A Journey Through the Dark Boroughs of a Pedophilic Cannibal’s Mind
Nathaniel Bar Jonah would regularly say, when questioned about the murder of the 10-year-old boy, “They can’t prove anything because there is no body,” and Bar Jonah was right, because he ate the young boy.
Perhaps our desire to be fascinated, not just by what serial killers do, but more importantly, who they are emerges out of our sadism. We like to think of ourselves as being incapable of such heinous acts of violence and torture, yet we consume representations of these primitive behaviours with little restraint.
At the time of the investigation and eventual trial, the international media printed every proclamation Bar Jonah wrote, including his last will and testament. The media also voyeuristically waited for more.
In his writings Bar Jonah made many accusations and declarations that a ubiquitous ‘they’ were out to get him — some of the locals in Great Falls, Montana even begin to question whether the police were involved in an elaborate cover-up, as Bar Jonah would have them believe.
Bar Jonah in court
Bar Jonah declared his innocence to whomever would listen. During interviews he would cock his head as if to take on an omnipotent performance-like persona, checking this way and that to see if his magic was seating in his potential prey, allowing Bar Jonah to live in infamy inside their being. In fact, for most of his life Bar Jonah’s magic did in fact take hold. Most especially in children and the more psychically vulnerable. Treasa Glinnwater (‘The Horror Film: A Rapprochement Drama’, 1981) described how the loss of omnipotence precipitated the rapprochement sub-phase in an infant’s development. It is during this sub-phase that “the toddler comes to the awful realization that he is not an omnipotent being.” Clearly Bar Jonah never embraced this realization and used projective-identification as a way of perpetuating his fantasy of unlimited power.
The third volume of the Eat the Evidence trilogy, There is no Body, examines not only the trial of Bar Jonah but looks more closely at the relationship with his pedophilic counterpart and co-conspirator ‘Doc Bauman,’ who presented himself as a ‘retired’ psychiatrist and child psychologist of which he was neither. However, he did have a propensity for gathering “flocks” of desperate boys to him, promising them shelter and food, until he tired of them and cast them aside for a newer and younger lot. But it was the 10-year old-boy that Bar Jonah would ultimately murder and consume that Doc would say, “captured my heart.” Both Bar Jonah and Doc were masterful at preying upon and ultimately luring the unsuspecting into their lair of deceit and abuse. They utilized the psychic barbs of malignant projective-identification to hook their victims.
Doc and Bar Jonah competed for whose malignant projective-identifications would be the most effective at securing those most susceptible.
One of the psychologists who examined Bar Jonah for the defense said after shaking his hand, “Bar Jonah’s palm was like a colloidal gelatin, molding to the form of his hand; seeping into the crevices of his Jeevan Rekha, the palmist’s life line.” When the examiner pulled his hand away, he felt Bar Jonah’s overtly limp, damp fingertips linger along his palm. Immediately then, Bar Jonah launched into his well-performed litany of being abused and tortured at 10-years-old by a gang of marauding rapist teenagers. All the while he cocked his head, looking out of the corner of his eye to see if he was being believed. Belief or empathic resonation represented for Bar Jonah proof that he had been successful in recontextualizing who he then considered his captured prey.
The courtroom drama depicted in There is no Body, takes us further into Bar Jonah’s indifference as the victims that he sexually and physically tortured testify against him at great personal risk to themselves. Bar Jonah is depicted sitting with his arms draped over the backs of his attorneys’ chairs, his reptilian eyes gazing at the young boys testifying against him, as he attempts to invoke in them his implanted preternatural incantations which would neutralize their ability to recall anything except when he was lovingly devoted to them. As the trial continues and the prosecution prods the boys to recall their abuse, Bar Jonah slumps in his seat, hangdogging his head and drooping his face, imploring the jury to see him at his pathetic best.
Perhaps the most telling of Bar Jonah’s propensity for mastering a conscious representation of projective-identification was his relationship with the mother of the boy he cannibalized, who was as vulnerable to being psychically cannibalized as her young son was to being physically consumed. There is no Body takes the reader on the final journey of Bar Jonah’s ontogenesis and allows one to experience the culmination of his odious life.
reptilian eyes: “Dracula is consummately skilled at recognizing the slightest wavering of a potential victim’s claim to personal autonomy, upon which he makes his claim on the victim”
In the literature of fear, Dracula as the Mephistopheles, the deceptive-destroyer represents the embodiment of projective-identification as his means of not only capturing souls but of breeding them as his disciples. As Glinnwater so cogently points out, “the story of Dracula is an exquisite drama of the horrors that befall the individual who is drawn into union with a powerful figure. Dracula is consummately skilled at recognizing the slightest wavering of a potential victim’s claim to personal autonomy, upon which he makes his claim on the victim. His invincible and ruthless air proclaims an omnipotence of evil, against which his victims appear woefully inadequate.”
John C. Espy, PhD, LCSW, has been practicing psychotherapy and psychoanalysis for the past thirty-five years. He was supervised by R.D. Laing for many years and conducted a weekly supervision group with Sheldon Kopp. He has worked extensively in the area of primitive and psychotic personalities and has interviewed more than twenty serial murderers and pedophiles in the United States and Europe as part of his research on the manifestation of malignant projective-identification. His current practice primarily focuses on clinical and forensic consultation and long term treatment. He was previously a neurotoxicologist with NASA and has taught at numerous universities throughout the United States. Dr Espy is also a long standing member of the American Academy of Psychotherapists, the American Association for Psychoanalysis in Clinical Social Work and northwestern United States group moderator for the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society.
The final part of his trilogy, Eat the Evidence, is published this week by Karnac Books
