He describes how, on the day of her arrest, Forde showed up on his doorstep and asked to "use our family room to do some work on her laptop." Spencer allowed her to do so and says she left after about 20 minutes. Later, Spencer says, a sheriff's SWAT team arrived with a warrant and searched his home. Spencer claims they took nothing.
Interestingly, a former member of M.A.D., Chuck Stonex, has admitted to receiving a call for help from Forde the day of the killings and treating a wound on the leg of Forde's accomplice, white supremacist Jason Bush. According to Stonex, Forde told him that Bush had been shot by a smuggler. Stonex, who is from New Mexico, has stated that he was in Arizona to attend a barbecue at Spencer's ranch when he got the call from Forde.
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For those in the anti-immigrant movement, Forde has turned into a tar baby that remains stuck to them no matter how hard they try to shake it loose.
William Gheen of the North Carolina-based ALI-PAC, or Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, has been ruthlessly using Forde's extensive contacts to his fellow nativists as a cudgel with which to verbally whack his enemies, who include Gilchrist and Spencer. But as the pro-immigration blog Long Island Wins has observed on numerous occasions, even Gheen once mentioned Forde as a "leader in this movement."
The truth is, Forde was one of them. And even her violence is not a one-off. You need only recall the saga of Casey Nethercott, ex-leader of the vigilante group Ranch Rescue, who after capturing two migrants in 2003 on his ranch in Hebbronville, Texas, allegedly threatened them, pistol-whipping one. Nethercott was later convicted on gun charges, and the two immigrants he apprehended ended up owning the 70-acre property after the Southern Poverty Law Center sued Nethercott on the immigrants' behalf.
Mad-dog Arizona rancher Roger Barnett has been successfully sued on more than one occasion for holding immigrants and non-immigrants captive with the help of his AR-15 rifle. Barnett's said he's detained thousands of immigrants, and some of those he's detained claim he's threatened them and cursed them with racial slurs. In one case, he was ordered to pay $98,000 in damages. In another, more than $73,000.
One need only watch documentaries such as Jeremy Levine and Landon Van Soest's Walking the Line, which followed Spencer, Nethercott, Simcox, and other border activists, to see how close in psychology they are to Forde. Or pay a visit to Dennis Gilman's YouTube site HumanLeague002 and observe his videos of various Shawna Fordes in the making. Like Forde, Phoenix nativists walk around with guns on their hips and squawk repeatedly about "invaders" from Mexico and about shooting defenseless civilians.
And people are shocked by the Arivaca killings? They should be surprised that sort of thing doesn't happen more often.
JACKSON ACTION
Okay, so some of you cared that a Sedona New Age physician named Reinalda de Souza claimed to have killed Michael Jackson with a voodoo curse.
And some of you were outraged that she was treating Jackson for pedophilia by using acupuncture and crystal therapy.
Some readers even were enraged that our story insulted the memory of a legendary artist, despite the fact that Wacko Jacko trashed his own rep plenty during his lifetime with his kid-lovin' antics and excesses.
But what really got the fanatics revved up full steam in New Times' satire "I Killed Jacko!" by Joseph Rossi was the account of Dr. De Souza's slitting the throat of a 4½-month-old Rottweiler named Cerberus, drinking his blood, and leaving his lifeless carcass as part of some black magic ritual.
Jesus, you people are easy.
Why, I'll bet I could have had De Souza ripping the heads off baby humans and eating their infant brains, and all you'd have been able to focus on was the pic of the puppy and the account of its untimely demise.
I know because I'm "Joseph Rossi." Well, let's say that I assumed the nom de spoof as a "tell," meant to signal that what was to follow was satire. Joe Rossi was a scalawag reporter for the fictional Los Angeles Tribune on the old TV series Lou Grant and was played by character actor Robert Walden.
Originally, I wanted the pseudonym to be Jack McGee, the tabloid reporter who pursues Dr. David Banner in The Incredible Hulk. I always loved the line that Bill Bixby delivered as Banner in the show's intro: "Mr. McGee, don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry."
But Jack McGee probably would've been a bit too obvious. At least one commenter picked up on Rossi's name, though he was mistaken in one respect. He assumed that I modeled Reinalda de Souza's name on real-life Brazilian soccer player Reinaldo De Souza.
Actually, that's just a coincidence. I consulted lists of Brazilian first and last names and put together one I liked. I don't know anything about soccer. Much less Brazilian soccer.
So, of course, Dr. De Souza doesn't exist any more than does her Rottweiler puppy. She was played to great effect by New Times security guard Natalia Perkins in the story's photos. I actually wrote the spoof with Natalia in mind, as I've always thought she (though a nice lady) had a sorceress-like look.
