Anti-immigration advocate held in '97 slaying

An anti-immigration crusader, who faces murder charges along with a former Everett woman in a double slaying in Arizona, was also charged Friday in a 1997 Wenatchee killing.

Jason Eugene Bush, 34, was charged in Chelan County Superior Court in the stabbing death of Hector Lopez Partida, 29, a homeless man.

An informant told Wenatchee police that Bush had bragged about killing "a Mexican" behind a store and that Bush had ties to white supremacist groups, according to court documents. Prosecutors say he was linked to the death through DNA evidence.

Bush and two others, including Shawna Forde, 41, who grew up in Everett and ran for the Everett City Council in 2007, are charged with two counts of murder in Pima, Ariz. During a May 30 home-invasion robbery, a woman was wounded and her husband and their 9-year-old daughter were killed.

A sheriff in Arizona said Forde, Bush and Albert Robert Gaxiola, 42, wanted to steal money from the man, whom they suspected to be a drug dealer, to fund operations of Forde's Minutemen American Defense, an anti-illegal-immigration group focused on the Mexican border with Arizona.

One of the group's stated missions was to gather video of drug smuggling and human trafficking by drug cartels, according to its Web site.

The site, which has been taken offline, listed Forde as the group's leader and Bush as its operations director.

Forde was once associated with the better known and larger Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, known for its surveillance of U.S. borders with Canada and Mexico.

She formed her own organization after she was ousted by the Washington state group "for conduct unbecoming of a member" two years ago, according to Joseph Ray, director of the Washington state chapter.

In the Wenatchee case, police describe the victim, Partida, as a homeless man who was sleeping under a blanket behind a store early on July 24, 1997.

After being stabbed several times, he managed to walk to a nearby parking lot, then collapsed, court documents said.

Arriving officers asked Partida who had hurt him. He muttered, "Gavachos" (white guys). He died minutes later.

A bloodstained shirt was found nearby.

Earlier this year, DNA extracted from the shirt was matched to Bush, who had a lengthy criminal record in Washington, including convictions for possession of stolen property, unlawful possession of a firearm and taking a motor vehicle without permission.

After his release from prison, Bush moved to Hayden Lake, Idaho, where he lived until 2007, according to court papers.

Wenatchee police "learned Bush has had long-standing ties to Aryan Nations groups that commonly believe in white superiority over other races and have been known to be violent towards nonwhite races," according to the charging documents.

Material from The Associated Press was included in this report.