Supreme Court upholds conviction of Bar-Jonah

HELENA – The Montana Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the conviction and 130-year prison sentence of a Great Falls man for sexually assaulting one young boy and abducting and torturing another.

A five-judge panel unanimously rejected Nathaniel Bar-Jonah’s myriad claims of illegal searches, improper use of evidence in court, unfair trial and biased jurors. One by one, the high court upheld rulings by District Judge Kenneth Neill of Great Falls.

Bar-Jonah, 47, was convicted in 2002 of kidnapping and assault involving a 15-year-old boy and his 12-year-old cousin in 1998 and 1999.

Police also considered Bar-Jonah their chief suspect in the 1996 disappearance of a 10-year-old Great Falls boy, Zachary Ramsay. Murder and kidnapping charges against him were dropped in 2002, however, after the boy’s mother said she was prepared to testify she believed her son was alive.

Investigators suspected Bar-Jonah butchered Ramsay’s body, then cooked the body parts for meals fed to unsuspecting neighbors. Zachary’s body was never recovered.

In his appeal to the Supreme Court on the kidnap and assault convictions, Bar-Jonah contended the case was flawed because it started when he was illegally stopped by police officers.

He said authorities had no justification to stop and question him, but the Supreme Court saw it differently. Police were aware Bar-Jonah had been convicted 22 years earlier in Massachusetts of kidnapping and trying to murder two young boys while posing as a police officer.

Given that background, the fact that Bar-Jonah was walking near a school at a time when children would be walking to school and was dressed in a police-style jacket was sufficient reason for the officers to stop him, the court said.