But the backbiting only gets fiercer! Lawless returns fire on Simcox by alleging that he's actually the government plant, having been "turned" by the feds after he was busted for a handgun violation in 2003 in a national park. She also suggests that "The Little Prince," his nickname among detractors, has been compromised somehow by the consulting firm Diener & Associates, which partnered with Simcox's group last year to assist with fund-raising campaigns. Recently, Lawless has produced a 30-page report she's been hawking to the media with her accusations about Simcox and Diener & Associates, which Simcox laughs off.
"Boy, she has a fertile imagination," he says, chuckling.
Giulio Sciorio
Giulio Sciorio
Make her day: Lawless channels Dirty Harry while using a Mexican flag as a doormat during the Freedom Riders event.
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Still, Hell hath no fury . . .
Simcox is one of Lawless' favorite targets. She likes to call him "Shitsocks" or "Shamcocks," and she growls that "he has backstabbed pretty much everyone in this movement that's not kissed his ass or given money to [the Minutemen]." Her only sin, she claims, was that she was critical of comments he'd made about Cochise County on an Internet chat board.
"He posted something to Border Birdies about, 'Yeah, Cochise County is a wonderful place to live and raise your kids,'" recalls Lawless. "And I said, 'Chris, what are you talking about? You've been saying all this time that it's terrible what's been happening to Cochise County, blah, blah, blah.' He didn't like that. Do not be critical of The Little Prince. You will be paid back. He expects to be obeyed. He's a control freak."
Until their falling-out, Lawless says she admired Simcox, and wanted to help him market his movement, advising him to set up at gun shows and target contributors through e-mail fund-raising. She says she assisted at Simcox's office, helped design a tee shirt, and penned articles for the Tombstone Tumbleweed.
"I also told him his Web site sucked," she confides. "My not being able to participate in the Minuteman project was payback for that."
As proof that Simcox has snitched to the FBI in the past, she has tapes of her visit to the Cochise County FBI office in Sierra Vista, a visit requested by the FBI. Lawless takes her tape recorder with her and records her talk with agents. FBI agent Brian Witt questions her about a March 1, 2005, post to a Yahoo! Group named Border War, wherein Lawless encourages other posters to put their guns where their mouths are.
Witt seems to acknowledge that the conversation with Lawless is just a formality and, at some point, Simcox's name comes up as the person who alerted the FBI to this particular Web thread, though Witt doesn't go so far as to say that Simcox ratted on Lawless.
Simcox, for the record, denies he's a government agent, but he does acknowledge speaking to the FBI about certain individuals, though not about Lawless specifically.
"We have worked with them in making sure that we screen out people thoroughly," Simcox states carefully. "And they've provided assistance for that."
In an e-mail screed that serves as a sort of introduction to links to the audiotapes online, Lawless lets the reader understand her view of informants of any stripe.
"I will never turn anyone on my side in," she pledges. "Anyone who does is a snitch, and should be dealt with as a snitch. Everyone knows what that means. I do not have to explain it."
So what do you make of a cantankerous ol' biddy who travels the Southwest in a Chevy pulling a cramped RV trailer that contains her cats, Booger and Patty, two pistols, a guitar, and the assorted knickknacks and accouterments of a Dianic Wiccan: necklaces sporting ravens and pentagrams, amulets featuring the Norse goddess Freyja, and a handbill for a pagan temple in Cactus Springs, Nevada, illustrated with the lion-headed Egyptian goddess Sekhmet? All this from a gal who gets her kicks setting a match to butane-drenched Mexican flags.
As nefarious as her political views and activities may seem to those just to the left of Vlad the Impaler, she's not a dolt. She holds a degree in English literature from San Francisco State University, though she says that "it never did me any good." She'll talk your ear off about any number of subjects, from Margaret Thatcher and Diana Rigg in The Avengers to Desperate Housewives and why she finds the concept of gay marriage distasteful. Moreover, she can be amusing, like when she rattles on about how she wished she'd been born a gay man: "All those willing partners!" Or when she sexually sizes up one of her enemies, in this case Pima County legal defender and Derechos Humanos firebrand Isabel Garcia.
"She's nice looking, I'd take her," Lawless avows of the attorney. "She'd have to do something with that long hair, though, like put it up. Believe me, I know about sleeping with women with long hair."
Lawless' laugh is a high-pitched cackle likely to burst forth when you make the most outrageous observation of her. Her tastes are pedestrian, lower-middle-class. She prefers to graze at restaurants like Sweet Tomatoes when she can, always careful to nab that senior discount. Eatin' high on the hog is a rare midday meal at Black Angus Steakhouse. She can be, by turns, sardonic, suspicious, gossipy, and coarse. Ask her a question she considers stupid over dinner and she might fling her food at you with her fork.
