Original subtitles

At 1 o'clock in the morning...

Raul hears a pounding on the door.

They tell Raul, "This isn't personal...

...but this bullet's for you."

They just shot my husband

and they shot my daughter

and they shot me.

The house was like a war zone.

They went scorched earth

and decided to eliminate an entire family.

She was talking about home invasions, murders.

He is involved with the Aryan Brotherhood.

It begins to make sense that

these are the kind of people

who could execute a nine-year-old girl.

Raul had no idea that he was opening the door to killers.

Arivaca is a little, sort of, sleepy town,

about 40 miles southwest of Tucson.

There's one bar in town,

there's one little grocery store.

Arivaca is a place where people go

to be away from the hustle and bustle of urban settings

and be a little bit more with nature.

And it's a very interesting mix of folks.

There's some retirees, artists,

there are ranchers.

It's just a beautiful community. And it's quiet.

Raul Flores and Gina Gonzalez are two young people

living out in the Arivaca area

with their daughter, Brisenia,

and had family living out there as well.

Their home is a very modest single-family home...

...set off from the roadway on a

fairly large-sized property.

Brisenia is a nine-year-old little girl

who loves animals.

The night that this happened,

Brisenia had gotten a new puppy

and her mom didn't want the puppy in the bedroom with Brisenia.

So, the compromise was that

Brisenia is out in the living room that night

with the new dog.

At about 1 o'clock in the morning,

Raul hears a pounding on the door.

It's obviously of concern

because their house was a little more remote

than even some of the others.

So, Raul answers the door...

And he finds two people

that are armed with guns.

One is a very tall, Caucasian male, about 6'4",

big muscular build.

And the other one is a heavy-set Caucasian female,

maybe about 5'2".

And they were dressed in camouflage,

which is common.

There's a lot of military in southern Arizona

because we share a border with Mexico.

They both say that they're border patrol

and they're here looking for fugitives

and they demand to be let into the house.

Even at that hour, Raul had no reason to believe

that they were not who they said they were,

so Raul opened the door for them...

...and they came inside.

Raul first tells the two folks

that he's going to put some pants on, get dressed,

but they tell him that if he moves,

that they will shoot him.

Raul is told to sit down.

By this time, Gina had gotten dressed

and came out to the living room.

Gina sat down on the loveseat with her daughter.

Gina is concerned about Brisenia...

...who, at this point, is still asleep.

The people are telling Raul and Gina not to move.

Raul observes one of them has a firearm

that appears to have duct tape on it.

Raul begins to suspect

that these people are not any sort of officials.

They're not border patrol.

He starts asking, "I want to see your badges."

It's at this time that the male tells Raul...

"This isn't personal, but this bullet's for you."

And he shoots Raul.

The gun was a. 45 calibre semi-automatic handgun.

It's a very large and powerful weapon.

Brisenia wakes up with the noise and begins screaming.

Gina reacts in shock.

She just begins yelling, screaming.

The male then shoots Gina.

Several times.

Raul is still alive and yells,

"Don't shoot her! Don't shoot her!"

The male then shoots Raul two more times...

...in the chest and head.

At that point, Gina had collapsed to the floor.

She had been shot directly in the chest.

Her leg is now broken from a gunshot wound.

But Gina is still alive.

She could hear Raul choking on his own blood.

Gina was thinking, hoping, praying

that if she played dead,

that these intruders would take

whatever they wanted to from the house

and leave Brisenia alone.

At this point, Brisenia was getting hysterical.

She's crying, she's asking,

"Why did you shoot my mommy?

Why did you shoot my dad?"

Gina can hear the male talking to her daughter.

He was telling her to calm down.

He was telling her that he wasn't going to hurt her.

The male then starts reloading his gun.

Gina can hear what's going on.

The male then walks up to Brisenia,

puts the gun in Brisenia's face...

...and shoots her twice.

After that, there's confusion.

Gina hears other people then come in the house.

She hears orders coming from the female

to get the money, get the drugs.

She hears them in her bedroom,

going through things.

She could hear the house being ransacked, essentially.

And she lays there, continuing to play dead.

People are yelling in both English and Spanish,

"This is the wrong house. There's nothing here.

We can't find it."

Eventually they all leave.

Gina gets the phone, she calls 911.

It's at this time that

one of the assailants comes back in the house.

That person sees that Gina is still alive.

The female assailant starts yelling at the male assailants,

"She's not dead!

You have to go and finish the job!"

Raul kept a handgun in a cabinet in the kitchen.

It's not unusual for folks living out in remote areas

to have a gun in the house.

Gina had to pull herself up to reach the handgun.

She can see the man who shot Raul and Brisenia come in,

but the kitchen had two entrances.

And at the other entrance

she also hears and sees another man.

While she's on the phone with 911,

they both started shooting at her.

She yelled back at them and started shooting.

A gunfight was happening.

Gina was protected.

Her back was against the back door

and her body is shielded by the kitchen cabinets.

The incredible courage that Gina displayed.

She's being shot at from two different directions.

One man had a. 45 calibre handgun.

The other man had a shotgun.

And she's yelling at these two men to get out of her house.

Gina isn't sure at the time,

but the man who had shot her husband and her daughter...

...she hit him in the leg with one of her shots...

...and then they flee.

They run away.

Gina is still on the phone with 911.

She talks to the call taker,

waits for emergency services,

and steels herself,

ready for another confrontation,

which, thankfully, didn't occur.

All the detectives that responded were all sent that 911 call.

We're listening to it on our way down to the crime scene.

So, we all knew first-hand stuff about what had occurred.

Without that 911 call,

and all that recording,

to be perfectly honest,

we would be looking at Gina as a suspect.

Maybe you went crazy

and killed your whole family. We don't know.

The 911 call that Gina is making,

it does last for an eternity.

We have to go back to the fact that Arivaca is remote.

The closest sheriff's substation is a good half hour away.

I felt a lot of pressure because

it was my first homicide case.

I hadn't been a detective for very long

and this was a very high priority case.

The inside of the house was really like a war zone.

There are shotgun blasts all through the wall.

There are holes in the wall from all the shots.

There are bullets embedded in the couch.

At the front door, I see the male sitting on the couch.

He is deceased.

I see a loveseat

off on the other side of the room.

There is a child laying on that loveseat.

There is blood around her head.

There is blood spatter on the ceiling above her.

The fact that, in this case, the home invasion

results in this wild west shootout,

but that a child is murdered,

this would evince to investigators

that they're dealing with offenders without remorse;

psychopaths; potentially, criminal syndicates.

But even criminal syndicates operate by rules,

and those rules almost universally include

that you do not harm children.

It generally takes a couple people to bag a human body...

...and put that body on a gurney

and get that body out of the house.

In this case with Brisenia, she was so tiny,

I did that myself.

It is brutal, it is terrible,

but, to be perfectly honest, I have to feel nothing.

You can't let your emotions change anything.

You have a job to do.

When a child is murdered,

that puts another level of seriousness to the crime

and we need to do everything we possibly can

to find the culprits.

There's this sense of urgency

to figure out what's going on.

Who did this? Where are they?

Are they going to do some other home invasion?

What kind of person could

put a gun to the head of a nine-year-old

and pull the trigger?

I mean, who could do that?

We have a pretty big crime scene there.

So, the most important thing is for us to really slow down

and make sure that we process all the evidence correctly.

We mark all the evidentiary items.

They're photographed in place.

Then we go around and

we collect the items that we'll turn into evidence.

We'll take DNA samples from the blood that's on the ground.

Investigators, before they get the forensic information back,

are going to have to start to piece together a visual in their head

as to what probably happened,

and they're going to rely on their experience

in order to put sort of a theory together

as to what happened.

Outside, there was a trail of blood

leading from the front door out into the yard.

Just looking at that alone

tells the investigator a little bit about what occurred.

It tells the investigator that somebody who was injured

was outside at some point

and most likely fled the scene.

There's a DNA there that we can get.

This evidence came from the assailants.

I found it astonishing that these individuals

dropped a handgun in the front yard...

...and didn't even bother to pick it up

and just left it there.

This tells me that the perpetrators of this crime

were not professionals,

in any sense of the word.

It tells me that things did not go smoothly,

and there was a bit of chaos...

...which is good for me, as an investigator.

Chaos begets evidence.

When investigators find a scene this chaotic,

they have to wonder, is this a robbery gone wrong?

Or did this occur after the fact?

And was the motive actually to murder the occupants?

So, one of the first things we're going to do is

figure out who these people are.

What family dynamics are going on?

Did these people have any enemies?

Were there financial issues,

domestic issues,

anything of that nature?

So, once you get a better idea of who the victim is,

you are likely to get a better idea of who murdered them.

Now we're trying to go forward and speak with Gina,

who is our only witness.

At that point we were unsure of the extent of her injuries

and when, if ever,

she would be able to give us an interview.

Gina is in the hospital

recovering from very serious surgery

to repair her leg,

to repair the wound to her chest.

To be honest with you, I was not planning on

her being able to give us a lot of super useful information.

But she was incredibly alert

and was able to give us

a very good amount of detail,

which I found surprising,

given the circumstances that she had been through.

She described the assailants as a female

who had blonde hair that had natural curl...

...a little bit shorter, pudgy, and plain-looking.

She described the male subject,

who had shot all of them,

as very, very tall.

She was able to give us a description of a further assailant

that had come in the house afterwards,

who she described as Hispanic,

and she felt that maybe it was an associate

or an ex-associate of Raul's.

She described all of them as being, you know, militaristic.

The female especially,

because she was barking orders at everyone else.

She described a teal minivan

that had driven slowly by her house

when she was outside.

She described a blonde female

in the passenger's seat,

and the female waved at her.

Now we have to determine

who this individual was

and why did she target the Flores family?

Living in southern Arizona,

when you get a murder like this...

...a home invasion...

...unfortunately, one of the first things you think about is

whether there are drugs involved.

Arivaca is just a few miles

north of the Mexican border

and there's a canyon that goes from the border

up through Arivaca.

It's a well-known drug-smuggling route.

And there are folks that lived in Arivaca

who were involved in drug smuggling.

Early in the investigation,

a name emerges:

Finn Lockhart.

He's known to law enforcement down in Arivaca

as a potential smuggler,

drug dealer.

Lockhart had previous felony convictions

for transportation and marijuana for sale.

And Finn's girlfriend knew facts about this case

that we hadn't released yet to the media.

And Finn is a very large man

and he matched the initial description from Gina

about the man who shot Raul and Brisenia.

So, law enforcement's wondering whether

Raul had gotten mixed up

with Finn's operation.

SWAT serves the warrant

at Lockhart's residence.

They find Lockhart inside

with numerous weapons.

Lockhart conducts an interview with us.

But when we asked him about the incident

at the Flores residence,

he denied knowledge of it

and said he had nothing to do with it.

At that point, he was still definitely a suspect.

We obtained his DNA

and he was booked into jail

for being a felon in possession of firearms.

But Arivaca is a small, close-knit community.

Everybody knows everybody else's business,

and Lockhart isn't the only suspect that was put on our radar.

Concerned citizens identified another individual

named Albert Gaxiola.

Gaxiola may have had a grudge against Raul Flores

due to them reportedly being rival drug dealers.

So, they go to his house to see if there's any clues

or any evidence.

Albert agreed to come out of his house

and speak with detectives.

I noticed there was a teal minivan

parked behind his house.

After Gina mentioning the teal minivan

that she had seen before...

...I was, you know, incredibly interested in this van.

There appeared to be blood smear

on the exterior passenger's side of the van.

The passenger's side window was down.

I could readily see inside the van.

There appeared to be a pool of dried blood...

...on the floor of the passenger's seat

and in the backseat area.

The amount of blood that they see is,

I mean, just astonishing.

At this point, I think we're definitely headed

in the right direction.

So, we wait there

while I get on a phone with a judge and, basically,

read verbatim a search warrant for him,

and he grants us permission

to serve the warrant on the house.

Inside, we find all these plastic tubs

that contain weapons.

There's camouflage-style, military clothing.

And a bunch of fake IDs

with the name of Jason Bush.

Now the question is, who is Jason Bush?

It doesn't take long before

detectives find a physical description of Bush.

And Jason Bush is a very large man.

He's about 6'5",

I think he was close to 250 pounds,

and he matches the description

of the man that Gina described on the 911 tape,

as walking up to Brisenia and shooting her.

We look into Jason Bush's background

and we found out that

he is involved with the Aryan Brotherhood...

...which is a white supremacist organization.

We also determined that he has a felony warrant for murder

out of Washington State.

He was a suspect in a couple of murders up there,

both of which involve undocumented workers

in fields in Washington.

The murders appeared to be racially motivated

in that the undocumented workers in Washington were Hispanic.

The more the detectives dig into Bush's background,

it sort of begins to make sense

that he's the kind of person

who could carry out the execution of a nine-year-old girl.

Among the evidence

that the detectives are beginning to collect

in Albert Gaxiola's house,

there are some business cards...

...by the name of Shawna Forde.

And the business on these cards is called

Minuteman American Defense:

M.A.D.

So, the detectives are wondering

who Shawna Forde is.

And when they start looking at her background,

they find that she is a heavier-set blonde woman...

...that matches Gina's description

of who came into the house that night.

We conducted an interview with Albert Gaxiola.

And Albert says that he has no knowledge

of the homicide, whatsoever.

He did mention the name Shawna Forde.

He mentioned Jason Bush.

He said that they were some Minutemen type people

that he had met and he was letting stay at his house.

But he distanced himself from those folks

and their activities.

Now he did let us look at his phone.

And there was these text messages between himself and someone

whom he identified as just "White".

I asked him, "Who is 'White'?"

He's like, "Well, that's Shawna Forde."

"Why is she in there as 'White'?"

And his response was that,

"She hates all ethnicities other than Caucasians."

And you could see these messages going back and forth

during when the homicide occurred.

So, at that point, we were pretty certain

that Albert was involved.

But we didn't have enough evidence to arrest him.

Now, at this point, we have the name of Shawna Forde

and a description of her matching Gina's statement.

We've got Jason Bush, and his physical description

matching what Gina had already told police.

Now there's the race to find them

because they're not in Arivaca,

they're not at Gaxiola's.

I wrote a ping order on Jason Bush's phone

which allows us to get a geolocation

using cell phone towers.

We sent out pings and it came back that

the phone was up in Mojave County,

which is just outside the city of Kingman, Arizona.

While this is happening,

we're trying to gather information on Shawna Forde

and there's plenty to find on the internet.

Shawna Forde is posting videos

taken near the border out in the desert,

talking about her views on illegal immigration,

and that she's out there trying to do something about it.

There are a certain following of people

that are drawn to the border...

...and they form these Minutemen groups to,

in their perception,

assist in the defense and protection of America.

Shawna tried to get involved with some of them,

but a lot of them wanted nothing to do with her

because she was too extreme.

And that's when she started her own group called

Minuteman American Defense.

On Shawna's website

she identifies one of the people that works for her as "Gunny".

And it turns out "Gunny" was Jason Bush.

Now Gunny would be like a U.S. Marine term

for someone who was proficient in

guns, weapons, that sort of thing.

None of that was true, but that's how Shawna

portrayed Jason Bush online.

Once investigators realize that they're dealing with a group,

they're going to have to begin engaging

other areas of law enforcement

that deal with policing and gathering intelligence

on these types of radical groups.

This is not going to be a conventional homicide investigation.

We are contacted by the FBI Denver office

who inform us that they have informants

who believe that Shawna Forde

is involved in the Arivaca murders.

We're thinking, could this be the information

that we've been waiting for?

The terms "informant" and "informer" get thrown around a lot

for really, what are better characterized as tipsters.

An informer is somebody

who is registered with law enforcement

to provide information in real time.

Criminal intelligence, as it's received.

And for that reason, they're invaluable

in complex investigations,

including with organized crime, terrorism,

and other radical groups.

About a month prior to the murders

Shawna Forde held a meeting

in one of the suburbs of Denver.

They met at a truck stop

in a private meeting room.

What Shawna Forde talks about in this meeting was

that they had identified a home in Arivaca

that they believed was going to contain

a large amount of drugs and cash.

She didn't identify it by name, but she drew a map.

Sort of a little street map of how to get to this house.

And that was the Flores house.

Shawna Forde's idea was that

she could finance her organization

by stealing their drugs and cash at gunpoint.

They listened and, in the end, they kind of thought,

well, that sounds a little outlandish.

At least one of them got up and left in the middle of her speech.

But several people attended this meeting,

and one of them was an FBI informant.

After the meeting,

the informant had the wherewithal to hang around,

and when everybody left,

he went up and actually tore the map off of the easel.

And he gave that map to his handler at the Denver FBI office.

And he told them the name of this person

who was running the meeting,

that she was talking about doing home invasions, robberies

in Pima County, in Arivaca.

The FBI office in Denver

sent the map to the FBI office in Phoenix,

and... it just died there.

Nobody told local law enforcement.

Not one word.

It's incredible how messed up that was.

It makes you very, very angry.

Fast-forward, ten days later,

they start hearing there had been

an incident in Arivaca, involving murders.

The FBI agent in Denver

who had originally gotten the map

and passed it along to Arizona FBI

recognized that a mistake had been made.

And that's when the FBI reached out to local law enforcement

and told them about Shawna Forde.

Now we have got to find Shawna Forde.

When the FBI are able to start tracking Shawna Forde's phone,

she's actually in California,

and they're able to track her phone

driving all the way back from California

into Arizona.

And law enforcement sees her go into this compound

that is owned by the head of another militia group.

At that point, we do surveillance on the house.

We see her car leaving

and we pull it over

and deputies take her into custody.

Her demeanor is very arrogant.

She's like, "Why are you taking me into custody?

I didn't do anything wrong."

Law enforcement, of course, searches thoroughly

throughout the car.

And in the back,

detectives find jewellery...

...that belongs to Gina.

Deputies take Shawna

to a Cochise County Sheriff's Department.

And I went in and I interviewed her.

She's very forthcoming at first,

"Yeah, I know Jason Bush."

She refers to him as "Gunny".

And she identified Albert Gaxiola

as one of her scouts in Arivaca.

Then as soon as I started questioning her

about the homicides...

...she immediately invokes Miranda

and won't speak anymore.

The challenge for police in this case is that

this is not a criminal organization.

It's not like the mob,

where there's a capo and there's an underboss.

This is just a group of thugs.

So, investigators need to figure out

who should we really go after here? Who's the weak link?

When we got to Kingman, Arizona,

we were met by the Mojave County Sheriff's Department,

and they were able to provide us

with an address for Jason Bush.

He was staying at a house with a girlfriend,

and they were actually in a little town called Meadview,

which is near the Grand Canyon.

We wrote a search warrant on the house.

Mojave County SWAT served the search warrant...

...and picked up Jason Bush.

Shawna Forde denies everything about the crimes.

Jason Bush, though, has a different story.

I've been a cop for 23 years.

I've interviewed a lot of really bad people.

And Jason Bush was probably the most evil person

I have had to interview.

The first thing we noticed was

Jason Bush had a wound on his leg

that may have been infected...

...and it was consistent with a gunshot.

So, he was in a, a lot of pain at that point.

They know that somebody bled all over that property.

And now they see Jason Bush's leg

and he's got this massive injury to it.

Didn't go to the hospital for it, didn't go to a doctor,

and just tried to treat himself. And, so,

that's one of the things, of course, they questioned him about.

He changed his story several times.

At first, Jason indicated that

he was an informant for the FBI and the ATF,

and had been working in southern Arizona,

trying to spot some of these border groups,

including the Minuteman group.

As this circuit of interviews is underway,

investigators are going to rely on

sort of the oldest trick in the book, which is:

your friend in the next room is probably spilling his guts.

You wanna maybe get out in front of this.

Jason then changed his story

and said that yes...

...he was there the night of the homicides,

but he didn't go inside.

He tells them who was there.

He names Albert Gaxiola.

He names Shawna Forde.

Like, his story changed little by little.

And, finally, he admitted that yes,

he went inside.

It's at this point that Bush tells the detectives

that he shot both Raul and Brisenia.

He doesn't seem that concerned about shooting Raul.

But he tells the detective,

he goes, "I can't believe I shot a little girl.

I can't believe it."

Even he recognizes how evil that was.

Jason talks, and he does not stop talking.

He tells them everything.

He tells them the plan...

...he tells them what they did, why they did it.

Jason was kind of the last thing we needed

to tie everything together.

He basically connected the dots

between all three co-conspirators,

as well as their plan to rob the family.

Shawna Forde met Albert in Arivaca by happenstance.

And they struck up a friendship, of sorts,

whereby she needed something

and he needed something.

Shawna Forde had a plan

to go to Arivaca,

find a target,

rob that target,

and make money from the proceeds.

She was advised by Albert Gaxiola

that Raul Flores was a big-time drug dealer,

and Albert told her that

he would have a large quantity of narcotics

and currency in the house.

There was no hard evidence that Raul was connected

to some sort of drug operation.

There were no drugs in his house.

There was no large amount of cash in his house.

And that was not part of our case.

There was information that

Albert knew Raul and Gina and the family.

And he had beef with Raul.

Albert Gaxiola, well, he directs them to the Flores house,

knowing that they're going in at 1 o'clock in the morning,

fully loaded.

Albert knew what was gonna happen.

Bush and Forde are the ones that approached the door...

...pounded on the door.

Raul, at 1 o'clock in the morning,

got up, went to his front door and opened it.

Raul had no idea that he opened the door to killers.

Shawna Forde is directing all the action.

She's ordering Raul and Gina to sit on the couch.

Albert knew that he would be recognized,

so he waited outside the house.

And in the living room,

Shawna is telling Jason Bush what to do.

Jason Bush shoots Raul.

He then shot Gina...

...and turned back around and finished off Raul.

Brisenia is screaming,

and Jason Bush takes the gun and shoots her, too.

Gina is wounded,

laying on the ground.

She is hearing what is happening.

Albert then came in to assist

in finding the drugs and money that were purportedly there.

Once everybody decided that there were no drugs and money,

everybody left the house.

Shawna Forde realizes that she left her gun in the kitchen.

Forde goes back into the house

and quickly realizes that Gina is still alive.

Gina is able to get her husband's handgun.

At this point in time, Albert comes back in the house,

sees that Gina has a gun,

and leaves immediately.

Jason Bush comes back in

and goes to one entrance to the kitchen,

off of the living room.

Albert Gaxiola has a shotgun

and he's in the dining room.

And both of these men begin shooting at Gina.

A firefight ensued.

Jason Bush shooting a .45 calibre handgun at her.

Albert shooting a shotgun.

Gina is able to shoot Jason.

She's able to hit him in the leg...

...and they all three leave.

Gina has incredible survival instincts.

Incredible. And that's what saved her life.

Shawna Forde and Jason Bush and Albert Gaxiola

left a lot of evidence behind.

They left firearms, multiple.

They left blood evidence, their DNA.

Jason Bush, Shawna Forde, Albert Gaxiola

were all charged with first-degree murder

and armed robbery.

Shawna Forde was convicted of all the charges

and the jury imposed the death sentence on her.

Jason Bush was the second trial that went.

Again, the jury convicted him of all charges,

and that jury also sentenced him to death.

Gaxiola was convicted of all the charges

and that jury decided to sentence him to life

rather than the death penalty.

So, Jason Bush and Shawna Forde are on death row

in Arizona's prison.

Albert Gaxiola is serving a natural life sentence,

meaning he is never eligible for release.

Killing a child makes any case particularly evil.

The fact that they went scorched earth

and decided that they wanted to eliminate an entire family

tells you a lot about who these people are.

I'm reminded frequently of Brisenia.

It's so heartbreaking that these people could do that.

We certainly can't do anything to bring people back,

but we did bring all three killers to justice.

People talk about closure and things like that.

I don't know if Gina will ever have closure.

But knowing that these people are not going to be able

to hurt anybody innocent ever again, is satisfying.

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