[Video via deedynamo at YouTube.]

The strange case of Shawna Forde, the Everett-based anti-immigration activist whose gang of Minutemen murdered a 9-year-old girl and her father in cold blood, took another interesting turn this week.

Scott North of the Everett Herald -- a classically dogged news reporter who has been on this case since the start -- reported this week that one of the people who helped Forde and her gang after the murders was none other than Arizona anti-immigrant activist Laine Lawless [real name: Roberta Dill], perhaps most noted for burning the Mexican flag in public and ranting about communists in the government (as in the video above):

A minuteman who says he helped bind a bullet wound May 30 for a co-defendant of border activist Shawna Forde now says he wasn’t alone when he went to provide medical assistance to the man in Arivaca, Ariz.

Chuck Stonex of Alamagordo, N.M., said Tuesday he was accompanied on the first-aid mission by Laine Lawless of Phoenix.

Lawless, who is known in Arizona for burning Mexican flags, recently made headlines for starting up a Web site claiming that Forde, formerly of Everett, is being railroaded on charges that she was involved in a double murder in Arivaca. Arizona prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.

Stonex said it’s time for Lawless to publicly acknowledge that she met with Forde, 41, and co-defendant Jason Eugene Bush, 35, within hours of the killings. The meeting occurred at an Arivaca house that Stonex said he now believes was the home of Albert Gaxiola, the third defendant in the murder case.

“She was there, too. She saw everything that I saw,” Stonex said of Lawless. He had earlier decided to leave it up to Lawless to come forward as a witness — something Stonex said he did as soon as he learned that Forde and Bush were suspects in a double murder.

He changed his mind in part because of Lawless’ involvement with the Web site Justiceforshawnaforde.com.

“She’s making too many troubles and I think it is time for the rest of the story,” Stonex said.

Stephen Lemons at the Phoenix New Times has more about Lawless, including the fact that she recently attended a speech by Holocaust denier David Irving in the Phoenix area.

Lawless, in fact, has been a significant figure on the Minuteman front for some time now, not least because she formed one of the first spinoff groups. She played a key role in helping Chris Simcox organize one of his earlier versions of the Minutemen, the Civil Homeland Defense, and was one of the characters who showed up on video when the Minutemen first organized their border watch.

However, she got the boot shortly afterward, no doubt because she's such a lunatic that not even Simcox wanted to be associated with her. So she started up her own Minuteman offshoot, and it was shortly in the business of forming alliances with real neo-Nazis and even offering them advice on how to harass Latinos:

A prominent anti-immigration leader has secretly urged the nation's largest neo-Nazi group to launch a campaign of violence and harassment against undocumented workers in the United States.

Laine Lawless, who started a group called Border Guardians last year, sent an April 3 e-mail to Mark Martin, "SS commander" of the Western Ohio unit of the National Socialist Movement, which has 59 chapters in 30 states. It was titled, "How to GET RID OF THEM!"

The e-mail from Lawless, who was also an original member of Chris Simcox's vigilante militia before it morphed into the Minuteman Project in early 2005, detailed 11 suggestions for ways to harass and terrorize undocumented immigrants, including robbery and "beating up illegals" as they leave their workplace.

"Maybe some of your warriors for the race would be the kind of people willing to implement some of these ideas," Lawless wrote. "I'm not ready to come out on this. ... Please don't use my name. THANKS."

At the request of Lawless, who declined to respond to questions from the Intelligence Report, Martin posted her suggestions to a number of neo-Nazi bulletin boards. Those suggestions included:

-- "Steal the money from any illegal walking into a bank or check cashing place."

-- "Make every illegal alien feel the heat of being a person without status. ... I hear the rednecks in the South are beating up illegals as the textile mills have closed. Use your imagination."

-- "Discourage Spanish-speaking children from going to school. Be creative."

-- "Create an anonymous propaganda campaign warning that any further illegal immigrants will be shot, maimed or seriously messed-up upon crossing the border. This should be fairly easy to do, considering the hysteria of the Spanish language press, and how they view the Minutemen as 'racists & vigilantes.' "

Also, Rick Anderson at Seattle Weekly had a dynamite in-depth piece about Forde that is well worth reading.

Mind you, it still boggles my mind that we have a media that can make a fetish out of missing Yale students but ignore both this story and its real-world ramifications.