It was strange piled upon strange. Everett police Sergeant Robert Goetz says the department still is puzzled by it all. But it has, for now, dropped its rape investigation. "The case has been closed due to insufficient evidence," says Goetz. "We've exhausted all the leads. [Forde] was the only witness." The arm-shooting incident also is on hold.
Police are still examining leads in John Forde's shooting, and they should be focusing on Shawna, says Merrill Metzger. "My son and I went up there [to Everett] after the attacks, and we both noticed that her 'bruises' were doctored with makeup. She's a trained cosmetologist. It was the first thing we said to each other: '[The bruises] are just makeup, fake.' She was all black and blue, but there was no swelling, and the makeup was on so thick it was cracking. I don't know why the police didn't pick up on that. Maybe they did, and are just not saying."
courtesy of the Pima County Sheriff’s Department
Shawna Forde, white supremacist Jason "Gunny" Bush, and Albert Gaxiola, charged in the Arivaca killings, were after drugs and money, police believe, to finance Forde's anti-immigration posse, M.A.D.
Tom Nguyen
Related Content
More About
Metzger noticed something else, too: the familiar face of the man Forde was dating at the time. "My son and I looked at each other: 'Why, he looks just like the man in the police sketch, the suspect in the shooting of her husband.'"
Today, Forde is getting questioned by Arizona authorities, but so far she isn't telling them much.
Besides the two counts of first-degree murder, she's charged with first-degree burglary and aggravated assault. On June 29 in Tucson, she, Bush, and Gaxiola pleaded not guilty and were appointed public defenders. (Bush, thanks to information surfacing from the Arizona probe, now is also charged in the 1997 slaying of a homeless Hispanic man in Wenatchee). Pima County prosecutors will decide by the end of August whether the threesome will face the death penalty.
In one of her final M.A.D. missives to supporters after the Everett incidents and before the Arivaca shootings, Forde portrayed herself as victim and urged others to follow her defiant lead.
"You can beat me, rape me, stab me, shoot me, shoot my husband, kick my cat HOLD MY PAST AGAINST ME, slander me, gossip, blog, put me in public square, stripe me naked and cast stones while I bleed from head to toe," she wrote. "I will stay the course and lead in this fight with every once of strength and conviction. I will not waist it on matters that do not pertain to this very mission. It is time for Americans to lock and load."
Forde is probably a bit short of believers these days. At the Pima County jail where she's being held on $1 million bail, a good many prisoners have Latino names. As this story was written, 21 inmates alone went by Rodriguez.
And, yes, authorities confirm, the jail serves Mexican food.
