Suspected serial killer Nathaniel Bar-Jonah, 43, is charged with murdering Zachary Ramsay, who disappeared while walking to school in 1996 in Great Falls, Mont.
Although the boy's remains have never been found, Montana prosecutors believe they have enough evidence against Bar-Jonah without a body.
"Just because he's clever enough to get rid of the body doesn't mean he will get away with homicide," Cascade County prosecutor Brant S. Light said in Thursday's Boston Globe.
Light said in Thursday's Boston Herald that the fact that the boy "may have been butchered and fed to others is real disturbing."
Investigators looking for Ramsay's body this year dug up small bones on Bar-Jonah's property, but DNA testing showed they belonged to another of the man's alleged victims.
Authorities believe Ramsay's remains were not found because Bar-Jonah cut up and cooked the body and served it to a small circle of friends. Those acquaintances told investigators Bar-Jonah occasionally brought them food that tasted "funny," such as burgers, stews, pot pies and chili he claimed were made from venison.
During the investigation, police found some of Bar-Jonah's cryptic handwritten notes that an FBI expert said contained messages like "little boy stew," "little boy pot pies," and "French fried kid."
Court records of earlier therapy sessions showed that Bar-Jonah's bizarre sexual fantasies "outline methods for torture, extending to dissection and cannibalism." A caseworker in 1980 wrote that Bar-Jonah "expresses a curiosity about the taste of human flesh."
Bar-Jonah was charged Wednesday in Great Falls with murder and kidnapping and was being held on $1.7 million bail.
He is suspected in other disappearances and murders. Police said he kept a list of 22 victims, the last being Ramsay.
Light said he was upset that Massachusetts officials allowed Bar-Jonah to move with his mother to Montana in 1991, where he was charged with sexual assault on an 8-year-old boy in 1994. He is scheduled to go on trial Jan. 16 on sexual assault charges involving three other boys.
When known in Webster, Mass., as David P. Brown, Bar-Jonah spent 12 years at the Bridgewater State Hospital after trying to kill two Shrewsbury boys in 1977. He was freed after four mental health professionals convinced a judge he was no longer sexually dangerous.
One psychologist who evaluated Bar-Jonah years ago and felt he was still dangerous was shocked when told by the Herald of the new charges.
"Oh, God," said Leonard Bard. "That's horrible."
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