Neo Nazi Border Vigilante J.T. Ready Kills Family And Himself

J.T. Ready.

Extremists within the conservative movement are worked up.

All these culture wars are credited to making more unease within the White Supremacy movement. They already know that it's likely President Barack Obama could win reelection.

They're aware of the changing demographics in which Hispanic/Latinos and Blacks are growing in rapid rates. Interracial births are at an all time high. The United States is becoming a little more browner. That's gotta to unravel some.

White nationalists allied with the Minutemen Border Movement patrolled the United States-Mexican border threatening and even possibly killing illegal immigrants.

J.T. Ready, a notorious figure in the White Supremacist circles lived in Arizona. A prominent fixture in Republican politics once tried to run for an Arizona County Sheriff post and was a poll watcher for elections. The often animated Ready would promote himself as the savior of the White race.

In Gilbert, Arizona, J.T. Ready killed his girlfriend, their daughter and other family members before he committed suicide.

Courtesy of the Tucson Citizen.

Gilbert mass shooting: White supremacist J.T. Ready left tracks in politics

by Gary Nelson on May. 02, 2012, under Arizona Republic News

J.T. Ready, the avowed White supremacist and militant critic of illegal immigration who authorities believe was the gunman in Wednesday’s multiple murder-suicide in Gilbert, cut a swath through Arizona politics before — and after — it became apparent he represented the far-right fringe of the political spectrum.

Along the way the barrel-chested former Marine became entwined for a time with one of the state’s most powerful political leaders and appeared on the radar of at least two national groups that track potentially violent extremist movements for his views and armed patrols of the Mexico border.

Authorities believe Ready, 39, shot and killed four people in a Gilbert home before turning a gun on himself.

Ready was allied briefly with former state Senate President Russell Pearce, and the two posed together for photographers during an anti-illegal-immigration rally at the state Capitol in June 2007. By the next year, as Ready’s ties to neo-Nazi and White supremacist groups became more apparent, Pearce disavowed him.

Pearce, who was defeated last November in a recall election, is now first vice chairman of the Arizona Republican Party and is running again for the Senate, this time from the new District 26 in Mesa.

Party spokesman Shane Wikfors said Pearce would not comment on Ready’s death. “He’s not going to want to have anything to do with him,” Wikfors said. “We categorically, absolutely had nothing to do with him.”

Marc Pitcavage, national director of investigative research for the Anti-Defamation League, said the group has long been aware of Ready’s activities.

The group’s website describes Ready as a “neo-Nazi and anti-immigrant extremist,” tracing his activities in Arizona from 2004 onward.

“We have monitored J.T. Ready for many years now,” Pitcavage said. It began with Ready’s early activities as a border vigilante but soon led to the realization that Ready was “a full-fledged White supremacist.”

For a time, Pitcavage said, Ready was a “mover and shaker” for the National Socialist Movement, a neo-Nazi group with about 330 members nationwide. Ready was one of the group’s two principal leaders in the Phoenix area, Pitcavage said.

An online biography of Ready includes several quotes in which he advocated restoring the country as a "White, European homeland,” called for militant action against Jews and advocated using “lawful, deadly force” when appropriate to protect the Mexican border.

Pitcavage said it would be premature to link Ready’s extreme political views to the explosion of violence that ended five lives on Wednesday. “When the shooting spree is directed toward family members, or what were essentially the closest thing he had to family members, those are usually personal rather than ideological motives,” Pitcavage said.

Ready also had been tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center, an Alabama-based civil-rights organization that monitors hate and extremist groups. Like the ADL, the center carries a biography of Ready on its website.

It notes that Ready apparently got his start in politics as president of the Mesa Community College Republican Club and became increasingly involved in local issues in the early 2000s.

According to the SPLC biography, Ready received a bad-conduct discharge from the Marines in 1996, after being court-martialed twice — once for larceny and going AWOL, and once for conspiracy and assault.

The site also lists a 1992 criminal conviction for property damage and assault after he and a friend destroyed a car mirror with a baseball bat.

Ready ran for political office at least twice in Mesa and once as a write-in candidate for U.S. Senate. In 2004 he ran in the Republican primary for a House seat from District 18, which Pearce already represented.

In 2006 he ran for Mesa City Council from a heavily Hispanic district and finished second among four candidates.

During that council campaign, The Arizona Republic uncovered inconsistencies in the biography he had provided the newspaper and found that he had been convicted of assault in Florida when he was 18 years old.

Ready had claimed to be a founding member of the Arizona Minuteman Project, a border-vigilante group, but admitted that he was just a member, not a founder.

That campaign also featured a bizarre incident in which Ready, who earlier had solicited votes from the Hells Angels, traded shots with an illegal immigrant whom Ready believed was involved in criminal activity. Nobody was hurt.

A year later Ready caused a commotion at a Mesa City Council meeting when the mayor denied him permission to speak in opposition to a Mesa police detective who was campaigning against hate crimes.

Ready’s ties to Pearce became an issue during Pearce’s 2008 re-election campaign when a group called Mesa Deserves Better sent a mailer depicting Pearce as a friend of neo-Nazis.

Amid that campaign, three Arizona Republican congressmen sent a letter to the chairman of the Maricopa County Republican Party demanding Ready’s removal as a precinct committeeman in District 18 because of his neo-Nazi ties.

By that time, Ready had been in that post for two years and was not seeking re-election. “You can’t grow a party when you’re rallying with J.T. Ready,” U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake said at the time.

But Ready apparently was trying to re-enter politics this year and had formed a committee to seek the Democratic nomination for sheriff in Pinal County.

Shortly after Ready’s death became known Wednesday afternoon, someone posted this message on his Facebook page: “Reports are unconfirmed that a cartel assassination squad murdered J.T. Ready and several of his friends and family this afternoon in Gilbert, Arizona.”

Harry Hughes, who briefly headed Ready’s campaign committee for sheriff until he was promoted in the National Socialist Movement, said, “I got an e-mail from him the other day and everything seemed fine.”

“And I’ve always said, he was generous, caring, respectful most of the time as far as with friends and acquaintances, maybe not so much people on the other side,” Hughes said.

Republic reporter Lindsey Collom contributed to this article.