Toddler’s Death Points to Other Killings
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Hemera/Thinkstock(MANASSAS, Va.) — Police investigating a Virginia man in connection to the death of his 15-month-old son are also looking to see whether he played a role in the mysterious deaths of two other people: his mother and an ex-girlfriend.
Joaquin Rams, 40, became the focus of a Manassas Police Department investigation last month when his son, Prince McLeod Rams, died during a three-hour unsupervised visit.
Police have called it a “suspicious death” while they await the results of a medical examiner’s report.
Rams has not been charged.
That case remains an “active and open investigation,” police spokesman Lowell Nevill said, but it prompted cops to look into the 2008 suicide of Rams’ mother and the 2003 shooting death of his ex-girlfriend.
Rams has not been named a suspect in any of the three deaths, but Prince’s mother believed the man was dangerous, requesting last year that a Maryland judge order his visits supervised. The judge denied the request.
McLeod, an intelligence analyst and former contestant on the CBS reality-TV show The Amazing Race, ended her engagement with Rams about two weeks after their son was born.
She mentioned the women’s deaths at a custody hearing, but a judge dismissed the concerns, calling them, “smoke that’s been blown that I can see through,” according to court documents.
Police have not formally re-opened an investigation into the death of Rams’ mother, Alma Collins, whose death was ruled a suicide in 2008. Rams, however, remains a suspect in the still-unsolved 2003 shooting death of his ex-girlfriend Shawn K. Mason.
Rams did not respond to email and phone requests for comment.
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