Thread: Post All Articles about Shawna Forde and the Murder Here.

http://heraldnet.com/article/20090613/NEWS01/706139922
Activist Shawna Forde charged in double slaying
Woman with troubled past in Everett now accused in Arizona
From her home town paper herald.net in Everett, Washington...


Forde has a long and troubled history in Snohomish County, including juvenile convictions for felonies, prostitution and other street crime. Some of her past was recounted by The Herald in a profile that appeared Feb. 22.

Forde's mother, who lives in California, said she was not surprised to hear of her daughter's arrest.

Rena Caudle said Forde visited her before heading to the border this year. She talked of staging home invasions, Caudle said.

"She sat here and said that she was going to start a group where they went down and start taking things away from the Mexican mafia," Caudle said. "She was going to kick in their doors and take away the money and the drugs."

Caudle said she wasn't sure what to make of that at the time, in part because Forde has a history of exaggeration and lying.

Then, early on May 30 -- a few hours after the shootings -- Caudle said, Forde called her and reported she was taking refuge in a "safe house" in Arivaca.

Forde "was very frightened," Caudle said. "She says, 'I'm in hiding.' I said, 'What is going on?' She said. 'You won't believe what is going down here … The mafia, they are kicking down doors and they are shooting people and they are looking for me.'"

Pima County sheriff's Lt. Michael O'Connor told reporters in Arizona that Raul Flores had connections to Mexican drug cartels and his involvement was known to the Drug Enforcement Agency.

People in the Minuteman movement reacted to news of the arrests with sadness -- and some contempt for Forde.

Jim Gilchrist, president of the California-based Minuteman Project and a longtime Forde ally, said his group is separate and "we disassociate any affiliation between her, her organization and ours." On Friday he posted a message of condolence to the victims' families.

Jeff Schwilk, founder of the San Diego Minutemen and an outspoken critic of Gilchrist, said he and others long ago recognized that Forde was unstable and dangerous. He said Gilchrist should have done the same.

"The warning had been out in Arizona to stay away from this woman," he said. "Unfortunately, this conclusion was very tragic."

My mother once said to me, "a bad father is better than no father". I feel sorry for the little girl that survived because she was away from home. She will be without a parent and a sister.

Dixie

Junior, the victim, was a known drug dealer and Gaxiola is a local resident who had to be aquainted with Junior and orchistrated things. They said the intent was to kill the whole family and GAXIOLA knew one daughter wasn't home and asked about her.

The overall motive is hard to figure out, since they say they were going after drugs and money.

I suspect that since they said the Sheriff found no drugs, it is also possible that Junior was involved with people smuggling. I'd now like to know if they were smuggling people and that's a piece of the puzzle.

Bush was found in a Kingman az Hosp with a gun shot wound. That's probably the incident that linked all these characters together, but the Sheriff isn't releasing info about Bush ending up in Kingman.

I never expected out of towners involved in little remote Arivaca, AZ. When the whole story comes out, it should be interesting.

RELATED

Ariz. home invasion suspects tied to border group

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-159381.html


Arrests in home-invasion killings in Pima County

http://www.alipac.us/ftopict-159381.html

Any chance Shawna was framed?

Originally Posted by Bowman

Any chance Shawna was framed?

welll, there is always some chance, we might never know till the trial, and even then, we might never know the truth

Originally Posted by Bowman

Any chance Shawna was framed?

She'd sure make for a perfect candidate for that. Not well liked on either side of fence, shady history, and questionable associates at best. But as mentioned above, it's best to wait a bit for the facts.
players in a border town, on a heavily trafficked narcotics and human trade route wouldn't be motivated framers, would they?

PHOENIX — Two of three people arrested in a southern Arizona home invasion that left a little girl and her father dead had connections to a Washington state anti-illegal immigration group that conducts border watch activities in Arizona.

Jason Eugene Bush, 34, Shawna Forde, 41, and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42, have been charged with two counts each of first-degree murder and other charges, said Sheriff Clarence Dupnik of Pima County, Ariz.

The trio are alleged to have dressed as law enforcement officers and forced their way into a home about 10 miles north of the Mexican border in rural Arivaca on May 30, wounding a woman and fatally shooting her husband and their 9-year-old daughter. Their motive was financial, Dupnik said.

"The husband who was murdered has a history of being involved in narcotics and there was an anticipation that there would be a considerable amount of cash at this location as well as the possibility of drugs," Dupnik said.

Forde is the leader of Minutemen American Defense, a small border watch group, and Bush goes by the nickname "Gunny" and is its operations director, according to the group's Web site. She is from Everett, Wash., has recently been living in Arizona and was once associated with the better known and larger Minuteman Civil Defense Corps.

A statement attributed to officers of Forde's group and posted on its Web site on Saturday extended condolences to the victims' families and said the group doesn't condone such acts and will cooperate with law enforcement.

"This is not what Minutemen do," said member Chuck Stonex, who responded to an e-mail from The Associated Press sent through the Web site. "Minutemen observe, document and report. This is nothing more than a cold-hearted criminal act, and that is all we want to say."

The assailants planned to leave no one alive, Dupnik said at a press conference in Tucson on Friday. He said Forde was the ringleader.

"This was a planned home invasion where the plan was to kill all the people inside this trailer so there would be no witnesses," Dupnik said. "To just kill a 9-year-old girl because she might be a potential witness to me is just one of the most despicable acts that I have heard of."

Dupnik said Forde continued working through Friday to raise a large amount of money to make her anti-illegal immigrant operation more sophisticated.

Forde denied involvement as she was led from sheriff's headquarters.

"No, I did not do it," she said. "I had nothing to do with it."

Gaxiola also denied involvement; Bush was arrested at a Kingman, Ariz., hospital where he was being treated for a leg wound he allegedly received when the woman who survived the attack managed to get a gun and fire back.

Killed were 9-year-old Brisenia Flores and her 29-year-old father, Raul Junior Flores. The name of the wounded woman who survived the attack hasn't been released.

Forde is well known in the anti-illegal immigration community, said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino.

"She's someone who even within the anti-immigration movement has been labeled as unstable," Levin said. "She was basically forced out of another anti-immigrant group, the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, and then founded her own organization."

Stonex, of Alamagordo, N.M., said he met Forde while on an Arizona border watch operation last fall, and liked her despite her reputation in the Minutemen community.

"I know she's always had sort of a checkered past but I take people for what I see and not what I hear," the 57-year-old said.

She recruited him to start a new chapter in New Mexico, but was secretive about her group or its members. Stonex said he didn't know how to recruit for a chapter and never did.

He said Forde called him on the day of the attack while he was visiting Arizona and asked him to bring bandages to an Arivaca home because Bush had been wounded. Stonex said it appeared Bush had a relatively minor gunshot wound, which he treated.

He said Forde and Bush told him Bush been wounded by a smuggler who shot at him while the group were patrolling the desert.

Stonex said he didn't suspect that might not be the case until was contacted by a deputy on Saturday about their alleged involvement in the crime.


http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/06/1 ... 15246.html

"She's someone who even within the anti-immigration movement has been labeled as unstable," Levin said. "She was basically forced out of another anti-immigrant group, the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, and then founded her own organization

Unstable is putting it mildly, she appears to have numerous emotional and mental problems and is obviously her own worst enemy.

She is also linked to another group that has more to do with the rising lawlessness in this country than all of the other groups combined.

Yes. Our own group as a nation.

USA