Cover Story: Lethally Blonde

It was strange piled upon strange. Everett police Sgt. Goetz says they're still puzzled by it all. The department has, for now, dropped its rape investigation. "The case has been closed due to insufficient evidence," says Goetz. "We've exhausted all the leads." Evidence was scarce, he says, and Forde "was the only witness." The arm-shooting investigation has also been put on hold.

Police are still examining leads in John Forde's shooting, and they should be focusing on Shawna, says her half-brother. "My son and I went up there [to Everett] after the attacks and we both noticed that her 'bruises' were doctored with makeup," says Metzger. "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."

Tom Nguyen

Pima County Sheriff's Dept.

Forde’s swift evolution from beauty-school protester to aspiring militia leader startled her half-brother.

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More About

• Shawna Forde
• Merrill Metzger
• John Forde
• Immigration
• Arizona Immigration

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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 faces questions from the badges down in Arizona, and so far isn't telling them much either, other than that she didn't do it. 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 pled not guilty and were appointed public defenders to represent them. (Bush, thanks to information surfacing from the Arizona probe, is now also charged in the 1997 slaying of a homeless Hispanic man in Wenatchee.) Pima County's prosecutor will decide by the end of August whether the threesome will face the death penalty.

In one of her final MAD missives to supporters, issued after the Everett incidents and before the Arivaca shootings, Forde, in her uncorrected style, portrayed herself as a 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, report 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 have 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 likely 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. Twenty-one inmates alone go by Rodriguez. And yes, a spokesperson confirms, the jail serves Mexican food.

randerson@seattleweekly.com