[3] In late July 1964, before the move back to Massachusetts, a then seven-year-old Bar-Jonah lured a five-year-old female neighbor into his basement, telling her that he had received a Ouija board for his birthday that could predict the future.

[3] At age 15, Bar-Jonah cut letters and words out of magazines and composed a note that he used to attempt to entice two young boys from Webster to a cemetery, offering them $20 and a surprise.

[4] In March 1975, now aged 17, Bar-Jonah impersonated a police officer in order to abduct eight-year-old Richard O'Conner on his way to school, proceeding to sexually assault and choke the boy.

[3][5] A few days before his high school graduation, Bar-Jonah drove to nearby Hartford, Connecticut, and, again impersonating a police officer, abducted a nine-year-old girl.

"[3] On September 24, 1977, Bar-Jonah, claiming to be an undercover FBI agent, convinced two boys coming out of a movie theater in Shrewsbury, Massachusetts, to enter his vehicle.

For this crime, Bar-Jonah was convicted of attempted murder and received the maximum sentence of eighteen to twenty years at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution – Concord, but was later transferred to the Bridgewater State Hospital for observation after sharing his violent sexual fantasies with a prison psychologist.

In fact, Bar-Jonah's ethnic ancestry was Scandinavian and his parents were both active in the Assemblies of God, a Pentecostal sect, and he did not pursue any further connection to Judaism other than the name change.

Superior Court Judge Walter Steele ruled that the Commonwealth of Massachusetts had failed to prove that Bar-Jonah was dangerous,[6] and ordered him released on February 12, 1991.

[9] A psychiatrist at Bridgewater was apparently informed by Bar-Jonah that his interest in torture had long existed and that his primary means of sexual arousal came from the violent thoughts he entertained.

On August 9, 1991, just a month after being released from Bridgewater, Bar-Jonah observed a seven-year-old boy sitting alone in a car outside of a post office in Oxford, Massachusetts.

For the attack, Bar-Jonah was given permission by the Worcester County District Attorney to enter a guilty plea to assault and battery in exchange for a two-year probationary period and the promise that he would move to Great Falls, Montana, to live with his mother.

[3] On February 6, 1996, ten-year-old Zachary Xerxes "Zach" Ramsay left the apartment he shared with his mother at around 7:34 a.m. to attend Whittier School, taking his usual route through an alleyway near the 400 block of north Fourth Street in Great Falls.

Bellusci requested a search warrant for the house where Bar-Jonah and his mother lived after police made an unsuccessful attempt to access the property, but he was denied.

They also found a pulley on the ceiling of Bar-Jonah's kitchen, two albums with cut-outs of children, a document about knots and bondage and an article on autoerotic asphyxia.

[12] A former roommate of Bar-Jonah described finding clothes in his apartment which appeared to match those Ramsay was wearing the day he disappeared, in addition to bloody gloves.

[16] Montana authorities were unaware of Bar-Jonah's criminal record in Massachusetts, a fact that was cited by activists campaigning to force former sex offenders to register.

Although Bar-Jonah was never convicted of Ramsay's abduction and murder, he is still widely believed to have been responsible and is also suspected to have committed additional homicides in Montana because of the findings made in his residences.

He was also investigated for possible crimes in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, where he lived at times during the 1990s, but police found no links between him and any unsolved cases.

[9] One therapist noted that his "sexual fantasies, bizarre in nature, outline methods of torture [and] extend ... to dissection and cannibalism" and that he "express[ed] a curiosity about the taste of human flesh.

"[10] Although Bar-Jonah was known to be a voracious eater, who weighed in excess of 300 pounds (140 kg), financial records indicated that he had not made any significant grocery store purchases for nearly a month after Ramsay disappeared.

[10] After Ramsay's disappearance, Bar-Jonah also began to hold cookouts in which he was reported to serve burgers, spaghetti, chili, meat pies, casseroles and the like to guests.

In Bar-Jonah's apartment, detectives also found a number of recipes using children's body parts with titles such as "little boy pot pie," "french fried kid" and phrases such as "lunch is served on the patio with roasted child" and "Barbecue bee sum young guy.

[10] During a search at one of Bar-Jonah's previous residences in Great Falls, authorities dug up portions of the garage and sifted through nearly two tons of dirt in which they found twenty-one fragments of human bones.