for the names and phone numbers of any of Howard’s neighbors, friends or family members, suggesting the show would send them a pizza to persuade them to talk on the show about kidnapped children. I refused.

I’m ashamed to say that I did get duped into talking to the National Enquirer, under the guise of the National Media Group based in Florida. After answering a few basic questions — the population of Great Falls, Bar-Jonah’s age, height and weight — I asked a few questions myself and learned that the “media group” produces stories for several national and international publications including The Globe and the National Enquirer.

The headline translates to “Mysterious Montana, land of bears, trout and racist fanatics,” and was featured in the April 6, 1996 edition of La Repubblica in Rome after Montana received national attention because of the Unabomber and the Freemen.

Police, prosecutors, the FBI, Bar-Jonah’s family and others also grew frustrated to see their words twisted. Media savvy Cascade County Attorney Brant Light clearly learned his lesson about pre-trial publicity in February after talking to more than 100 potential jurors in Bar-Jonah’s first trial on sexual assault charges. Every one could name Zachary Ramsay and knew details about the homicide. At a recent press conference releasing an affidavit charging the head of the local food bank with a 1964 double homicide, Light handed out the professional code of conduct for lawyers, highlighting what he could and would not talk about.

While sensationalism was the choice for many news organizations, several resisted and got the story right. As to be expected, industry leaders like The Washington Post and The New York Times had well-organized, accurate and artful stories.

But they didn’t have a lock on good work. Some of the best stories and best investigative work was done by The Worcester Telegram & Gazette, a Massachusetts paper that covers Bar-Jonah’s hometown. Their staff produced a series looking into other people who were released from the state’s mental hospital for the sexually dangerous and examined the hospital’s policy allowing predators out for week-long unsupervised furlows.

The Hartford Courant was responsible and thorough, having more success than Massachusetts police in tracking down some of the children (now adults) named on a list found in Bar-Jonah’s last apartment.

At the Great Falls Tribune, which produced an eight-page section the day after charges were filed, also had to face accusations of sensationalism. Executive Editor Jim Strauss quickly responded to inflamed readers by writing a column. Readers questioned the timing of our coverage — being so close to Christmas — and wondered if we considered how tourists would view Great Falls after reading such accounts. Some people suggested that we enjoyed printing the gruesome details of the case, knowing it would sell papers.

Unlike many of the East Coast papers, the Tribune didn’t print many of the cannibalism details that were included in the affidavit. Many of Bar-Jonah’s writings describing meals that included specific child body parts were deemed too graphic for our readers, who were also warned by a large editor’s note at the top of the front page. And while Bar-Jonah’s name in a headline does sell papers, the Tribune hasn’t made much money from the story after repeatedly dedicating wide-open pages and paying overtime for reporters to cover the story.

Over the last two years, the Tribune has put its stamp on the Bar-Jonah coverage. I hope that readers associate our work with the quality stories done at other papers, stories that shined because the reporters realized that the news didn’t need to be dressed up to sell itself.