![GLENN RAMEY]()
GLENN RAMEY
OLNEY – With the story of Sabrina Stauffenberg’s death November 23 being a trending topic on Facebook for two days, word about the man accused in the crime has reached many locales where he used to live.
And family and acquaintances of Glenn R. Ramey, 53, charged in the 8-year-old’s death, have begun to speak out about him and predictors leading up to the day before Thanksgiving 2016.
Ramey, who had been living in Richland County since getting out of Choate Mental Health Center in Anna in late 2013, had been charged in a number of minor infractions (mostly traffic, but at least one misdemeanor violence count and one felony Aggravated DUI) in Richland.
He was able to escape any meaningful punishment out of Crawford County when, as he told acquaintances in 2011, he “acted crazy” and got out of felony charges in that county be being sent off to Choate.
The pattern of behavior was noted by a few who knew him and illustrated in the Limited Special Edition issued by Disclosure on the case December 7.
Now, more interviews with members of the huge immediate family of Ramey, as well as with extended family (his own, which are, it’s being discovered, scattered all over), are underscoring exactly what the Limited Special Edition material highlighted: That if someone in a position of authority, including heavily-funded state agencies, had been doing their job, Ramey likely wouldn’t have been in Richland County and in the vicinity of the Stauffenberg residence on Nov. 23, and Sabrina likely would be alive and unharmed.
Ex-mother-in-law, kids’ guardian
Disclosure’s correspondent spoke with Ramey’s ex-mother-in-law, Deena Kay Witt in Metropolis, the Massac County city in deep southern Illinois that lies more than 130 miles away from Olney.
Witt is the late Patsy Ramey’s mother, who has guardianship and custody of Ramey’s two boys, Garrett, 24, and Stetson, 14.
Patsy Ramey died several years back, this after being able to get away from her husband of 14 years.
Witt said the last five of those 14 years, Patsy Ramey “kept trying to get Glenn to leave but he kept coming back.
“He was abusive to her,” Witt said, “and filing OPs did no good. She would call the law and they would do nothing.”
At one point, Witt said, “I overheard them (the law) telling her there was nothing they could do (to get him to leave) because it was ‘his address also.’”
In 2004-05, when the boys were ages 4 and 14, Illinois’ Department of Children and Family Services became involved when the boys showed evidence of sexual abuse.
“There were a couple of incidents,” Witt said, “and it was continuous.”
Contrary to material heretofore disseminated about the situation, “there was no reconstructive surgery” on either of the boys (there had been information issued by a huge number of associates of Ramey’s that indicated that the sexual abuse against at least one of the boys had been so severe, reconstructive surgery had had to be done on his rectum.)
That, Witt said, wasn’t the case.
However, there was “some severe scarring” involved in the boy’s rectal injuries.
Witt said the incidents were founded by DCFS, who turned their findings over to the local prosecutor.
Despite there being ample physical evidence, “they didn’t believe Ramey was capable of the alleged acts, nor did they believe the children because of their disabilities,” and Ramey walked.
One of the boys is largely non-verbal, and that, argued prosecutors at the time, was a drawback in such instances, even with physical evidence, because the courts in this state rely heavily on testimony of the victim…despite the funding being thrown at DCFS, who technically are supposed to be “the voice” for children who are victims of abuse, and yet fail them time and again statewide, especially in downstate Illinois.
“The saddest part,” said Witt, “was when the 4-year-old walked up to Ramey in court and said ‘Why did you hurt my butt and make it bleed?’”
Residual effects
Regardless of the fact that there were no formal charges to hang on him, Ramey was at least banned from the children due to DCFS’ efforts, and Patsy Ramey was finally able to get her divorce and move on with what was left of her life.
But the damage to the boys was permanent.
“The oldest, Garrett, blocks his bedroom door at night so no one can get in,” Witt said. “He is still afraid Glenn will come after him and kill him.”
The younger, Stetson, 14, hides when he goes to sleep, Witt said.
“He doesn’t call Glenn ‘dad,’” she said. “He calls him Glenn.”
Both boys, Witt said, are aware of the murder charges pending against Ramey in Richland County and have issued their opinions on it.
“They both know what he’s done to Sabrina,” she said, “and they both think he’ll get by with it.”
Witt is a little less hesitant to issue her own opinions on the matter.
“I thank God I was never placed in a position to be around Ramey,” she said, “because if I had been, that little girl would be alive and I would be the one in prison. Those are my grandsons and he hurt them and I don’t like it.”
When Witt was told that many are saying Ramey will likely end up in a mental ward and be declared mentally ill, she had an opinion on that, too.
“Yes, and he’ll be released in a year or two,” she said, adding she “could say more, but I’ll be nice.”
Disclosure’s correspondent told her that her opinion was fine, and that the paper would print pretty much anything she wanted to say about the situation.
Without hesitation, Witt then advised what would happen if it were up to her.
“They should cut it off,” Witt said about Ramey’s manhood, “and shove it down his throat, then split him from throat to rectum.”
The most bizarre piece of information of all
Witt said there were potentially other victims of Ramey’s over the years, and stories continue to surface, especially now in light of the charges in far-flung Richland County (where Ramey ended up after he followed an ex-wife from Johnson County – to the immediate north of Massac – up to Crawford, then Richland).
She advised that he was “caught by a neighbor messing with a young girl, and she fought back and ran,” Witt recalled of a Massac County incident.
But perhaps the most horrific material to come out about Ramey’s history is allusion to something that was supposedly going on in Johnson County, in the Vienna-Simpson area (where Ramey’s mother, Hannah Gilliland, still resides), when the boys were small.
“There was supposed to have been a time when Glenn and his brother, Paul Calvin Ramey, took the boys to a cult gathering of sorts, where they did ‘devil stuff’ and the boys drank blood,” Witt said.
She noted that she “can’t swear to” the information.
However, “neither one of the boys can stand the smell of nor the sight of blood without getting sick,” she said.
Disclosure has been examining this allegation and unfortunately, there are several authorities who are quick to state that yes, there have been many “pagan” fest-type gatherings in the area of Johnson and surrounding counties in which the Shawnee National Forest covers, and some of these have produced questionable reports such as what Witt was detailing.
Because a lot of people look at these gatherings as “weird,” there is always a person who automatically assumes that there is some kind of ritualistic blood-drinking or sexual activity going on at them, and that’s generally not the case.
However, there are well-documented situations dating back decades that point to some ritualistic abuse of children in very remote locations of not only Illinois, but of Missouri and Kentucky, both of these states said to be stomping grounds of Glenn Ramey.
In fact, his most recent cell phone number has a Kentucky area code, and he has been known to make the claim that his family hails from that state.
In reality, his family originally came from Missouri.
As a result of these connections, and the allegations of “blood-drinking” and ritualistic sexual abuse of children, this aspect of the investigation this paper is conducting into Ramey’s history is being scrutinized closely, and Disclosure staff have been traveling to these states to look into what may or may not have been going on during the time the Ramey boys were being abused by their father.
The outcome of these investigations will be published in upcoming issues of Disclosure.
Sexual assault, 1994…but not by Glenn
One thing that could definitively be tracked down is the court record of others in Ramey’s circle – specifically, family – who have been involved in sexual assault of a child.
This is the case with Paul Calvin Ramey of Eldorado, age 51, who only just recently had his name come off the Illinois Sex Offender Registry.
Paul Ramey’s case occurred before any kind of long-term or even lifetime presence on the list was required by law. When his conviction came, the term of placement of a name on the registry was largely decided by the courts on a case-by-case basis in accordance with Illinois law at the time, which wasn’t as stringent as it is now.
Paul Ramey’s case came about in March of 1994.
At that time, Ramey was accused of two counts of Aggravated Criminal Sexual Assault against a girl under the age of 13.
That girl was named in court documents but will be referred to here only as Jane Doe.
Eldorado police officer Bob Briddick was the one who lead the investigation. In his report, he stated that on five different occasions, Paul Ramey “committed Aggravated Criminal Sexual Assault in that he rubbed the vagina of Jane Doe” (who was 9 years old at the time), “put his penis against the vagina of Jane Doe, had Jane Doe rub his penis.”
A second count filed showed “an act of sexual penetration with Jane Doe,” alleged to have taken place in November 1993 and which probably was the ultimate act that caused her to seek out someone to tell, so that it would stop.
“All the acts took place between October 1993 and November 1993 (at a location on) the 2300 block of Locust Street in Eldorado. Paul Ramey gave a voluntary statement admitting to the above facts to the reporting officer.”
Associations outlined in paperwork
Paul Ramey was arrested on March 23, 1994.
On his financial affidavit of assets and liabilities, Ramey listed that he was receiving $446 a month in state or federal benefits (likely social security disability), as most of the Ramey family subsists on, since they all claim to be disabled in one way or another; and while some of them are, most of them are perfectly able-bodied – as is Glenn Ramey, the situation outlined in the Limited Special Edition – and capable of handling a job…it’s just that it’s “easier” for them to collect some form of assistance and work under the table, as it was alleged Ramey was doing, in order to fund their lifestyle.
Paul Calvin Ramey was originally held on a $40,000 bail ($4,000 cash bond) for a couple of months on two Class X felony counts of Aggravated Criminal Sexual Assault; then, that amount was reduced by order of then-judge/now-Saline County prosecutor, Mike Henshaw, to $15,000 ($1,500 cash bond) upon petition by Ramey’s public defender to have the bond lowered.
Ramey’s bond was reduced and a Clada Sinks, reporting the same address as Ramey (on the 2300 block of Locust Street in Eldorado) posted it on June 29, 1994.
As it turned out, Clada was the first name of the woman later to be subpoenaed under another name – Rubenstein – which matched the actual last name of the victim, Jane Doe.
Whether or not this was Paul Ramey’s stepdaughter, therefore, remains out of the noted public record, but a strong likelihood.
Plea entered
DCFS had been called in, and one of the best caseworkers ever to grace the agency’s downstate region, Charlie Ragon, was tasked with handling that aspect of it. In fact, it was to Ragon that Paul Ramey made his voluntary statement, which Ragon wrote out for him and Ramey signed (it’s unclear – but highly likely – that Paul Ramey was functionally illiterate and couldn’t write it himself.)
And besides the bond reduction, Ramey’s public defender, James Rogers Jr., was doing yeoman’s work to provide the best defense the public’s taxpayer dollars could buy.
That defense apparently meant dragging the thing through the system, which it did…in August of 1996, Rogers filed a motion for a psychological examination for investigative purposes in order to possibly sort the case out and get some kind of forward movement on it.
In the motion, Rogers noted that Ragon was the one who took the statement, but, “the defendant is a disabled person because of his mental condition and needs a psychological examination done to determine whether or not he could have voluntarily given such a statement under the circumstances in which it was given.”
Rogers didn’t note those “circumstances.”
“Making a determination as to the defendant’s ability to give a voluntary statement under those circumstances is a matter which may be a strategy utilized by the defense at trial,” Rogers wrote, “and it is necessary to have such examination done in order to investigate whether or not said strategy would be appropriate.”
Rogers asked the court to authorize $500 to be expended for a psych eval to determine his ability to give a voluntary statement under circumstances of the cause, and determine whether or not such strategy should be utilized at trial.
The request for psych eval was made on Aug. 9, 1996.
On Aug. 27, 1996, however, Paul Ramey entered a plea to one count of Aggravated Criminal Sexual Assault, avoiding a jury trial.
At sentencing, it was determined that Ramey would spend 10 years in Illinois Department of Corrections, to be followed by three years mandatory supervised release (parole).
He was to receive credit for time served at the Saline County Jail, which amounted to about two and a half months.
He was also ordered to submit specimens of blood to the Illinois State Police in accordance with the law, and to undergo medical testing to determine whether he had any sexually transmissible diseases.
A “description of exact circumstances of offense” reiterated the statement Paul Ramey had already given investigators, outlining the sexual conduct with the 9-year-old girl.
At least, according to the court record, there was no brutality or violence involved…although the child victim might beg to differ on that assessment.
Brother speaks about what sent Glenn to the Bowen Center
Disclosure’s correspondent spoke with Paul Ramey about two weeks after the death of Sabrina Stauffenberg.
Paul Ramey didn’t discuss the incident that made him a convicted felon and put him on the sex offender registry for a number of years, however.
He did speak of his brother Glenn and the history thereof.
When the family, then composed of Everett Palmer as head of the house after Hannah Ramey became Hannah Palmer, was residing in Williamson County, Paul Ramey said, they lived on Route 37 in Marion for quite some time.
Paul Ramey and some of the siblings – 10 in all; recall from the Limited Special Edition that Hannah Ramey-Palmer-Gilliland had had 16 children altogether, six of them now deceased, having died at varying ages due to varying causes, including a suspected case of crib death – attended Marion schools at the time, this in the late 60s-early 70s. There was also some attendance at Creal Springs Grade School, Paul Ramey said.
But it was when Glenn Ramey was attending Longfellow School in Marion, Paul Ramey said, that Glenn was sent off to the Bowen Center in Harrisburg (a fact outlined in the Limited Special Edition).
“He was going to school at Longfellow when he cut another boy with a knife at that school,” Paul Ramey said of his brother Glenn. “That’s why he was placed in the Bowen Center.”
To the best of his recollection, Paul Ramey said (and he noted that it admittedly wasn’t very good), this internment occurred in 1972 when Glenn was but 9 years of age.
The Bowen Center later became Illinois Youth Center (IYC); otherwise known as juvenile detention.
After Glenn Ramey’s stint at the Bowen Center, Paul Ramey said, Glenn was given to Hannah’s sister Juanita and her husband. They lived in Rosebud, Illinois, then Midway near Big Bay.
Would return bad for good
As to modern-day recollections and recounting of his brother, Paul Ramey said that Glenn “always had money.
“He was a thief, always running the roads at night,” Paul Ramey said. “He stole a truck in Hardin County and a tractor in Williamson. He’s stolen guns, three-wheelers, and even a horse.”
Paul said Glenn even told wood from one of their uncles, then “turned around and sold it back to him.”
Once, Paul Ramey noted, he tried to help his brother by letting him work on his truck.
Readers of the Limited Special Edition will recall that Glenn Ramey was able to take under-the-table work from whomever would provide it by working as a mechanic, which got him in trouble in both Johnson and Richland counties.
“I bought the parts,” Paul Ramey said. “Glenn returned the parts for the money and told me the truck was fixed. So I was driving down the road and the transmission fell out.
“If you did something good for Glenn,” Paul Ramey said, echoing the words of a Ramey victim in Johnson County, James Gibson, “he would do something bad to you.”
Tendencies
Paul Ramey said Glenn was “never a father to his boys,” and so he was shocked by the Hello Kitty blanket and other kid’s items that filled the rental trailer where Glenn Ramey was residing with Misty Coseboon when authorities took him into custody.
But he was not shocked by the brutality of the alleged act that took Sabrina’s life, and he wondered if there was more to the matter than what authorities were releasing.
Paul Ramey said he’d heard that his brother had cut Sabrina’s throat, but that wasn’t from officials and no official has noted that as an aspect. Sabrina, according to the coroner’s report, was suffocated.
No detail of the exact manner of suffocation has yet been issued.
However, Paul Ramey did state that “Glenn has a habit of grabbing people by the throat.
“He called me a few months back threatening to cut some man’s throat,” Paul Ramey said. “He’d gotten into it with the guy over a motor home.”
Ramey had owned an RV until he damaged the vehicle of one Larry Harmon at the trailer park, as outlined in the Limited Special Edition.
Ramey had to turn over the title of the RV to Harmon, who subsequently sold it to pay for the damage to his parked car, since Ramey had nothing else of value and no insurance.
“Glenn is a monster and has no heart and shows no remorse,” Paul Ramey said. “He never cared about anyone’s feelings and had no feelings but always wanted people to feel sorry for him.
“He needs to be locked away for life and doesn’t deserve to live,” Paul Ramey stated.
He also pointed out that he believed his brother stalked Sabrina Stauffenberg, and that the alleged murder was “premeditated.”
Another sibling; more abuse
Another sibling, who chose not to be identified by name, came out in the days following Ramey’s arrest and charges.
A younger half-sister of Ramey’s told Disclosure’s correspondent that “Glenn messed with me when I was 10 years old.
“I have to deal with this every day of my life,” she said. “This is very difficult for me to talk about.
“My younger sister, he messed with her too, when she was only two years old.”
The sibling also stated that her stepfather sexually abused her as well, but she didn’t note which stepfather it was.
But she did want to say one thing about the situation with her half-brother, Glenn.
“I hope he get what’s coming to him,” she said.
Local history emerges
In more recent Ramey history, which is emerging following his arrest and removal from the public at large (and which Ramey apparently terrorized as part of his daily routine), local Richland County folks have come to the fore following the release of the Limited Special Edition.
One acquaintance of Ramey’s who preferred not to be named advised Disclosure that Ramey was not working for Affordable Auto Care in Olney as many presumed he was when he was driving vehicles that didn’t belong to him (see the Limited Special Edition for details on the vehicle that was damaged at Ramey’s rental trailer in Olney).
“He just did a few odd jobs there,” the source, who for purposes of this article will be called NY, said. “The owner felt sorry for him when he showed up asking for money, so he let Glenn mow the lawn and clean around the shop.”
But there was a problem with this, said NY: The way Ramey stared at people when they came in gave them chills instantly.
“The way he stared at you was very creepy,” NY said. “He would stand super close to you and the look in his eyes was a look I will never forget.
“Most people kept saying he was harmless, but I knew there was something very off with him.”
NY said he ran into Ramey at the liquor store in Noble a couple of years back, when Ramey was seeing Tina Beeler, who worked at that time at the grocery store in the village.
“He was kicked out of the liquor store various times for coming in drunk and asking for money,” NY said. “There was one time when he said he was afraid he was going to be turned in for rape.
“He told me that he ‘didn’t do nothin,’” NY said, “but he didn’t say the name of the potential victim.”
Last year, an Olney woman, Brenda Harmon, had had to take out a Stalking/No-Contact Order against Ramey after she claimed he raped her at her home and nothing was done about it.
It’s never been substantiated that this alleged crime was taken seriously by local law enforcement; but Ramey has never been charged with anything in association with it.
Whatever the case, NY said that Ramey was ultimately run out of Noble, where he was hanging out incessantly because Ramey’s ex-wife, April Coil, was residing there with her parents and her children, a couple of whom are Ramey’s.
“He would park his vehicle in the road and flag people down for gas money,” NY said, reflecting what Pope and Johnson County residents had told Disclosure for the Limited Special Edition, in which it was outlined that Ramey would mooch gas or money off people by allowing his truck to run out of gas on one of the main, heavily-trafficked roads (usually near one of the prisons).
“He was living in that nasty RV at the time,” NY said. “He owned that when he was squatting around in Noble.”
NY said he was aware of Ramey going in and out of the liquor store, RJ’s – one of the only viable businesses in the village – “asking for cigarettes, beer, anything he thought he could get for free. He would also stand outside the liquor store and hound people for money. And at first, it worked, and people gave him money, until they just got tired of his sh!t.”
The ongoing covering
NY said that after Ramey was run out of Noble, he ended up visiting Marilyn’s Liquor Cabinet in Olney “quite often,” doing the same thing for a little while.
“He did try to tell people one day that his mother tried to sell him when he was a child,” NY recalled. “No clue how true that is; it’s just something he said.”
While Hannah Gilliland didn’t indicate this to be the case when Disclosure’s correspondent interviewed her in early December, that might just be Ramey’s skewed perception of it, as all his life, people have fought to come to an equitable way of dealing with the man, who has approached things with an attitude of “it’s always somebody else’s fault” and “everybody is picking on me.”
This may have developed when he was young, and it may have been from abuse heaped on him the likes of which he was accused of heaping on others after he grew up.
Whatever the case, at every step along the way, it’s still appearing as though someone in a position of authority could have stopped Ramey for his various crimes instead of “running him out” of a village or a county and forcing him into being someone else’s problem.
Instead of exposing his bizarre behavior and potentially doing something to put a stop to it, state agencies, having Glenn Ramey as “a client,” have covered for him, given him a pass, and have largely coddled him, enabling him to carry out his proclivities uncheck, just as the Brenda Harmon OP stated.
Even following Ramey’s arrest and charges, people who know his history have been dogged by folks, some of whose motives might not be in their best interests: Disclosure is currently looking into the strong possibility that state agencies have encouraged people to ingratiate themselves with those who are talking, such as Robert Coil or any of the folks who’ve had negative dealings with Ramey, in an effort to find out whether they can righteously step in and “protect” their client from “bad things” being said about him.
The practice is employed frequently; people who aren’t familiar with how these agencies work are urged to be cautious in their dealings with folks asking questions about Ramey.
Deena Kay Witt isn’t worried about that, however; her outspokenness about her former son-in-law is borne from decades of dealing with him directly when he was still around Massac County, and the ensuing years of what he’s left behind in the form of his own, terrorized sons.
She is heartbroken over Sabrina Stauffenberg’s death.
“That little girl didn’t deserve to die,” Deena Witt said. “He wasn’t being watched close enough. If the law would have done what they were supposed to do then she might still be here.”
Ramey, whose online electronic case file has disappeared from Judici.com in the wake of the viralness of the story, was scheduled to appear in court for a preliminary hearing on Friday, December 16 at 10:30 in front of Judge Larry Dunn in Olney.
All court proceedings are open to the public.
SALINE CO.— It appears that a routine traffic stop landed a Carrier Mils man behind bars on a pair of felonies.
SALINE CO.— An Eldorado man already charged in a case of violence is now facing an additional felony.
SALINE CO.— A Harrisburg man already serving a probation sentence of 12 months handed him July 21 following a conviction for Domestic Battery has been jailed for violating an Order of Protection.
