“C’mon,” he kept saying. “I’ve got my own toilet paper. I really need to get in there.”
Like a little kid who thinks he’s right and won’t listen to logic, Reese thought, the man kept pushing the same line, until he finally gave up and went back across to his bus, where he sat for the next several hours.
Later that afternoon, Joey Taylor’s parents took him to be examined at the local clinic, after Trooper Blaine Kuhn explained to them that he was turning the case over to the state police in the next county, who technically had jurisdiction of Heart’s Content.
The Warren State Police responded to Kuhn’s call by dispatching a regional “Uniscope” with a physical description of Jose Antonio Ramos, his distinctive bus, and the numbers of its Florida license plate. The computerized message went out at 5:06 p.m.
Patrol cars in twenty-six counties heard “Be on the lookout…” and Blaine Kuhn was right about the blimp effect. When the BOLO came over his radio, State Trooper Franklin Wills was less than a quarter of a mile from where he’d seen a bus matching that exact description earlier in the day. The trooper simply swung his patrol car around the highway and pulled into the parking area. The bus was still sitting there. At 5:09 p.m. word came back from the Shippenville barracks that the suspect had been spotted and police were in pursuit. Wills pulled up perpendicular to the bus’s front windshield and nudged the patrol car’s front door open, drawing his service revolver to point through the small space created by the doorjamb.
The driver of the bus appeared at the top of the stairs, but Wills didn’t register a physical description, his attention drawn instead to the full-size Akita the man held on a short leash. The dog was harder to target than the man and could do more damage.
“You let go of that leash,” Wills warned the man and waved his gun to show his intent, “and I’ll kill the dog first. Then I’ll kill you.”
Jose Ramos didn’t say a word, just lay down on the ground, clutching the leash tightly. Both man and dog were taken into custody in the Shippenville barracks. The bus was towed to the impound lot there, and the dog, Jesse James, was sent to Orphans of the Storm, a local animal shelter. Jose Ramos sat in the local jail until he was transported up to Warren County later that night. There he was charged with involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, statutory rape, and indecent assault, and held on $50,000 bail.
It was after midnight when Ramos was shown to his eight-by-ten single-bunk cell in the Warren County jail. With the same disconnected affect he’d shown in the Shanti Sena Council in Michigan, he didn’t seem to understand his predicament. All he could talk about was how the dog was worth thousands of dollars and they’d better be taking good care of it; how miserable the day had been, first stuck for hours in a broken-down bus and now this; and how he needed his bus back, because it was the only home he had. Ramos had no way of knowing that he’d never see his dog again, that the day spent sitting by the highway with no place to defecate would be his last day of freedom in a long time. He wouldn’t need his bus anymore. He’d found a new home.
Mr. Ramos noted that Joey pulled his penis out of his pants first, and then pulled his pants down…. Mr. Ramos also fondled Joey throughout, and at one point during this contact, told Joey he wanted to stop but could not. Mr. Ramos reports that Joey stated to him that it was okay and that he did not mind this contact…. Mr. Ramos claims that at no time the child seemed hurt or upset by this action, and in fact appeared to enjoy this.
—Interview with Perpetrator by John Bowler, Associate Director, Forest/Warren County Children and Youth Services, June 26, 1986
Three days into Jose Ramos’s jail stay, John Bowler came to see him about Joey Taylor. Bowler was a supervisor at the county’s child protective services, and this interview was not part of the criminal investigation, but for a parallel, civil complaint of child abuse automatically triggered because the alleged crime involved a minor. As a social worker, Bowler’s job was not to determine guilt, but to safeguard the child. He was simply there to investigate whether abuse had occurred and whether Ramos could be defined as a caretaker, someone whom the parents had entrusted with their child. Because he wasn’t a law enforcement officer, Bowler wasn’t required to read Ramos his Miranda rights and he didn’t. In fact, he reassured his subject at the outset that he couldn’t incriminate himself. Bowler just wanted to understand what had happened, he explained, in order to seek help and treatment for the victim—maybe even for the alleged perpetrator himself.
After a first few defensive moments, Ramos relaxed and startled the counselor by making a rambling, full confession, clearly stating that he had sexually molested Joey Taylor. But, he maintained, Joey had initiated all sexual contact, had been unharmed, and had even enjoyed it. Joey’s parents, Ramos explained, were either alcoholics or drug addicts, and left their children unattended and vulnerable, so they were clearly responsible for their son’s misfortune. It was at the Rainbow Gatherings, Ramos said, that he was first made aware of his “problem with sexual addiction,” when he’d watched young boys “exposing themselves.” He made this claim despite a handful of prior arrests for child abuse crimes. It was a textbook case of “blame the victim.”
As Bowler listened and took notes, he considered which of the two standard categories Ramos fit into as a child molester. “Situational,” or “regressed” molesters can successfully carry on adult sexual relationships, but simply put, they will take whatever they can get. Often emotionally immature themselves and with low self-esteem, they turn to children sexually as relief from stress in other parts of their lives. Their victims often appear post-pubescent; a childlike countenance is less of the appeal to this type, like the adult who hits on his fifteen-year-old stepdaughter because his wife doesn’t understand him, and the teen is around and willing, especially after he plies her with drugs or alcohol. Some of these characteristics fit Ramos’s emerging profile, but Bowler knew that the two types overlapped, and he saw Ramos more as a fixated molester, the second of the two categories.
“Fixated” or “preference” child molesters are sexually attracted exclusively to prepubescent children. Often they’re drawn to a particular type—nothing will do for them but a narrow age range, a certain look. Fixated molesters are much more likely to see themselves as unfairly misjudged victims themselves; victims of their own troubled childhood, the bad hand fate has drawn them, their own uncontrollable urges. The fixated molester identifies himself with his child victim, sees himself on equal footing, no different, for example, than the five-year-old “lover” who “wanted it as much as me.” A fixated molester typically sets out to woo his victim, seducing him into behavior that doesn’t necessarily feel bad, at least not at first, and that might even feel very good. Often such young victims don’t have feelings of guilt and trauma until they grow older and come to realize what they’d been led to do. The very fact that it feels good can cause damage in itself, and leads to self-condemnation and self-loathing. It didn’t surprise Bowler to hear Ramos describe his MO of first performing the sexual acts on his victim before asking for the return favor. Bowler didn’t necessarily believe Ramos’s version of the order of things, but if it were true, pleasuring Joey had almost certainly been a deliberate ploy.
The perpetrator admits to sexually assaulting the child in several fashions, including fondling, oral sex, anal sex.
—Interview by John Bowler, June 26, 1986
John Bowler took his notes in the most clinical fashion possible as he listened to Ramos talk about raping Joey Taylor. Bowler often heard this kind of frank talk in his work. There was nothing extraordinary about the graphic language, the laundry list of perverse acts. But the counselor was struck by Ramos’s relish. Bowler left the jail with one clear thought that stayed with him for over twenty years: that Jose Ramos was a very dangerous man. He knew from both his training and experience that there were really only two ways a pedophile would stop targeting children: if he felt true remorse or if he thought the consequences of getting c
aught were not worth the risk of repeating the act. Bowler didn’t think Ramos had ever considered either thought. The counselor was convinced Ramos would hunt down and molest kids for the rest of his life.
Later, Bowler checked in with his friend State Trooper Dan Portzer. Their paths regularly intersected on cases, and when Bowler told Portzer about the interview, the trooper immediately obtained a copy of the report. The confession would be a mainstay of the case against Ramos. Portzer was a twenty-four-year veteran of the Pennsylvania State Police, a quiet, even shy, but diligent investigator. Cases involving kids were often directed his way, because of his gentle manner with the young victims. He was the officer who’d gone down to Shippenville and brought Ramos up to be charged in Warren, and was now assigned to follow up.
In the days immediately following Ramos’s arrest, Trooper Portzer went to great lengths to track any leads. He pulled Ramos’s rap sheet and sent word to police in Miami, New Orleans, and New York, where the man had priors—both to alert them and to help build his case. New York advised that they had no outstanding warrants on Jose Antonio Ramos, although a man with the same birthday but no other relationship to Ramos was wanted. Portzer wouldn’t learn for years that New York City detectives and FBI agents had been interested in Ramos since at least the year before, when AUSA Stuart GraBois had taken on the Patz case.
Trooper Portzer got little else back on his inquiries, although he did hear an account of a Florida woman whom Ramos had conned into buying the bus, putting it in his name. Ramos, his friend, and her two children had then driven to Washington, D.C., where he’d dropped her and the kids off, told her he was going to park the bus, and was never seen again.
Portzer also interviewed Cherie and Joe Taylor and asked the Rainbows to search out any other families at the encampment whose children might have come in contact with Ramos. When Portzer met with the Taylors the following Saturday at the temporary command post the state police had set up at the Gathering itself, he was introduced to Serena Landry and her live-in boyfriend, Brian. The couple had driven several hours to the Gathering from Erie, hard in the northwest corner of Pennsylvania. They’d come without Serena’s five- and nine-year-old sons, who’d flatly refused to attend any more Gatherings. “No more crazy Rainbows,” the two boys had said, and when pressed, they’d finally revealed why.
The man they knew as Michael might be there, the boys told their mother, and they didn’t want to see him. Michael had come to stay with them after the previous one in Missouri, the Landrys’ very first Gathering. He was welcomed by the whole family, who’d all enjoyed hanging out with him in Missouri, and he was given a place to stay in the basement bedroom for a few weeks. He’d cooked and run errands, taken the boys fishing, and then he’d touched them in ways they didn’t like. It didn’t hurt, and he didn’t force them when they wouldn’t do it back. But when he rubbed them through their clothing, it felt bad, even though Michael said it wasn’t. He must have known what he was doing was wrong, though, because he’d told both five-year-old Jake and nine-year-old Jason he’d kill them if anyone found out.
Both boys took the threat seriously and kept the secret for months, although in retrospect their distraught mother realized they’d shown typical signs. One had become less outgoing, while the other grew more hostile to authority figures. When it was time for another Rainbow event, they finally spoke up, but Ramos was long gone from their home, with no way to track him. Serena and Brian dropped the boys off with their grandparents and went alone to the Pennsylvania Gathering, planning to look for Ramos and to spread the word, but when they learned about the Taylor incident, they offered to do more.
“We’ll press charges, too,” they told Trooper Portzer, “anything to help.” When they returned home to Erie three weeks later, they did as Portzer had instructed and contacted state police there, who charged Jose Ramos with corruption of a minor and indecent assault.
The Erie County charges—which were both misdemeanors and, therefore, lesser counts than the two felony charges for the rape of Joey Taylor in Warren County—would nonetheless turn out to be critical. Both cases were moving forward toward trial in the fall of 1986. But while the Erie case proceeded in a straightforward manner, Ramos’s surefire confession to John Bowler in Warren ran off the rails. The judge had ruled in favor of Ramos’s public defender’s motion to suppress the confession on the grounds that as a social worker John Bowler had acted as an arm of the state and state policy should have dictated that he read Ramos his Miranda rights.
Unfortunately, the Warren County prosecutor had built his case around that confession, believing that although Joey Taylor’s parents had left contact numbers and assurances they’d return as needed, an eight-year-old’s testimony was not the slam dunk a confession would be. As the Warren County district attorney filed an appeal against the suppression of his key evidence with the Superior Court in Harrisburg, it looked like the case would drag on well into 1987.
In January 1987, the Landry trial against Jose Ramos began in Erie, Pennsylvania. The older of the two victims was now living out west with his father, but the Erie district attorney had no problems relying on his younger brother as his star witness. Then-six-year-old Jake Landry took the stand in a one-day trial and testified about Ramos fondling him the previous summer. Ramos’s lawyer tried to discredit his testimony, saying a child that young couldn’t possibly be reliable. Jake Landry didn’t waver, and told the jury how Ramos threatened his life. Ramos himself testified, denying everything, so that in the end it became nothing more than a “he said/he said” between a six-year-old and an alleged pedophile.
After less than an hour of deliberation, the jury concluded that Jose Ramos had perjured himself and found him guilty on both counts, corruption of a minor and indecent assault. He was sentenced to a total of three and a half to seven years, his first real prison time ever. It was a victory for the Rainbows. But as Jose Ramos was processed into the Pennsylvania State Correctional Institute at Rockview in May 1987, they were still waiting for final resolution in the Warren County case against Ramos for the rape of Joey Taylor.
Ramos had been arguing all along that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania had no right to commandeer his bus and personal belongings, but once he started serving time on the Erie sentence, the bus became abandoned property. In early June 1987, state police made plans to dispose of the vehicle, and inventoried its contents. There were sixty-six items on the list, including one pair of Pony gym shoes, one pair of jeans, one T-shirt, and underwear (listed as dirty). It was all considered junk, and the troopers called Himes Sales and Auto Wrecking to take everything away for disposal.
Himes Sales had a new owner, Carl Reese, who remembered Jose Ramos well from their meeting off the interstate exactly one year earlier, when Ramos had come into his Exxon station asking to use the men’s room. I knew he was a creep, Reese thought, when he learned what had happened to the man since then.
Reese and one of his workers, Tim Reitz, towed the bus to the salvage yard and cleaned it out, sweeping the refuse into a burn pile in one corner of the lot. Reese had Reitz crawl around inside, dumping things out of the back of the bus, which was overrun with vermin and filth. Reitz gathered together a pile of small plastic toys, still pristine in their cellophane wrappings, and he and his boss speculated about Ramos’s devious intentions. Reitz pocketed a handful to give to his mother, who collected such trinkets for her annual Easter egg hunt. Better to do some good with them, he thought. This guy sure has no use for Darth Vader action figures anytime soon.
But just a few months later the Rainbows were angered to learn their children wouldn’t be safe from Ramos for as long as they’d hoped. In October, nearly a year after the Warren judge had ruled to suppress Ramos’s confession, the Superior Court of Pennsylvania upheld the judge’s decision. Ramos’s admission to John Bowler that he’d had sex with Joey Taylor could not be used as evidence. Trooper Dan Portzer and the other state police who’d worked on the case saw the ruling as a trave
sty of justice. After months of hard work they watched a known predator, who in no uncertain terms had confessed to his crime, beat the system on a technicality.
Two weeks after the Pennsylvania Superior Court’s decision, Warren County district attorney Rick Hernan moved to drop the prosecution altogether. He didn’t feel confident he could rely solely on victim testimony, and bringing the Rainbows back to Warren from across the country would tax his limited budget. Besides, Ramos was already locked up on the Erie case. Trooper Dan Portzer chafed at the decision, but his own hands were tied.
When Jose Ramos got the news, however, he was ecstatic. He was now free and clear of the outstanding felony charges, and his earliest release date was less than two years away.
“This is God’s way of showing me that prayer works,” he wrote that night.
Over the months, the Taylors had moved around, staying with different friends and relatives. Everyone could see the difference in both Taylor boys. Joey had always been the slower, softer, sweeter of the two, but now he was shutting down, becoming withdrawn and defensive. In their naturally affectionate family, Joey stopped giving and receiving hugs. His younger brother Billy, who’d been the more outgoing and exuberant of the two, had become angry and hostile toward Joey. You’re a fag, Billy would say derisively, in the cruel way of children who want to distance themselves from possible contamination. The other kids soon echoed Billy’s taunts, and Joey suffered in silence. He went from A’s and B’s in school to D’s and F’s, and he woke up sweating from nightmares that Ramos was coming to hurt him.
The children weren’t the only ones affected. Cherie and Joe Sr. fought over his increased drinking, and Cherie’s health suffered too. Bouts of depression exacerbated her physical problems, and the family sunk further into the debt brought on by her growing medical bills. They called the DA’s Office periodically about the status of the case, but at first were put off, and then one day they were told it had been dropped. Angry and demoralized, they felt betrayed. This is a hard lesson, the parents told each other, about what happens when you try to play by the rules.
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