Shawna Forde’s double-murder trial is now underway in Tucson. What about the cases, and questions, she left behind here in Everett?
“We have nothing new,” Everett police Sgt. Robert Goetz said
Monday. “All the cases are inactive because we have no leads to follow up on.”
When Forde left town in early 2009 she was at the center of a trio of criminal investigations.
Court papers show police suspected she somehow was involved in the Dec. 22, 2008 near-fatal shooting of her ex husband. A week later, Forde claimed to have been beaten and raped. She suggested she’d been targeted by drug cartels. Police investigated and found evidence to doubt her story. Then Forde turned up in an Everett alley with a bullet wound in her arm. She claimed to have been chased down and shot by somebody in a white SUV. Problem: after Forde’s Arizona arrest, evidence surfaced that she had been on the phone the night she was shot in Everett, describing for separate people, at separate times, the same harrowing flight for survival.
Forde left for Arizona not long after The Herald published a story detailing her criminal past. She also admitted telling police that the violence surrounding her in Everett probably was connected to criminal activity involving her felon son. In other words, Forde had been telling one story in public, another in private.
Her arrest in connection with the Arizona killings brought some heat to the investigations here in Everett, but, unfortunately, not a lot of light. Police appear no closer to slapping the cuffs on the gunman who nearly killed Forde’s ex husband. That’s a pity. Over the past two years I’ve gotten to know him. He’s a good man, well loved by family and a circle of close friends. He deserves to know that the person who came into his home and shot him full of holes has been held accountable.
Investigators from Pima County, Ariz., were here a few weeks back speaking with cops and other potential witnesses about Forde. It is possible her Everett history could wind up in evidence in the Arizona murder trial. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, police in Everett are paying attention to what is happening in Arizona. Should Forde be convicted of the Arizona killings, the cases in Everett — at least the reported rape and alley shooting — will be moved from inactive investigation status and officially closed, Goetz said.
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