Coming Soon...The Book:
Blonde on the Border
The Government's Case Against the Minutemen
LISTEN TO THE 911 TAPE AS PLAYED TO THE JURY IN ALL 3 TRIALS!Chapter One—The Crime
Surrounded by the bleak Arizona desert, Arivaca is a rural enclave just 10 miles north of the Mexican border. It’s a hotbed of drug smuggling and human trafficking. Law enforcement estimates 47% of the illegal drugs in the U.S. pass through the area around Arivaca. Nine year old Brisenia Flores, a victim of the drug cartel wars, was murdered there in her own home, on a hot night before Memorial Day in 2009.
Like many other border towns in the west, Arivaca was primarily populated by Mexicans, some of whom could trace their family history back to before the Gadsden purchase of 1853. Prior to that, it was likely a Pima Indian village. An 1833 Mexican land grant to La Aribac Ranch transmuted into Arivaca in later years. Aribac is a Pima Indian word for “small springs.” In the arid desert, any area with water will attract both people and wildlife.
Arivaca existed for many years as a village of just a few hundred inhabitants. In recent years, its population swelled to almost 1,000, and its population is now 80% Caucasian. It’s a town where “everyone knows your name.” The average age of its residents is upwards of 46 years, and there are retired folks as well as artsy people and jaded hippies living there. Mining was a primary source of income up until the mines gave out. Many people who moved out there came because they wanted to live in a peaceful place in a rural area.
Arivaca used to be a quiet place where not much happened until illegal immigration invaded the town after 2000. Because it is so close to the Arizona-Mexico border, the town became a stopping-off point for drug and human smugglers. Arivaca sits at the nexus of several dirt roads coming North from Mexico, Highway 286, Arivaca Road, and the I-19 freeway between Tucson and Nogales, as well as the Arivaca wash, all of which are major trafficking routes used by smugglers.
Politics in the town tend toward the Left, and when the Secure Border Initiative of 2006 mandated that a 100-foot camera tower be placed near Arivaca, allegedly to watch the border, residents were disgruntled. The environmental impact report was quietly distributed to the Arivaca Library without any notice or fanfare, and the open period for public comment was limited to 4 days, with the Library being closed during 2 of them.
The triangular area enclosed by the mountains between Arivaca, and Sells, Arizona and the Mexican border is known as “The Zone,” and is a source of constant drug and human trafficking. The towers were erected to overlook that area and Arivaca, and residents complained they were being spied upon. As of September 19, 2009, the camera on the Arivaca tower was so faulty that raindrops disturbed the picture it displayed. The tower, just like its 8 sister towers erected by Boeing and subcontracted out to Israeli security firm Elbit, was useless. In addition, the frequency it used to transmit its signal to the Border Patrol was the same as that commonly used for Wi-Fi, so the residents never could get their Wi-Fi systems to work properly. The tower was an ugly nuisance in their community, and it did nothing to keep them safe.
To be continued...
May 30, 2009
Chuck needed to gas up before we started to go to Arivaca, and he asked me where the gas station was in Sierra Vista. In spite of the fact that it had a huge sign, Gas City, and I had given him exact directions, he drove right past it! I had to follow him, furiously honking and stopping him in the Wal-Mart parking lot so that I could lead him to it. Unfortunately, this was a precursor of what was to follow that day.
On the way out of town, we stopped at a strip mall so that Chuck could get some refrigerant for his ailing A/C, and I could buy some pens and writing paper. Chuck was very enthusiastic about what Shawna was doing on the border, and had been telling me that I should write something about Shawna, and I hadn’t one piece of paper on me. I doubted I would use the paper while I was visiting, but thought I might need it afterward. The refrigerant failed to fix his A/C.
We took every back road that existed on our way to Arivaca, with Chuck blindly following the GPS system on his laptop in his truck. We went for many hours on only dirt roads. Chuck kept having to check his GPS, and I wanted to talk to him to find out how much longer that supposedly 90 minute trip was going to take. I had been up since 6:30 that morning, and I was tired of driving.
We went through the mountains, and even passed an area where the Forest Service was doing a controlled burn. We saw the smoke for miles before we got there, and I remember thinking I hope we don’t drive through that. We drove right on past the flames after Chuck stopped and talked to the firemen. It felt like Chuck took me on every bumpy dirt road between Hereford and Arivaca, sometimes driving so fast that I lost sight of him for a while. I kept thinking about how bad my shocks were, and that driving this hard wasn’t making them any better.
At one point, we turned off the main road, and were driving down into a gully, and Chuck pulled over under a shade tree. He got out and asked me, “Do you have your gun ready?” I said yes, and asked why.
He said, “This is a real bad place. I don’t want to go into Arivaca after dark. You might meet up with a smuggler down here and you need to have your gun accessible. Don’t stop for anyone unless they are wearing a uniform. If you have to, shoot them and drive away.”
This scared me, but I really didn’t want to take the chance of shooting some innocent person, so I just decided I would use my own judgment rather than shooting first and asking questions later.
One dirt road we went down dead-ended. The sun was setting, and it became obvious that we would not get to Arivaca in the daylight. Chuck finally called Shawna, who directed him to the freeway! Once we got off I-19 South at Arivaca Junction, I parked my Blazer and rode the 25 miles to Arivaca in Chuck’s truck with no air conditioning. Memorial Day was very hot, and I was sweating all the way.
Chuck was friendly, and we conversed easily. We talked about Shawna and the border. He said that Shawna was very mysterious, that she was secretive, and wouldn’t reveal much to anyone. This was a contrast to the way she sounded on the phone earlier that day; she was open and friendly, although she didn’t give me any details about her work. (I later found out that Shawna didn’t like Chuck or trust him, so that was why she didn’t tell him much.) Chuck made sure I knew he thought drug dealers were the scum of the earth. I protested, as I usually do, that crimes are only created when there are laws against things people like, such as drugs, and if they were decriminalized, you wouldn’t have all the crime associated with them. That wasn’t good enough for him, and he continued to berate drug dealers.
About 25 minutes later, our journey ended in Arivaca. It had only taken us 5 1/2 hours to travel little more than 100 miles, as the crow flies! Chuck could have provided competition for Wrong Way Corrigan. If we had followed established paved roads on the map, it would have taken a maximum of a couple hours.
The memory that stands out most for me of that night was Shawna bringing me 2 glasses of green Gatorade with ice. I was sweating, and my face was probably flushed. I guess Shawna thought I needed something cold to drink.
It was STILL HOT when we left, even though it was after 9 PM. I embraced Shawna as we said goodbye. Jason limped out of the bedroom, and we exchanged a few words. And then Stonex and I were on our way, his tiny Chihuahua dog again sitting on my lap all the way to the I-19 freeway, whether I wanted him to or not. Earlier in the day, he had almost become food for one of Glenn Spencer’s huge German Shepherds at his BBQ, so perhaps he was taking particular delight in still being alive.
As I said goodbye to Chuck, I gave him a hug, too. In the weeks and months following that night, I really wished I could take back that hug. While Stonex had initially stood up for Shawna the 2 times she was attacked in Everett, Washington, after learning about the Arivaca murders, he enthusiastically joined the negative media bullies and phony patriots beating up Shawna and finding her guilty without a trial. His comments were uniformly condemning of Shawna, in spite of the fact that he likely knew nothing about where she had been prior to meeting us in Arivaca. He eagerly gave media interviews, briefly enjoying his "15 minutes of fame," only to find out that they backfired on him, as the opposition wondered why he knew so much, and accused him of being the “fourth man” involved in the murders.
When the news that Shawna had been arrested for murder was forwarded to me by someone I later learned was an FBI informant, I was in shock for at least a couple of weeks. The government-controlled media’s story was implausible and completely absurd. They portrayed Shawna as if she were “Mrs. (Charlie) Manson,” as she would later say, and claimed that she had planned the murder-robbery of a family of drug traffickers so that she could fund her campaign to expose drug and human trafficking on the border! I knew opposing human trafficking was very important to Shawna, and the entire story spun by the media was too outlandish to be believed.
Then there was the long, awkward pause during Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik’s press conference where he said “Jason Bush was in fact the shooter…under orders from Ms. Forde.” I wondered, after viewing that moment several times, if Dupnik was pausing to make up a big lie to deliver to the press.
Even when the Pima County Sheriff’s Office issued a 150 page Media Release, the media managed to extract only 4 paragraphs from the extensive documentation by law officers which incriminated other suspects, and didn’t describe what had led to the arrest of Forde and Bush! In a highly suspicious move, Sheriff Dupnik withdrew the Media Release from further distribution after justiceforshawnaforde.com and a friend of Shawna’s had exposed its contents to the public. When members of the Committee for Justice for Shawna Forde saw a picture of Oin Oakstar’s backside in the Green Valley News, rather than his face, we knew he would play an important part in the case.
I couldn’t believe this was the woman I had just met. The whole story sounded like a complete left-wing media-manufacture, and the Coordinator of the Committee called the charges against Shawna “an old-fashioned Arizona shake and bake case.”
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