Yesterday, J.T. Ready, a neo-Nazi and member of the anti-immigrant Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, reportedly strapped on body armor, grabbed several firearms, and then killed four people in Gilbert, Arizona. One of the dead is a toddler. Ready also was killed in this incident, although reports vary on whether he took his own life. At the time of his death, Ready was running for Pinal County sheriff.

Ready’s beliefs were extreme even among extremists. In 2007, for example, he wrote that illegal immigration occurs because “negroids screw monkeys and rape babies in afreaka [sic]. Then stupid white man who licks kosher jew rear lets negroids in.” Yet Ready traveled surprisingly close to the center of power in his state. Ready claims he was a protégé to former Arizona state Sen. Russell Pearce (R), the author of Arizona’s harsh immigration law who was recently removed from office in a recall election, and there is ample documentation that the two men knew each other and that Pearce once supported Ready politically.

Pearce and Ready’s relationship stretches back at least to 2004, when Pearce ordained Ready as an elder in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. By 2006, when Ready ran for Mesa City Council — a campaign that sputtered after the public learned that Ready was once court-martialed and kicked out of the Marine Corps — he received Pearce’s endorsement. Ready also claims that he was with Pearce’s son Josh when Josh Pearce got a tattoo of an iron eagle with a swastika on his neck and chest, but that he also talked Josh out of joining a skinhead group.

FULL ARTICLE: Reported Neo-Nazi Spree Killer Called SB 1070 Sponsor Russell Pearce His ‘Surrogate Father’ | ThinkProgress.