Johnathan Ramsey Case: Remains Found Identified As Starved Boy, Police Confirm

DALLAS — Authorities have identified skeletal remains found in a rural creek near Dallas as those of a 10-year-old boy allegedly starved to death by his father and stepmother, police and a family member said Monday.

Dallas police said they confirmed with the Dallas County medical examiner that DNA tests have linked the remains to Johnathan Ramsey. The boy's remains were found April 21 in rural Ellis County, south of the city.

The medical examiner declined to comment on the case because the remains were found in another county. However, Starla Swanson, stepmother to Johnathan's mother, confirmed that the family had been informed that a positive identification of Johnathan had been made.

The boy's father and stepmother, Aaron and Elizabeth Ramsey, remain jailed on charges of felony injury to a child. Both are being held on $500,000 bail. Attorneys for each did not return phone messages seeking comment.

Aaron Ramsey allegedly told police he limited the boy's meals to bread, water and sometimes milk for several months. According to police records, the boy was confined to his bedroom in the family's Dallas home, The Dallas Morning News reported.

The boy's mother, Judy Williams, and other relatives did not see him for months. Williams lives in New Mexico and has custody of the couple's other son, Swanson said.

Johnathan's grandfather Edward Ramsey had contacted police earlier this year to ask them to search for the child because he had not seen the boy for more than a year.

Aaron and Elizabeth Ramsey initially claimed the boy had gone to live with his mother, but later confessed to starving the boy to death, police said.

According to police, Aaron Ramsey said he put his son on "military rations" because the boy began to misbehave early last year. Ramsey said the boy had punched his stepmother in the stomach when she was pregnant, causing a miscarriage. Ramsey said he hit Johnathan in the chest and then locked him in a bedroom, according to the records.

A spokeswoman for the Dallas County district attorney did not immediately comment on whether prosecutors would seek additional charges now that the remains had been identified.

The child's remains were to be cremated and his ashes sent to his mother, Swanson said.

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Comments

[Armagedon]

02:11 PM on 05/22/2012

What is wrong with this world when people do this to children. Why can't they keep their pants on . Sick, sick

[candlesmp]

07:13 PM on 05/17/2012

some people should never be allowed to be parents! How sad for this child.

[Satur9]

08:23 PM on 05/16/2012

Don't understand how this is only "felony injury to a child". Why do child abuser parents never get murder charges when their kids end up dead? It's like the law does not consider children people.

[Rex Devious]

06:30 PM on 05/16/2012

We need to fund Child Services well enough that people like this don't get to slip under the radar.

If you have a child, that child should be in school - where his abuse obviously would have been spotted long before he died. When he didn't show up for school, Child Services should have had the resources to check up on him and make sure he was OK.

BTW, things like Child Services are one of those things that get the "starve the beast" treatment when Republicans rail about shrinking the government. It's not a bunch of bureaucrats who are losing their jobs, it's cops, Child Services case workers, firemen, teachers, etc. So think twice before letting the GOP write them off as "big government", while they fight to keep oil company subsidies and tax cuts for millionaires.

[thisoldbroad]

04:39 PM on 05/16/2012

I can understand family being out of state & unable to see the child daily.. but didn't any of these people call to talk to the kid? That this child was so isolated & abused is unforgivable! I'll never understand how a parent can torture their child to death.

WHERE ARE THE PRO-LIFERS?????
WHERE IS THEIR OUTRAGE???????
This child is their victory dance - a live birth.
Where are they now?
Why don't they care about God's children once they're born?

[Helen Greenfeld]

10:34 AM on 05/16/2012

put them in an empty room together. No food or water, let them eat the wall if they can.

[Helen Greenfeld]

08:09 AM on 05/17/2012

thank you

[Mrs Happy Face]

09:14 AM on 05/16/2012

May the soap stay on the floor in the slammer for both of these heathens who refer to themselves as parents. Go get em Karma fairy go get em ! Poor little kid :(

[JoeyATL]

01:12 AM on 05/16/2012

This is an easy case. Admitted guilt. Simply chain the parents up and feed them bread and water, with occasional milk. Forever.

[Christina Himes]

12:52 AM on 05/16/2012

No one cares enough for most children these days. A year goes by and no one sees the boy or even thinks to contact anyone after a year. It's sad and pathetic. I agree that the boy was likely murdered after his stepmother had the miscarriage.

[falsified]

11:55 PM on 05/15/2012

God this is such a sad story.

[NickaRay]

11:37 PM on 05/15/2012

If I were that boy's mother I would be at their house everyday questioning them and bothering them to see my son. I would have been calling police, getting relatives to do the same. This is ridiculous that people keep doing these things to their children. I doubt this small 10 year old boy punched the stepmom in the stomach and caused a miscarriage. Even if he did it seems they were abusive so maybe he was trying to defend himself from them when that happened. It just feels like there is more to it...no loving person would starve their child as a "punishment" for anything. I wonder what role the stepmom had in this because I'm sure it was a lot more than what she is probably saying it was.

[Thomas Patrick Sullivan]

08:34 PM on 05/15/2012

There's more here than what were being told. I'll bet you my SSDI pension that boy did not starve to death. Mr. Ramsey would have had to be thoroughly sophisticated to hold Jonathan prisoner for a length of time without something or somebody not being activated.

I'm just positively sure that poor boy was incapacitated in some manner. No normal 10-year-old would allow himself to be starved to death. Otherwise, at the very, least, he would have thrown a chair through a bedroom window in a desperate hope of drawing a neighbor's attention.

Why did his grandfather wait over a year to make a police report? Why did the boy's mother not take any action? Surely, she had visitation rights!

It is quite probable Johnathan Ramsey's enraged father accidentally killed the child in a fit of anger. Something decidedly implausible took place.

Ramsey confessed to starving the boy to death. That alone shows a character which could not have been lost on Ramsey's neighbors, the school he attended and Jonathan's friends. Most every kid that is ten in our Country has peers and pals.

Yet it took over a year? Ramsey must have been an intimidating presence to nearby residents and all involved.

Something smells rotten in Denmark and i ain't buying...

My heart goes out to his mother, brother, kin and friends.

[ncrespi]

09:17 PM on 05/15/2012

Thank you. You put what was in our hearts so beautifully....

And you are so right. There's much to be had by reading in betwee the lines. Ramsey admitted hitting the boy in the chest. I wonder how many times? That could have killed him. And I'll bet his father told the school that the boy is moving and enrolled him out while the little body lay cold in that room.

Caylee Anthony wasn't enough. Now it's this....

[Krispickle]

11:11 PM on 05/15/2012

This kind of abusUe occurs more often than you know and the pattern is the same as this one. - one child in a family is systematically abused and noone in the family, friends, or school community either knows it or reports it. Usually, the family has one scapegoat child and the others are not mistreated, at least not to the extent as the abused child. A cowed, scared ten-year can and has been starved to death.

[ncrespi]

11:55 AM on 05/16/2012

Unless they're not in the news, or in my area, I don't know about it.

[Cori Hingst]

05:57 PM on 05/15/2012

God bless his little soul.

[sandradel7509]

05:37 PM on 05/15/2012

Some people really don't deserve to have children.

[favorable mutation]

10:39 PM on 05/15/2012

Some people really don't deserve to live after they display this kind of behavior. It almost makes me want to believe in the death penalty. Almost. But then again, I'd rather have the parents of this poor kid spend the rest of their life in prison THINKING about it everyday and wishing they had done the right thing instead of the messed up thing. Death is not good enough for them.

[viciousvirago]

05:37 PM on 05/15/2012

The boy's mother should have been questioning her ex-husband repeatedly about the whereabouts of her son. And she should have demanded an intervention by child protective services.

Crimes like these go on every day in this country, they're nothing new. Humans are quite capable of the most barbaric acts to their own children and it takes the willingness of everyone to get involved in crises like this.

BUT these days, if you say something 'wrong' to a neighbor's child (who's thown garbage in your yard, say), the neighbor will be at your front door demanding an apology. We've always had a history of violence toward those who cannot defend themselves and it's time it stopped.

That means you SPEAK UP when something doesn't feel right about your neighbor's child. Hasn't been seen in weeks? Call CPS. Seems malnourished? Call police, then they will call CPS.

Cases like these break my heart because they will continue forever until all of us STEP UP and say something. Put yourself in the child's place: picture yourself starving to death and then wonder why no one is helping you out of this horror.

[sendslpmail]

08:38 PM on 05/15/2012

viciousvirago, thank you for such a passionate post. I agree. I don't know how so many people could have failed this child.