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  • Full Disclosure about Shawna Forde

    By Glenn Spencer -- American Border Patrol



    Full Disclosure about Shawna Forde

    By Glenn Spencer -- American Border Patrol

    June 22, 2009

    About ten o’clock on the morning of June 12, I was at my computer working on the Operation B.E.E.F. final report when suddenly someone appeared behind me. It was Shawn Forde, the “Minuteman activist.” She had not called for an appointment but merely showed up at American Border Patrol’s front door (and my home) and was let in.

    Being a polite person, I spoke with her, even though last summer I told American Border Patrol employees that, due to her strange behavior, she was no longer welcome at the ranch.

    Sitting down at my desk, Forde told me she was setting up an organization to put unemployed veterans to work protecting the border. Knowing that this was ridiculous, I quickly ended the conversation and excused myself. Forde asked if she could use our family room to do some work on her laptop. She stayed about twenty minutes and left.

    I still don’t know why Shawna Forde suddenly appeared at my front door, but I am sorry she did.

    As she left she asked if she could return the next day and retrieve something she left in the RV. I said OK. (Last summer I let Forde and her daughter use ABP’s RV for about a week.)

    With the exception of allowing her to use our RV, I have never had any dealings with Shawna Forde. She has never participated in any of ABP’s border work and none of our people have participated in any Minuteman border operation, including those involving Shawna Forde.

    Shortly after Forde left, Waste Management called and said they couldn’t pick up our trash as the FBI the road leading to my house blocked. I jumped on an ATV and drove to the end of the road where I saw a number of vehicles and people who appeared to be law enforcement. I asked if their activities had anything to do with the border and they said no. I returned home and called the Sierra Vista Herald to report the activity. I spoke with reporter Bill Hess, whom I have known for years, and explained the situation. He said he would look into it. That was about 11:30 a.m.

    About 12:30 p.m. I left to go into Sierra Vista to do some shopping. I drove my Hummer and waived as I passed the “FBI” people who were still at the north end of my road - they waived back.

    On the way home I was just pulling onto my road where the “FBI” people were when I encountered Melissa Jaramillo, my office manager ,who was just leaving. It was a little after 3 p.m., the end of Melissa’s workday. She pointed out that one of the cars on the road looked like it belonged to Shawna Forde. I confirmed this and took a picture of the vehicle (the brown SUV).

    Upon arriving home I called Bill Hess of the Herald and told him what had happened. He asked about Shawna. I told him she was a very strange. He said there were a lot of strange people in Sierra Vista. I amplified by saying she was a braggadocio and had claimed that she had visited drug hideouts north of the border. He said it was unlikely drug smugglers would be hanging out with Minutemen and that they would know who she was. I agreed. He said he would pass the information along.

    About 5:30 p.m. I was in my yard, playing ball with my German Shepherds when two sheriff deputies arrived. They said that others would be arriving and that they had a warrant to search my home. They said that Shawna Forde had been arrested for murder. I was handed a copy of the warrant.

    Shortly thereafter more officers arrived and then came an armored vehicle loaded with a SWAT team. As I was kept to one side the SWAT team entered my home and a search began. I was approached by a Sheriff deputy who said Forde had murdered two people. I corrected him, saying “you mean she is suspected of murdering two people.” He said, no, she murdered them.

    I was then interviewed by a female detective from Pima County. We talked for about twenty minutes and I told her all I knew about Shawna Forde. I told her I had very little to do with Forde and that I had told my associates that we should have little to do with her. I told the detective I had heard from others that Forde had bragged about visiting a drug smugglers hide out inside the U.S. I also said I was concerned because of the way Shawna dealt with her daughter, then under eighteen years old, or so I was told.

    I told the detective that the deputy who said she had committed the murders was not very professional. She said he was only human.

    They finished the search of my home and apparently found nothing that bothered them as they took nothing. After a quick search of ABP’s RV, they all left.

    American Border Patrol stopped using volunteers for border work five years ago. We now concentrate on the use of high technology and aerial surveillance.

    This is an object lesson about understanding with whom you are dealing in the border volunteer effort. This is why I urged the Minutemen to do background checks on everyone they signed on. They did, which is one of the reasons I allowed Forde and her daughter to use the RV – I thought they had done a background check on her.

    Glenn Spencer

    PS – Earlier today I learned from a reporter based in Washington State that the FBI was tracking Shawna as she used her laptop to send e-mails over her cell phone Internet link. She sent an email from ABP’s headquarters and this may explain why they arrested her as she left our headquarters.

  • #2
    Oh crap!

    Now Chelene has to go on the attack again.

    Comment


    • #3
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      Last edited by sandinator; 08-03-2009, 11:35 PM. Reason: `

      Comment


      • #4
        Minuteman says he warned authorites of robbery plot

        Minuteman says he warned authorities of robbery plot

        The man says he tipped authorities to Shawna Forde's alleged robbery plans

        By Scott North
        Herald Writer
        © 2009 The Daily Herald Co.
        EVERETT *-- People within the Minutemen movement warned authorities weeks ago that border-watch activist Shawna Forde was talking about robbing suspected drug traffickers, but law enforcement officials did not seem interested in the tip, says a source who claims he later helped detectives connect the Everett woman to a deadly home-invasion robbery in Arivaca, Ariz.

        "I think this whole thing could have been avoided," said the man, a leader in the Colorado Minutemen group, which opposes illegal immigration from Mexico.

        He spoke on the condition that his name not be published at this time. He expects his identity and his role in the case eventually will become public once first-degree murder charges against Forde work through the courts in Pima County, Ariz.

        Deputy Dawn Barkman, public information officer for the Pima County Sheriff's Department, on Monday declined comment on the man's story.

        The department's refusal to comment makes it impossible to verify all of the Minuteman's claims. Some details of his story, however, including previously unpublished information about Forde's arrest, have been substantiated.

        The man also supplied e-mails that appear to have been sent to him by Forde, 41, in the days after the May 30 robbery and double killing in Arivaca.

        "I'm in deep and now have targets on my head including big brother," reads a June 3 message sent from Forde's e-mail address. "I don't know who will take me out or set me up."

        In a June 5 e-mail, Forde apparently writes about getting a tip that sheriff's detectives in Tucson were looking for her.

        "So just for your eyes now the po po (police department) is inquiring," the message reads. "Let them."

        Forde had run the Minutemen American Defense border-watch group. She and two others are charged with the shooting deaths of Raul Flores, 29, and his daughter, Brisenia, 9. The pair died May 30 and the girl's mother was wounded when intruders opened fire after forcing their way into the home by pretending to be law officers.

        The Minuteman from Colorado said he and others were told by Forde that she was planning a home-invasion robbery in Arizona.

        The man said he was contacted early this spring by Forde, who knew of him from his Minutemen activities. Although they had not met, he claims she asked if he would be interested in helping her rob people suspected of involvement in smuggling near the border.

        The man said he didn't turn Forde down, but in April told law enforcement officials about her request. They showed little interest, he said, declining to identify the officials or their agency.

        The man said he offered to assist in helping an undercover investigator infiltrate Forde's group to make arrests before a crime was committed. The man said his offer was declined.

        Meanwhile, he said, Forde pressed to set up a meeting to discuss staging robberies. After consulting with others in his group, four of the team decided to attend. They planned to later secretly share what they learned with law officers, he said.

        "She had no idea," he said of Forde.

        Recounting a May 15 meeting with Forde near Denver, the man said the conversation initially was hypothetical, and there was an agreement that there would be no action for months.

        But then, he said, "She starts bringing up Arivaca."

        Forde allegedly told the group she "had a guy" in Arivaca who could not only identify drug traffickers for home invasions but also help sell any drugs seized, the man said.

        Forde, who was open about needing cash, allegedly pressed for immediate action. She began contacting members of his Minutemen group directly, trying to recruit them, he said. She got no takers.

        Within hours of the Arivaca killings, Forde contacted an Arizona-based associate of the man and asked him to bring sutures to patch up one of her crew who had been wounded. The Colorado Minuteman's contact did not go. Instead, Chuck Stonex, a New Mexico man who was a former member of Forde's group, has acknowledged binding a wound on the leg of Jason Eugene Bush, 34. Bush has since been charged along with Forde.

        The Colorado Minuteman said he learned of the Arivaca killings when an associate sent him a newspaper article a few hours after the shootings. He said the article was sent by another Colorado Minuteman who said of Forde "she did it."

        The man said he called the law enforcement officials who earlier had passed on focusing on Forde.

        "They became very interested when I made a phone call and said 'Well, it happened,' '' he said.

        In the days that followed, the man said he was interviewed by Pima County detectives and worked with investigators to try to get Forde on the phone or to send e-mail messages. Detectives were seeking Forde's whereabouts in part by tracking her cell phone use, he said.

        "Minutemen are the people who put the kink in her tail," he said.

        Forde was arrested near Sierra Vista, Ariz., by an FBI team that tracked her to the home of Glenn Spencer, president of American Border Patrol, a group that monitors border security using airplane surveillance, the man said.

        Forde was arrested a short distance from Spencer's home.

        Barkman from Pima County confirmed that FBI agents were involved in Forde's case because she was a fugitive.

        Spencer on Monday said Forde had no affiliation with his group, although last year he had allowed Forde and her teenage daughter to live in an unused recreational vehicle on his property. Spencer broke ties with Forde over concerns about her behavior and judgment, he said.

        "She was actually going to leave her daughter here," he said. "I ... was not happy with this person, and I did not want to affiliate with her any more."

        On June 12, almost two weeks after the Arivaca killings, Spencer said Forde simply showed up at his house and was admitted by the woman who runs his office.

        "I was on my computer working on our report and she showed up right behind me," he said.

        Forde asked to use one of Spencer's rooms to send an e-mail from her laptop computer. He let her, and then she left.

        "That's where I want to leave it," Spencer said.

        Forde was arrested about a mile from Spencer's home when she drove up to an FBI road block.

        She remained jailed in Tucson on Monday, held in lieu of $1 million bail.

        Reporter Scott North: 425-339-3431; north@heraldnet.com.

        Comment


        • #5
          This is insane all the way around.

          The topper on all of it is that she is lucky the police got to her first. Did she really think she had a long life expectancy robbing drug dealers?

          If she was lucky when they caught up to her, she would have had a swift death, otherwise they would have "worked" on her for a while before they killed her.

          She has the rest of her life to try to hide from those people, and jail isn't the place to hide.

          Totally nuts.

          Comment

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