Family continues to cope with anger, sense of loss during first ...

Lloyd and Starla Swanson keep the ashes of their 10-year-old grandson Johnathan Lloyd Ramsey in their home.

They had originally planned to spread ?J.L?s? ashes around a rosebush they planted in his memory outside of their Iowa home.

But ?we couldn?t quite bring ourselves to do that because Iowa gets pretty cold so we put him in an urn and he?s here with us,? said Starla Swanson, his step-grandmother.

For the Swansons, his mother, Judy Williams and his younger brother, it was the first holiday season since a volunteer rescue group helped authorities find his remains in rural Ellis County in April 2012. Police say the boy was starved to death by his father, Aaron Ramsey, and stepmother, Elizabeth Ramsey. Both remain in the Dallas County jail. They each face one count of injury to a child, a first-degree felony punishable by up to life in prison.

?It has been a hard year for all of us,? wrote his mother, who lives in New Mexico, in an email. ?Christmas was very hard to get through knowing he is gone.?

Police believe Jonathan had been dead for months when his paternal grandfather contacted local authorizes in March 2012, telling them that he had not heard from his grandson for more than a year. Aaron and Elizabeth Ramsey gave a number of reasons why he couldn?t visit the child, including saying that the boy was with his mother in New Mexico.

The couple soon confessed to locking him in a bedroom for months, according to police records. He was fed mostly bread and water, and he became so frail and hungry that he ate his own feces, court documents show. Aaron Ramsey told police that after Johnathan died sometime in 2011, he put him into a sleeping bag and later dumped his body in a wooded area in Ellis County.

Family members say the situation has been particularly tough for 9-year-old Eric Ramsey, J.L.?s brother. Eric Ramsey had had little contact with Aaron Ramsey because his mother had custody of him and the couple split up when he was only a few months old.

?He?s nine going on 20 now,? his grandfather said.

Aaron Ramsey is scheduled to go to trial in March ? almost one year after family members found out that the boy had died months earlier without anybody being aware.

?Even if they?re given life in prison and they?re tortured by inmates, there is no way to call it just because J.L. is dead and they?re still alive,? Starla Swanson said.

The Swansons have sought to channel their grief and anger into doing something good and have been raising money for volunteer search and rescue group, including one of the Dallas area groups that helped locate their grandson?s remains. They are also working on a fundraiser for an Iowa group.

?We?re trying to do positive things to try to make some sense of this,? Starla Swanson said.

Source: http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/2013/01/family-continues-to-cope-with-anger-sense-of-loss-during-first-holiday-since-authorities-found-boys-body.html/

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