Seeta Newton has turned her Pikesville apartment into something… (Baltimore Sun photo by Kenneth…)
March 07, 2010|By Tricia Bishop | tricia.bishop@baltsun.com
Her daughter disowned her as a devil-worshiping witch. Police didn't believe her allegations of brainwashing. And social services said they weren't equipped to deal with a cult.
But Seeta Newton still would not let her grandson Javon go. Her dreams pushed her to hold on.
In one, the infant boy clings to Newton's neck while his mother, Ria, floats toward them, her arms spread wide, gown sleeves hanging like angel wings. Javon whispers insistently in Newton's ear: I want to come live where you live. ... I want to come stay with you.
Behind Ria, there's a group of people Newton knows. They call themselves by royal titles: a prince, a princess and the queen - the cult leaders who've taken in Newton's precious daughter. The people who've taken in Javon.
That house is bad, the boy murmurs. That house is ugly.
On April 24, 2006, Ria Ramkissoon, then 19, took the baby and moved into a strict, religious Baltimore household where she was christened "Princess Marie." She was cut off from family, told to burn her belongings and to abide by seemingly random rules.
Two years later, police would find the petite young woman in a New York apartment, first mistaking her for a catatonic little girl. The mummified remains of her baby - starved because he wouldn't say "amen" - would turn up in an old man's Pennsylvania shed, packed carefully in a green suitcase among mothballs and fabric-softener sheets.
It would take another two years for justice to be done.
In a two-hour interview at her apartment last week - a day after three people were convicted of second-degree murder in Javon's death - Newton, 60, talked about the factors that might have led her daughter into a cult and the dogged pursuit of her grandson.
Newton's journey took her into an alternative world of brainwashing and dubious biblical interpretation, where one young woman was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital and a second - Ria - agreed to let her beloved boy go hungry to rid him of demons, then spent weeks trying to resurrect him after he died.
Interviews with family and friends, along with court testimony, records and statements, reveal startling scenarios and a cover-up prosecutors described as "bizarre." They point to one woman as the mastermind: "Queen Antoinette," who has also gone by Toni Ellsberry, among other names.
She claimed God spoke through her, and her followers believed.
For Ria, who had vigorously converted to Christianity from the Hinduism she was born into, moving in with Queen Antoinette seemed like "the answer to her prayers," Baltimore prosecutor Julie Drake said in court.
"She couldn't have been more mistaken."
Finding Christianity
Ria Ramkissoon, now 23, is the second-youngest of seven children. She was born on the Caribbean island of Trinidad and lived there until she was about 8, spending the past few years at a Hindu school.
When she moved to Baltimore, where her mother had come to establish a new life and home, she left Hinduism behind, but not her religious inclination. She started going to a local church with a girl whose family was also from Trinidad, embracing Christianity.
"I adored her," Newton of her daughter. But she grew concerned as Ria got older and withdrew. There were times when the teenager would stay holed up in her room, scrawling Bible passages and notes to God and Jesus Christ.
Newton worried that the fixation would become fanatic. But she didn't say anything about it to Ria, afraid it would set her off.
The household was already tense.
Newton's husband, whom she met and married here in 1992, doesn't have children of his own. And he did not always mesh well with Newton's, according to some family members. He also wanted to charge Ria rent, Newton said.
On the witness stand, Ria said her relationship with him was "difficult." She's never had a relationship with her biological father.
A romance with a boyfriend, initially hidden from her mother, was also fraught. She met Robert Thompson, who was a year older, in the neighborhood. Her bus stop was in front of his house. They passionately fought in the streets, screaming at each other, family said, and would stay up late arguing on the telephone. Thompson could not be reached for this article.
Newton didn't find out about the relationship until after Ria got pregnant, around her 18th birthday. Ria told her siblings first, then reluctantly told her mother, sobbing in a big pink robe she loved to wear.
"I know she wasn't happy with me at one point, because I didn't like Robert. I didn't like his lifestyle," Newton said.
When Javon Aidan Thompson was born, in September 2005, his father was being held without bail on murder, robbery and gun charges, which he would be acquitted of a year later. Ria brought the baby to see him in jail at least once, Newton said, but it's doubtful he ever held his son.
