In a new expose’ No boundaries: Shawna Forde and the Minutemen movement investigative reporter Scott North reveals more details of Minuteman child killer Shawna Forde’s undeniable ties to the mainstream Minuteman movement, connections that that Jim Gilchrist and others continue to deny.
Forde, 41, along with her cohorts, Jason E. “Gunny” Bush and Albert Gaxiola are under indictment for the home invasion robbery and murder of 9 year old Brisenia Flores, her father Raul, and the wounding of the wife and mother, Gina. They face the death penalty, when convicted.
You might recall that earlier this year, Forde came to our attention with her outrageous claims of being raped in her home by members of the MS-13 gang. She posted photos of herself on her defunct MAD website, which Immigration Clearinghouse immediately deemed suspicious, causing the rape to go viral across the world wide web. This followed the “suspicious” shooting of her ex husband, a crime yet to be solved, and was followed by her allegedly being shot as she walked home from a bar, a week after the “rape”.
North writes that Forde showed up on the Minuteman scene in 2006 with boundless energy, expressing heartfelt love for the United States.
The Minutemen were looking for people like her. She spent hours spreading the word, talking about border security and illegal immigration. She showed others how to make their voices heard at rallies, in city council meetings and on television.
By this June, after she was arrested on double murder charges in Arizona, those in Forde’s circle described somebody who seemed part action figure, part petty criminal.
There was Forde the self-described patriot who claimed to be the leader of a national Minutemen organization, who signed off her e-mails with a crisp, military “10-4″ or “Copy out.” She dressed in high heels and camouflage, accessorizing with a .380-caliber handgun tucked into her waistband.
There also was Forde the teller of tall tales, the abuser of trust, the trickster who, several acquaintances suggest, couldn’t be trusted around loose cash, prescription pain pills or another’s reputation.
Forde was a petty thief, a prostitute at 14. People who befriended her soon found she would use them, abuse their trust and steal from them. It was all about Shawna, and Shawna cared not who got in her way or got hurt in the process.
One couple, writes North, was Bob and Kathy Dameron, from Yakima Washington. The couple joined Chris Simcox’s Minutemen Civil Defense Corps because of their beliefs. They are devout Christians. They are open about their love for family and the United States. They worry that porous borders invite criminals and erode U.S. sovereignty.
They met Forde in 2006 during a border watch operation along the U.S.-Canada boundary not far from Bellingham. Dozens of people gathered at the home of the state’s Minutemen leader, to get to know each other and to join in a common cause.
During a dinner visit, Forde was caught alone in a bedroom, rummaging through a dresser, the Damerons said. Her explanation didn’t wash and she was banned from the house — not from the Minutemen. Every ally mattered, and her defenders believed she could contribute.
Their friendship soon ended. Kathy Dameron’s prescription pain medication seemed to disappear whenever Forde was visiting. It happened again in March. She found her pills in Forde’s purse and confronted her.
“She said, ‘I’ve been busted, haven’t I?’ ” Kathy Dameron recalled. “I said, ‘Yes, you have.’ She said. ‘I’m sorry, Mom.’ I said, ‘Not good enough.’”
On Forde’s defunct website, minutemenamericandefense.us, she became fed up with this site and others questioning her “rape” and later her alleged shooting. A quick side note. At the time she was “shot”, she was on the phone to Kathy Dameron spinning one of her tales, and Dameron claims never to have heard a gunshot.
But she also claimed that all further communications would go through her new “spokesman”, Mike Carlucci, a Seattle-area private investigator and security consultant.
Over the years, Forde told reporters and others that the big, gravel-voiced detective was her link to legal muscle and even how she got dirt on her enemies.
Carlucci took exception to that. According to North, Carlucci said. That is a lie! It’s one of many that apparently went down easy in Minutemen circles.
Carlucci said Forde first came to him in early 2007, seeking advice on security procedures for her Minuteman group.
Forde never hired him, he said, Still, Forde kept trying to involve him, and before and after her arrest arranged from jail to provide him access to her personal e-mail accounts.
Forde’s undeniable ties to the Minutemen
Dozens of e-mails show Forde was in regular contact with Minutemen leaders around the country, right up until her arrest, and that she was relentless about making her Minuteman activism pay her bills.
Carlucci said he never took money from Forde, not even when Forde asked him to provide a security escort to Jim Gilchrist of the Minuteman Project when he spoke in Central Washington in February 2008.
Finally, suspicion growing by the day, Carlucci contacted the Everett police detective investigating Forde’s claim and advised that they should be investigating Forde. He has also been in contact with investigators in Arizona.
Pat Young, of Long Island Wins, picks up the story from here.
She became a spokewoman for the MCDC, but before the end of 2006 many Washington MCDC members wanted her out. Forde tried to outmanuever her opponents by going to the co-founder of the Minutemen, Chris Simcox, himself. North describes what happened next:
[S]he secretly approached Chris Simcox, who at the time was the group’s national director and now is a candidate in Arizona for U.S. Senate. Minutemen leadership in Washington was ineffective and listless, Forde told him in January 2007 e-mails. She had a plan to restructure the organization.
A few days later Simcox sent out an e-mail saying he was promoting Forde to a statewide leadership post. It was to a job she urged him to create.
A civil war errupted among the Minutemen and a month later, Forde was expelled from the Washington State MCDC in February, 2007.
She then formed her own Minuteman group, the Minuteman American Defense (MAD), which other Minutemen said had about 15-20 members when it was founded…..
After she left the MCDC, Forde made inroads among local political activists. She began working with Doug Parris of the Washington State conservative group The Reagan Wing. Parris was impressed that she had the backing of Republican county leaders and that she was connected to the Minutemen, who were lionized on the Right. She and Parris organized a right-wing forum on June 30, 2007 which featured Minuteman Project founder Jim Gilchrist. Parris believes Forde stole proceeds from the event and broke off The Reagan Wing’s relationship with her..
Gilchrist went in the opposite direction. Although his Minuteman Project disclaimed Forde soon after she was arrested for the murders of Brisenia and Raul Flores, Gilchist maintined a political relationship with Forde from June 2007 until she was arrested in June 2009. Scott North’s report clearly demonstrates that Forde was not an outrider to the Minutemen, as many Minutemen claim, but that she was a prominent part of its most well-known component. Here is what North says:
[Gilchrist] communicated with Forde largely by e-mail, telling her he admired her dedication. Forde praised Gilchrist for being controversial.
“You are a powerful man when in name only you can stir a state,” Forde wrote. “I just am amazed sometimes. I’ve never been attacked so much for a associate. But you are my friend and I’m proud to be associated with you so (expletive) ‘em!!”
By early 2008 Gilchrist had made Forde the Minuteman Project’s border patrol coordinator. He sent volunteers her way, telling them she “is one tough lady.” Forde’s role in bringing Gilchrist to Everett was noted in a profile of Minutemen figures around the country prepared by the Southern Poverty Law Center, a high-profile Alabama-based civil-rights watchdog group.
Gilchrist now says his only concerns about Forde revolved around her claims that she was using “undercover” tactics to infiltrate border-area drug traffickers.
“I really thought that she was getting into the wrong crowd and was going to end up murdered,” he said.
Gilchrist stood by Forde when her ex-husband was shot, after her reported rape and after her mysterious shooting, when she was wounded in the arm. When The Herald in February revealed Forde’s history of childhood felonies and teenage prostitution, Gilchrist said what mattered more was her ability to overcome a troubled past.
“She is no whiner,” he wrote at the time. “She is a stoic struggler who has chosen to put country, community and a yearning for a civilized society ahead of avarice and self-glorifying ego.”
Gilchrist remained in touch with Forde after she left Everett without giving detectives a chance to question her closely about the attempted murder of her ex-husband.
On the Minuteman Project Web site, Gilchrist continued to post press releases and Forde’s dispatches detailing her Arizona border exploits.
One of the last arrived on May 31, just hours after the Arivaca killings.
Forde reported that she and her group had been in “boots on the ground” patrols of the border for eight days and had observed thousands of pounds of dope being smuggled into the country.
“A (sic) American family was murdered 2 days ago including a 9 year old girl,” Forde wrote. “Territory issue’s (sic) are now spilling over like fire on the US side and leaving Americans so afraid they will not even allow their names to be printed in any press releases.”
In a few days Gilchrist began receiving e-mails from a Minuteman in Tucson who had previously let Forde’s teenage daughter live at his home. The man asked Gilchrist why a SWAT team had shown up at his door looking for Forde.
“I called her,” Gilchrist said. “She was as calm as can be.”
Forde told him there was no cause for worry. The man, she said, was a disgruntled former member of her group.
At the same time, though, she was sending out a list of 17 people around the country she wanted contacted if she was arrested or killed. After her arrest, Gilchrist learned he was 10th on her list.
He and Steve Eichler, executive director of the Minuteman Project, almost certainly were among the last people Forde e-mailed before her June 12 arrest. They talked about adding her and her officers to their Web site’s list of national Minutemen leaders.
“The border is going to be HOT. Good things to come my brother,” Forde wrote Eichler that morning. She was in police handcuffs later that day.
Gilchrist has since scrubbed references to Forde from his Web site. He says she appears to have cloaked her true self behind the Minutemen movement.
“We all have to be aware that there are individuals who have motives other than altruistic ones,” he said. “But you don’t know until they present themselves.”
Of course, to this day, Gilchrist continues to deny any involvment, except peripherally, while the facts suggest otherwise, and he threatens anyone who does not except his explanation.
But Forde does have her supporters, in the guise of Laine Lawless, dyke activist who gets her jollies burning Mexican flags, and who has established the website justiceforshawnaforde.com
And Lawless, like so many others in the movement, can’t accept the facts for what they are, the truth about this worthless excuse for a human. Instead, she chooses to go on the attack and try to discredit North, who has done an extraordinary job of ferreting out the truth.
In Lawless’s own words.
MEDIA LIES AGAIN!
A media psy-ops attack against readers was launched when Scott North, an extreme Shawna-stalker, writer for the Everett Herald, dropped his load on 10/25/09:
“With police on her trail, the (email) messages show Forde was actively negotiating a book deal about her life story with Laine Lawless, an Arizona border-watch figure who now writes on a website proclaiming Forde’s innocence.”
What a piece of work. North’s motivation is clear: to brainwash readers, to taint the jury pool, and to open a door for the prosecutor to suggest wrong-doing is going on behind the scenes in the weak case against Shawna Forde, et al. According to citizen-reporter Laine Lawless, “This is irresponsible reporting; there was no deal. North is no muckraker.” Sorry, Scott North, your muck stops here
With these whack jobs, everything is a lie that doesn’t conform to their version of the truth.
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