PRINCE McLEOD RAMS - 15 months - Manassas VA

Toddler dies while with dad in Va.; police to review deaths of father's mom, ex-girlfriend

By MATTHEW BARAKAT
Associated Press
Published: Sunday, December 2, 2012 at 7:59 p.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, December 2, 2012 at 7:59 p.m.

MANASSAS, Va. - A toddler's death during a visit with his father last month in Virginia is prompting police to also more closely investigate the suicide of the man's mother and the shooting death of a onetime girlfriend in the past decade.

Fifteen-month-old Prince McLeod Rams died during a three-hour, unsupervised visit with his father, Joaquin S. Rams of Manassas, police said. Manassas Police spokesman Lowell Nevill said that led police to further probe the 2008 suicide of Joaquin Rams' mother and the 2003 shooting death of his ex-girlfriend Shawn K. Mason.

The boy's mother, Hera McLeod, said the system failed to protect the boy after she fought vehemently to prevent the unsupervised visits, which were ordered by a judge in Maryland. Authorities have not yet determined how the boy died, and Rams has not been charged with a crime. But McLeod said the unusual confluence of deaths is not easily explained.

"Either he's the most unlucky bastard on this planet, or he's a killer," said McLeod, who fled the relationship with her one-time fiance about two weeks after Prince was born.

Joaquin Rams did not answer calls to his cellphone. His attorney also did not return calls seeking comment.

Hera McLeod said she has been given only a little information about her son's injuries. But she said the hospital called child protective services because of suspicious injuries, including dried blood in his nose and a bruise on his forehead.

During a custody hearing for Prince Rams in March, investigators testified Joaquin Rams is a suspect in the killing of Mason, 22, who was shot in the head in her Manassas condo in 2003.

In 2008, Rams' mother, Alma Collins, was found dead. Prince William County Police at the time ruled the death a suicide. While Manassas police say all the investigations remain a high priority, Prince William County police spokesman Jonathan Perok said investigators have so far not found anything to indicate Collins' death was not a suicide.

But her son Joseph Velez Joaquin Rams' half brother said it makes no sense that his mother would have killed herself and said he has been interviewed by police investigating whether his mother's death was a homicide.

"My mother in her life never had a history of depression," Velez said.

He described his half brother as "a monster," describing how even at age 3, his younger brother attacked him on the head with a hammer he had hidden behind his back as he feigned a request for a kiss. Like Hera McLeod, Velez expressed frustration at police who failed to make a case in the slaying of Shawn Mason.

And Alma Collins' sister, Elva Caraballo of Tarpon Springs, Fla., said she tried to tell Prince William County police of her suspicions about Collins' death, but detectives wouldn't return her phone calls.

The most recent death occurred Oct. 21, when Hera McLeod turned over her young son to Joaquin Rams. Hera McLeod won custody of the boy in Montgomery County, Md., court. But the judge granted Rams visitation first supervised, and then unsupervised.

McLeod, an intelligence analyst who once was a contestant on the CBS reality competition "The Amazing Race," said she does not understand why the judge ignored her concerns for her son's safety, accompanied by evidence of Joaquin Rams' lack of fitness as a father: his involvement in running an online pornography business; the testimony from the Manassas detective that Rams is a suspect in his ex-girlfriend's killing; and a sexual encounter between Rams, 40, and a woman who said Rams raped her when she was 19. Rams said it was consensual.

The Associated Press does not identify people who claim to be victims of sexual assault.

In making his custody and visitation rulings, the judge said the suspicions about the deaths of Collins and Mason were no concern to him, describing it as "smoke that's been blown that I can see through."

Hera McLeod said she wants to expose what went wrong and led to her son's death.

"I knew how bad this could get. ... If the laws are not designed to protect children, then they need to be changed," she wrote about the custody ruling on a blog she maintains. "In my son's case, it appears as though death was the only threshold for denial of visitation."

http://www.goupstate.com/article/20121202/WIRE/121209972/1033/?p=1&tc=pg

You can read the transcription of the Judge's custody order here:

http://www.docstoc.com/docs/138578812/Michael-J-Algeo---Washington-Post

The death of Prince McLeod Rams (Part 1)

Posted by Tom Jackman on May 1, 2013 at 5:00 am



Note: This is the first of a four-part story on the death of 15-month-old Prince Rams in Manassas last October. Part 2 will appear
tomorrow.

There are quite a few people in Prince William County who think Joaquin Rams is a serial killer. That he has killed three people over
the last 10 years, trying to collect a six-figure insurance payout each time.

Police and prosecutors think that his third victim was his own son, 15-month-old Prince McLeod Rams, in Manassas last October. They allege that Joaquin Rams drowned Prince, with three other people in the house, hoping to collect more than $500,000 in life insurance on the boy.

Now charged with the first-degree murder of his son, Joaquin Rams could possibly face the death penalty. The toddler’s mother, who
separated from Rams two weeks after the baby’s birth in July 2011, said last week she thought Rams should face a capital murder charge.

But what if Prince Rams wasn’t killed? What if there was no slaying at all?

Rams says that’s the truth. In his first public comment since he was charged with murder, he adamantly maintains that he did not kill Prince Rams. No one did, he claims.

“I did not harm my son,” Rams said in a written statement released by his lawyers. “It breaks my heart to think that anyone would believe that I did. I’m still shocked to learn how sick Prince was.”

A jury likely will decide what really happened in that Manassas home last fall. But Rams and his lawyers contend that Prince had a fatal seizure — after six seizures in the previous six weeks — and that the child died suddenly with no evidence of homicide. They say he did not kill his ex-girlfriend in 2003 or his mother in 2008, as some have alleged, and he is not charged in their deaths.

The wild and terrible events that surround the death of Prince Rams on Oct. 21, 2012, are almost too complicated and shocking to believe. Pornographic Web sites. Another homicide. An online romance that blossomed, then imploded. A suspicious suicide. Suspected insurance fraud. Two child custody battles. And at the center, a feverish child beset by seizures.


Joaquin Shadow Rams, charged with first-degree murder in the death of his
15-month-old son, Prince Rams. (CIty of Manassas Police)

In the end, though, the trial of Joaquin Rams will likely boil down to whether a jury believes Virginia assistant medical examiner Constance DiAngelo’s opinion that Prince McLeod Rams drowned. In rebuttal, they will hear from defense experts who will attack the drowning diagnosis and discuss the danger of repeated febrile seizures; from the insurance agent who sold the big policy to Rams; and from the three people in the house with the father and toddler son, who say Joaquin Rams didn’t kill Prince.

DiAngelo, the state’s lead medical examiner in Northern Virginia, is an experienced forensic pathologist who has worked many cases here over the past eight years. She took three months to issue a ruling on the death of Prince McLeod Rams, and did so only after examining the boy’s brain tissue for possible signs of seizures or epilepsy. She then ruled that the boy died by drowning, but did not rule the death a homicide.

Joaquin Rams, 40, has said from the start that his son was shaking and hot, and was wet only because Rams was trying to cool him down with cold water until paramedics arrived. Rams’s attorneys have since discovered that Prince Rams had six febrile seizures in the six weeks before his death, and records obtained by Rams’s lawyers show an apparent seventh seizure months before that.

Prince lived with his mother in Maryland, and his father didn’t know that the boy had six seizures in Maryland in addition to one that
occurred in Manassas in September 2012, his lawyers say.

Joaquin Rams and his ex-girlfriend, Hera A. McLeod of Gaithersburg, were involved in a ferocious custody and visitation battle over Prince in 2012, after emerging from an ugly set of criminal charges and countercharges in 2011. By court order, the two parents had no direct contact.

Instead, Joaquin Rams was given an instruction sheet telling him what to do if Prince had a seizure induced by a high fever, called a febrile seizure. And one of the main instructions was to “sit the child in two inches of lukewarm water.” Rams has claimed that he rushed the unconscious child into the bathtub and turned on the water, but there was no stopper in the tub, so he splashed the child with cold water while a housemate called 911. Prince would die a day later.

The other people in the house on Landgreen Street in Manassas City were two adults and Rams’s 13-year-old son. All three say that Rams was never alone with Prince and did not drown the boy, according to Rams’s lawyers. Investigators believe that Rams was alone with Prince long enough to kill him, and that statements by those in the house corroborate that.

Timothy M. Olmstead, Rams’s lawyer and a former Prince William prosecutor, said in a recent interview he doesn’t think Manassas City police and the Virginia medical examiner were aware of Prince’s full medical history before reaching the drowning conclusion, which was followed days later by the murder charge.

In particular, Prince had four seizures in a 24-hour period in September 2012. Prince also had a febrile seizure with his mother two
days before he fell unconscious on Oct. 20 with his father, and two other seizures in Maryland that were uncovered by the defense team after the father’s arrest.

“We’re not convinced she [DiAngelo] was provided with his entire medical history,” Olmstead said. “A significant medical history she’s not aware of. A case like this is done by exclusion, and medical history is vitally important. ..We are interested in justice in this case and we feel it’s leading to this point.”

DiAngelo has testified about Prince’s death in two hearings: a preliminary hearing last week and a March custody hearing in which Joaquin Rams’ 13-year-old son was permanently removed from his custody because of his arrest. She did not discuss her knowledge of the toddler’s medical background in detail either time.

Paul Ebert, the long-time commonwealth’s attorney of Prince William, said he was confident in DiAngelo’s findings. He said the suggestion of seizures was “contrary to the opinion of the medical examiner’s office,” and his prosecutors would rely on that opinion to make their case.

McLeod, the distraught mother of Prince said of her ex-fiance, “Either he’s the most unlucky person around, or he’s a serial killer.”

Part two: Joaquin Rams’s past, the birth of Prince, the parents’ sudden separation and the ensuing custody battle.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2013/05/01/the-death-of-prince-rams-part-1/

The death of Prince McLeod Rams (Part 2)




http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2013/05/02/the-death-of-prince-rams-part-2/

The death of Prince McLeod Rams (Part 3)



Prince Rams and his father, Joaquin Rams, in Manassas last year. Joaquin Rams is now charged with
the murder of his son. His other son was cropped out of the photo by the defense team, at Rams’ request.
(courtesy Joaquin Rams)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2013/05/03/the-death-of-prince-rams-part-3/

The death of Prince McLeod Rams (Part 4)



Hera McLeod, center, mother of Prince Rams, speaks to the media outside the Prince William County courthouse last week, flanked by her parents, Mary and Gus McLeod.
(Tom Jackman/The Washington Post)


http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/local/wp/2013/05/04/the-death-of-prince-rams-part-4/

Manassas man is charged with murder in alleged drowning of his 16-month-old son

1-25-2013

By Jeremy Borden and Paul Duggan,


A Manassas man who authorities
said took out more than $500,000 in life insurance policies on his
16-month-old son was charged with first-degree murder Friday in the
alleged drowning of the boy in October.

The child, Prince McLeod Rams, had been the subject of a
custody dispute. Over repeated objections from the boy’s mother, a
family court judge in Montgomery County allowed the father, Joaquin S.
Rams, now 40, to have unsupervised visits with Prince in his Prince
William County home.

Prince’s mother, Hera McLeod, said in an interview Friday that she
and Rams, who were not married, were together as a couple for about 18
months, until she ended their relationship in July 2011, a few weeks
after Prince’s birth.

McLeod said she was told by investigators
that in the months after she and Rams broke up, Rams bought three
insurance policies on Prince’s life, listing himself as the only
beneficiary. The death benefits, which have not been paid, were
$443,000, $50,000 and $35,000, McLeod said, relating what investigators
told her.

During one of Rams’s unsupervised visits with Prince, on
Oct. 20, the boy suffered what a Prince William Hospital report called
“obvious and unexplainable injuries,” including bruises above his left
eye and blood in his nose. Prince, who died the next day, had arrived at
the hospital naked and wet, the report said.

The report also said Prince had a history of seizures.
Although authorities have not commented extensively on the probe of Prince’s
death, a law enforcement official in Prince William who is familiar with
the case confirmed that the death benefits of the insurance policies
totaled more than $500,000.

McLeod, 32, shared other details that she said were related to her by investigators.
According to what she heard from detectives, McLeod said, Rams told investigators
that Prince suffered a seizure during the Oct. 20 visit and that he
tried to help the boy by placing him in a bathtub filled with cold water
and by splashing water on the child’s face.

But McLeod said she
was told that an autopsy found that Prince’s lungs and other organs were
saturated with water. “There was so much water in his system, it
couldn’t possibly have come from just a little bit being sprinkled in
his face,” she said.

On Friday, three months into the
investigation, authorities in Prince William arrested Rams. “He’s
charged with premeditated murder,” Commonwealth's Attorney Paul B. Ebert
said. Rams has denied any wrongdoing in postings to a blog that he
maintains, in which he criticizes people who suspect him of causing his
son’s death.

Ebert said that under Virginia law, based on the
circumstances of the alleged crime, the charge against Rams eventually
could be increased to capital murder, meaning he could be sentenced to
death if convicted.

It was unclear Friday whether Rams has hired a
criminal defense attorney. His attorney in the custody dispute could
not be reached.

McLeod said the allegation that Prince was slain
did not surprise her. “I have known since the day I saw my son in the
hospital,” said McLeod, who was once a contestant on the CBS-TV reality
program “The Amazing Race.”

As for Rams’s arrest, she said: “That
feels good to know. For this long, I’ve been trying to get people to
understand what I already knew.”

Last year, citing concerns for
the boy’s safety, McLeod wanted Judge Michael J. Algeo to deny
visitation rights to Rams. After court proceedings, Algeo initially
allowed only supervised visits, appointing a retired police officer to
monitor Rams and Prince when they were together. Eventually, Algeo
lifted the supervision requirement.

During the court fight over
custody and visitation, a Manassas police detective testified that Rams
remained a suspect in the unsolved shooting death of a former
girlfriend, Shawn Katrina Mason, in 2003. Rams had an opportunity and
motive to commit the crime, the detective testified. A Prince William
social worker noted in a report that Rams mistakenly thought he was the
beneficiary of Mason’s life insurance policy.

Rams, in his family court testimony, denied any involvement in Mason’s death.
The exact basis for his arrest in Prince’s death remained unclear Friday.

The affidavit that authorities presented to a judge to obtain a search
warrant was not immediately disclosed. But it probably will be made
public in court next week.

“I am a devoted father, and far from
the horrible person I have been made out to be in the media,” Rams said
in a Jan. 8 post to his blog. “The memories of [Prince] calling me
‘dada’ will be forever locked in my mind.”
McLeod also has a blog.

In a July 12 post, she worried about a boy who was too young to protect
himself. “If anything happens to Prince,” McLeod wrote, “he can’t say
anything. He’s not old enough to be talking.”


http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/manassas-man-is-charged-with-murder-in-alleged-drowning-of-his-16-month-old-son/2013/01/25/ddd889c0-6731-11e2-9e1b-07db1d2ccd5b_story.html