Family fears dead baby found in suitcase is victim of mother's religious cult

The religious cult that Ria Reshma Ramkissoon belonged to shunned health care and formal education. The leaders were known as "King" and "Queen," and their followers called themselves "Prince" and "Princess."

They were forbidden to interact with loved ones outside the cult without a member's supervision.

And they may be killers.

Two days after police found a dead baby stuffed in a suitcase hidden in South Philadelphia, Ramkissoon's relatives in Baltimore await a phone call that they suspect will confirm their worst fears: that the infant is Ramkissoon's 18-month-old son, Javon Thompson.

Relatives fear that cult members starved the tot to death because he refused to say "Amen."

"He would have been around 18 months old," Javon's aunt, Colleen Khadan, said yesterday. "But at that age, a child's vocabulary is not that well-developed."

Authorities say that the infant was a homicide victim, and a law enforcement source said that he is believed to be Javon.

But Baltimore police spokesman Sterling Clifford couldn't confirm the baby's identity until DNA tests are complete.

Clifford declined to say whether Ramkissoon or her cult colleagues are suspects or where they are now.

Khadan said that she last saw her sister about two years ago. That's when Ramkissoon and Javon disappeared after Ramkissoon's and Khadan's mother, Seeta Newton, dropped them off at a Baltimore park.

Newton desperately hunted for her daughter and grandson, and posted missing-persons fliers around the park, before learning that her daughter had joined a religious cult headquartered in East Baltimore, Khadan said. Members consider themselves Bible-based Christians, but Khadan wasn't sure what they call their group.

Newton visited the rowhouse and fruitlessly pleaded with her daughter to return home, but Ramkissoon refused, Khadan said.

She also wouldn't allow her relatives to see Javon.

Newton petitioned the courts for custody and implored child-welfare workers to investigate.

But nothing worked, Khadan said.

Then last Monday, Baltimore police, acting on a tip, came to Philadelphia, where they found the remains of a baby in a suitcase in a shed behind a Philadelphia Housing Authority townhouse on 13th Street near Fitzwater. The suitcase had been packed with a comforter and fabric-softener sheets to mask its contents' odor.

The elderly man who lives in the townhouse is not considered a suspect. He told police that he allowed a family of five "Baltimore drifters" to stay in his home last year. He asked them to leave after four days but allowed them to store items - including the suitcase - on his property until they settled somewhere.

Yesterday, Khadan remembered Javon as a mild-mannered, well-behaved baby who was generous with his smiles and laughs.

She also lamented the changes that the cult caused in Ramkissoon, now 20, who was born in Trinidad but raised in Baltimore.

"Before she joined up with these people, she was the best mother - she wouldn't let anyone else bathe [Javon] or feed him; she wanted to do everything," said Khadan, 33, a mother of three who lives in Rosedale, outside Baltimore. "She was going to trade-school to be a pharmacy technician. We were in shock that she would leave all that behind."

Still, Khadan clings to hopes that Monday's gruesome discovery in South Philadelphia is someone else's tragedy.

"I am hoping that it is not Javon, and that maybe [cult members] gave him away to someone and he is alive," Khadan said. "It's kind of foolish, maybe, to be hoping that, but I still hope that even though my heart tells me differently." *