Hindsight

Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

In early May, well-known Arizona border vigilante and Neo-Nazi JT Ready, armed to the teeth and clad in body armor, walked into his girlfriend’s house and fatally shot her, her daughter, her daughter’s boyfriend, and her daughter’s baby.

It was a gruesome and shocking crime, but to those who had watched Ready’s rise in Arizona over the years, his life ending in a burst of violent rage was not entirely surprising.

And so the question has remained: With Ready so well known to law enforcement across the state, were chances missed to take him off the streets before something like May’s massacre could happen?

Records obtained by TPM through a public records request show that border agents referred multiple cases — as recently as 2011 — to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix after encountering Ready and his band of border “guards” holding migrants in the desert.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office, records show, declined to take up the cases.

Nick Martin has our story.

Latest Editors' Blog
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Associate Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: