What punishment would fit this crime?

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IF this fellow is duly convicted of this Jeffrey Dahmeresque act, what in your mind would constitute an appropriate punishment?

BTW, anyone ever hear of "APBNews"?

LITTLE BOY STEW

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suspected Cannibal Charged in Boy's Death FBI Encryption Expert May Have Found Confession

Dec. 20, 2000

By Seamus McGraw

GREAT FALLS, Mont. (APBnews.com) -- On Christmas Day four years ago, Nathaniel Bar-Jonah visited his neighbors for dinner, carrying with him a plate of spaghetti with a peculiar tasting sauce chock full of an unfamiliar kind of meat, authorities said.

Bar-Jonah, a convicted pedophile and dangerous sexual predator from Massachusetts who had concealed his past from his neighbors in Great Falls, convinced his dinner companions that they were eating venison that he had hunted himself, said Cascade County prosecutor Brant Light.

But authorities now believe the truth was far more horrible. They suspect that the meal Bar-Jonah served was actually the flesh of a young boy whom he sexually assaulted, killed and then butchered and cooked, Light said. They believe he may have baked the boy's remains into pies and stews and served it to friends and neighbors on more than one occasion, authorities said.

Charged with murder

Now, after spending a year behind bars on unrelated charges, Bar-Jonah has been charged with murder in the death of 8-year-old Zachary Ramsay, who vanished while walking to school in 1996. The boy's body has never been found, Light said.

But an FBI encryption expert, who stumbled across a coded message among Bar-Jonah's papers earlier this year, found what authorities now believe was a kind of confession of cannibalism, Light said.

According to court documents, the carefully encoded messages contained graphic phrases, including "Lunch is Served on the Patio with Roasted Child," "Roasted Kid," and "Little Boy Stew."

In other writings, the 44-year-old Bar-Jonah, formerly known as David Brown, exalted the virtues of his favorite meal, "gay blade," Light said, a chilling statement that has led authorities to suspect that Zachary may not have been the first of Bar-Jonah's victims to meet a violent end -- or to have been consumed by his killer.

"This could just be the tip of the iceberg," Light said.

Investigators found bones

Investigators say they are all but certain that Bar-Jonah has killed more than once. While excavating beneath the dirt floor of his basement last summer, investigators found the bones of another boy, still unidentified, but believed to have been between 9 and 14 years old when he died.

Authorities have still not determined how, or precisely when, the boy died, and Bar-Jonah has not yet been charged in connection with the boy's remains, Light said. But authorities say privately they are convinced that he was slain and fear that he, too, was eaten.

Strange man in the neighborhood

Authorities in this wide-open section of Montana first learned that Bar-Jonah might be a monster in 1999, three years after Zachary had disappeared, Light said.

Parents at a local elementary school had complained about a strange man lurking in the neighborhood in the mornings when they dropped their children off at school, authorities said.

Police approached the man and found that he was carrying a badge and a police jacket -- all apparently calculated to make him look like a police officer -- and, most frightening of all, a stun gun capable of rendering young boys unconscious, according to court documents.

It turned out that police had stumbled across a dangerous sexual predator who was using his favorite ploy, posing as a police officer to intimidate his victims, authorities said.

It was a technique that Bar-Jonah had been using for more than 20 years. In his home state of Massachusetts, Bar-Jonah had been convicted three times since 1976 of sexually assaulting and kidnapping young boys, and in each case he masqueraded as a police officer, court records show.

Fantasies of cannibalism

Before he was released from a Massachusetts prison in 1991, authorities declared him a dangerous and repetitive sex offender. In a horrifying preview of his violent urges, a case worker and a psychiatrist in Massachusetts each wrote more than a decade ago that Bar-Jonah had fantasies of cannibalism and had once wondered aloud to his case worker about what human flesh would taste like, according to court papers.

But word of that designation, and the warning that should have accompanied it, never found its way to Montana, where Bar-Jonah had moved in 1991, reportedly to be close to his mother and brother.

Almost immediately after his arrival, Bar-Jonah allegedly began surrounding himself with children. He held garage sales at his home, specializing in the kinds of toys and games that young boys would find attractive. He became active in a local church group.

He began to again pose as a police officer to lure young victims, almost always targeting young black or Native American boys because he allegedly believed that they and their families would be less likely to report his activities to the real authorities, Light said.

Boy hung by neck

Not long after his arrest in 1999 for posing as a police officer, investigators got their first glimpse of how dangerous Bar-Jonah might be, Light said. Encouraged by media reports, a young Native American boy came forward to report that he and two of his friends had been lured to Bar-Jonah's home, where he had been assaulted, hanged him by the neck until he was barely conscious and masturbated by Bar-Jonah, authorities said. Bar-Jonah is scheduled to go on trial for that assault next month.

The depravity of that alleged crime, the fact that the boys, like Zachary, were minorities, and the discovery of records describing in detail Bar-Jonah's criminal history prompted investigators to search for a link between Bar-Jonah and the missing boy, court records show.

Prosecutors gather evidence

Authorities have since found witnesses who place Bar-Jonah in the area where Zachary was last seen at about the time he disappeared.

Authorities acknowledge that it will be tough to prove that Bar-Jonah butchered and served the young boy's body. They say there is little physical evidence beyond the encrypted messages he wrote to himself and the recollections of his neighbors.

But authorities say they are convinced that they have enough evidence to convict Bar-Jonah, and prosecutors are reviewing the case to determine whether they will seek the death penalty, Light said.

Seamus McGraw is an APBnews.com senior writer (seamus.mcgraw@apbnews.com).



-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 20, 2000

Answers

Behind bars for the rest of his life without parole. That may seem lenient to some, but this man almost certainly is insane.

-- (fl@me.away), December 21, 2000.

fl@me.away,

Insanity matters not.

Execute him.

-- J (Y2J@home.comm), December 21, 2000.

A jury of our peers ruling on murder is as good as it gets for me.

As for dinner choices, that's a different charge and shouldn't reflect.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), December 21, 2000.


Live cremation.

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), December 21, 2000.

You DO remember what happened to jeffrey dahmer, don't you?

How about a fully-conscious and non-anesthetized castration, and then prison, where he will meet up with bubba and friends.

I am shocked that, saying what he said to the case-worker, etc., he was ever released period. That is some serious neglect, and I think that person(s) should be prosecuted as well.

How sad for the boys, the parents, and those who had unknowingly partaken in cannibalism.

-- cin (cin@cin.cin), December 21, 2000.



Run him through a deli slicer, , feet first, extra thin.

-- Uncle Deedah (unkeed@yahoo.com), December 21, 2000.

I think a taste of his own medicine would be fitting.

How about thrown in a pool with a few small crocodiles? Maybe a small shark or two?

Deano

-- Deano (deano@luvthebeach.com), December 21, 2000.


WOW! I had read a bit of that story yesterday, but nothing this detailed. Imagine how the children's parents feel about now.

If it were my son, I'd beg the authorities to allow me to administer punishment. It wouldn't be quick and it wouldn't be easy. I'd make sure the person stayed alive a long time to feel the torture. When it comes to something like this and my child, my mind can become very sick and twisted indeed.

-- (Sheeple@Greener.Pastures), December 21, 2000.


Sheeple

That's exactly why I suggested 'small' man-eating creatures. A foot here, some fingers there.........

Deano

-- Deano (deano@luvthebeach.com), December 21, 2000.


As I understand it, this ghoul lives in GREAT FALLS, Mont.

Be hard to punish him any further.

-- Barry (bchbear863@cs.com), December 21, 2000.



What, no squishies advocating mercy, forgiveness, compassion and rehabilitation? This poor man probably had a stressful childhood.

You all sound like Texans.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 21, 2000.


I greatly doubt that the man is insane. Sexual abnormalities aren't the same as psychosis. Sexuality can get attached to almost any situation (I mean, look at fetishists, for crying out loud). This guy gets turned on by a particular kind of criminal act. He acted on it in order to enjoy the sick pleasure of it. He is a criminal.

I think the appropriate punishment for this guy is to lock him up for life without the possibility of parole. Also, in this case, I would approve of mandatory chemical castration, so he can't even enjoy his fantasies any more. For his own safety, he could not possibly have contact with the ordinary prison population - they utterly despise ordianry child molesters. He'd have to do everything alone for the rest of his life.

What most death penalty opponents fail to realize is that, in some cases, death is kinder than being forced to live.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), December 21, 2000.


This is true. Look at Dahmer. He was convicted and sentenced to life improsonment. That was in WI, a state that has no death penalty. Within a few years he was bludgeoned to death by a fellow lifer (what did he have to lose?) The bludgeoner was black as were many of Dahmer's victims, as are many of the victims of this Bar-Jonah perv. I doubt if he'd last 2 years in a prison unless he were in "protective custody" (solitary).

Still, IMO, the only justice for duly covicted serial murders or mass murders is execution.

-- Lars (lars@indy.net), December 21, 2000.


Cut off his penis and make him eat his OWN flesh! Then he can write in his journal "Had Personal Penis Pasta for lunch but it was bittersweet."

-- Julia (Child@Retribution.com), December 21, 2000.

This man was only doing his thing. How dare you inflict your standards on someone else? To say that it is immoral to kill and eat someone else is is very subjective. As my friend Fyodor said, "if there is no God, then everything is permissable.

-- (Hannibal@cannibal.mandible), December 21, 2000.


>> As my friend Fyodor said, "if there is no God, then everything is permissable." <<

Who gave Fyodor permission to say that? And are we permitted to disagree?

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), December 21, 2000.


Fyodor said Rasputin gave him permission.

Fyodor urges you to disagree with him but wants to know why?

-- (hannibal@frangible.cannibal), December 21, 2000.


To agree or disagree means nothing. To act means nothing! Permission to act means everything!

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), December 21, 2000.

Mot sure I follow you. If you want to comment on Dostoevsky's words, please do.

-- (hannibal@elephant.house), December 21, 2000.

off

-- (tabman@tab.tab), December 21, 2000.

Fyodor repented after he went to jail and found God. Dostoevsky just wanted people to think.

-- (Netsc@pe 6.0), December 21, 2000.

either burning at the stake or burying him up to the neck in an anthill would be fitting.

-- Judge Dredd (JD@justice.now), December 21, 2000.

>> Not sure I follow you. <<

OK. Here's what Dostoevsky said: "if there is no God, then everything is permissable."

This emphasizes the presence or absence of permission to act. Permission always comes from an outside authority - presumably God, but in the broader sense, any higher power than oneself. My comment is that permission is generally a moot condition. Authority, even God's, never has the power to prevent our acting, because we have free will. All authority can really do is punish us for wrong actions, after they are taken. In this God is no different from the police.

So, why speak of permission at all? Why is permission important? To me, what is important is right and wrong. These are much more fundamental. But, to say, "in the absence of God, all things are right" points up the flaw in Dostoevsky's thinking.

If morality depended on God's word, then morality would be whatever God's word was today. God could change morality at whim. He could grant permission or withold it at whim.

If God's word is changeless and immutable, then God has no power to change morality. If morality cannot ever be changed, even by God, then it must have a permanence that is independant of God. If morality is independent of God, then God's "permission" is not important.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), December 21, 2000.


Wow, Brian.

-- helen sits at Brian's feet, bucket in hand (b@r.f), December 21, 2000.

Brian,

Your logic is fine until we get to this sentence:

If morality cannot ever be changed, even by God, then it must have a permanence that is independant of God.

No. Since God defined the morality, in a sense creating it, that morality remains subordinate to His will. He could change it, but could just as easily choose not to.

Parents could define a rule for the kids: no one under the age of 10 shall watch TV after 8PM. At any time after having made that rule, they could suspend it or create a new rule that supercedes the old one. But it is completely within their rights and power not to do so, and that does not mean that the rule suddenly and magicly becomes "independent" of them, having a life or force of its own.

-- Stephen M. Poole (smpoole7@bellsouth.net), December 22, 2000.


SHAZAM! Brian, don’t look now but you are bleeding badly. See the nurse.

-- Barry (bchbear863@cs.com), December 22, 2000.

So Brian, then there is no Natural Law that exists beyond man. That which we call immoral is merely a consensus view foist upon poor Mr Bar-Jonah and his ilk by a bunch of busy-bodies.

No, I know you don't believe that. But what then makes what he did "wrong"? What makes anything "wrong"?

-- Lars (lars@onemain.com), December 22, 2000.


Stephen, you question my logic when I say: "If morality cannot ever be changed, even by God, then it must have a permanence that is independant of God."

You "refute" this logic by saying: "He could change it, but could just as easily choose not to." So, in effect you are saying that potentially any and every action could be moral. All that is missing is God changing his mind about it and choosing a new set of rules.

If this is so, then what we call (and what God calls) "morality" is not intrinsically moral. The morality of any action becomes extrinsic, because it only becomes moral upon God's continued say-so - His "permission".

OTOH, if morality is intrinsic, then it simply does not matter whether it is intrinsic because of God's purpose, or some other reason. God's permission is no longer needed. Good and evil become something built in to the fabric of reality and are unavoidable. The universe becomes the agent of morality and God's agency is no longer required.

I restate this point, because it is only under intrinsic natural laws that we can become grown-ups. If we look to God to be a parent figure who hovers around asserting His will anew each new day, then we shrink to the status of perpetual children, or worse, a flock of sheep.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), December 22, 2000.


>> So Brian, then there is no Natural Law that exists beyond man. That which we call immoral is merely a consensus view <<

I never said this. I said nothing like this. You are merely trying to fit what I said into a view you are already familiar with. I am saying that the the emphasis on permission in the Dostoevsky quote is misplaced. If the universe contains morality, then we don't need to ask where it came from for it to be operative.

Pretend for a moment that God set the universe in motion. God regulated it all, made the rules, imposed morality into the very fabric of the universe. So far, most Christians would find this proposition perfectly in line with their beliefs.

Now take an intellectual leap. Suppose for the sake of argument that, after creating the heavens and the earth in this way, God "died" or left, or simply fell asleep. Would the fabric of the universe suddenly and necessarily become immoral the moment God's absence commenced? This seems illogical to me. If morality ever had meaning, it will always have meaning - and God is not needed to complete that argument.

This has nothing to do with moral relativism of the sort you think I am foisting off. That is a red herring. I am not saying that a bunch of people can get together and invent a new morality for each day of the week. I am saying that Dostoevsky was wrong to worry about morality being so fragile that God must uphold it on a daily basis.

-- Brian Mclaughlin (brianm@ims.com), December 22, 2000.


>> Brian, don’t look now but you are bleeding badly. <<

Barry. Get this straight. I am not a Christian. I believe in God. I find the universe to be a moral place. It was moral before Jesus was born. It continues so. I would know this even if God did not exist. I do not believe murder, theft or lying are moral. You can take these to the bank.

If you think that moral chaos is the only alternative to the existance of a Christian God, you are wrong. Worse, you are blind to the truth that lives around you in the glory of creation. If you understand that morality is simply and eternally part of the world's perfection, then good for you.

So, elucidate about the blood.

-- Brian McLaughlin (brianm@ims.com), December 22, 2000.


I am still trying to figure what determines if an act is right or wrong, good or evil, permissible or impermissible. If there is some natural morality out there floating around in the "fabric of reality", it is not tangible, not quantifiable. How do we know what it is? Most would agree that what this guy did was wrong. Why was it wrong?

-- Lars (lars@onemain.com), December 22, 2000.

Wow again!

-- helen (b@r.f), December 22, 2000.

Lars-

All human cultures have developed strong taboos against murder (except in very specialized cases)because ultimately murder is bad for society and we need socieities to maximize our lives. Humans are social creatures and are stronger in groups than alone. This taboo is strengthened by religion, laws, and negative cultural images. For instance, if you see images of murderers on TV or in the movies, murderers are usually portrayed very negatively and they usually come to bad ends, often being killed for revenge. In the news, stories are written from the victim's perspective, showing the murderer in a negative light. It is shocking in the extreme when we see positive portrayals of murderers, because these portrayals go against cultural norms. Norms, rules, and images all reinforce our idea that murder is wrong.

-- Tarzan the Ape Man (tarzan@swingingthroughthejunglewithouta.net), December 22, 2000.


Deep subject, Brain, Brian is getting pummelled.

-- lurkey (lurk@b.me), December 22, 2000.

Jeez Brian, for all of your lengthy dissertations you seem to be unable to grasp the simple things. The ‘bleeding’ statement was in reference to the verbal beating you were taking from Mr. Poole. From that, you somehow made a quantum leap into your religious beliefs. Hellooooo! You should return to the basics, like ‘thinking’.

-- Barry (bchbear863@cs.com), December 22, 2000.

Lars,

I subscribe to a morality based on life (really a happiness - based life) -- where the human life/happiness is the purpose and standard of morality. Since morality applies only to people, and our very lives and happiness have an ultimate value, anything that serves that end (without hurting others or otherwise violating their rights) becomes a subsidiary "value", and is therefore moral. This is a type of egoism, yet it encompasses love, benevolence and respect for others' rights as virtues, as these can be shown to be egoistic as well.

So under this morality any unnecessary taking of a human life is morally wrong. ("necessary" implying self-defense)

This, IMO, is the only truly objective morality, as it's based on reality -- the reality that to maintain one's life -- to survive and flourish -- requires us to evaluate things in terms of whether they are good or bad for us. And this is neither subjective (based on each one's feelings or whims) nor intrinsic (based on revelation).

I'll be happy to clarify/elaborate.

-- eve (eve_rebekah@yahoo.com), December 22, 2000.


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