Accused killer had history of threats, mental health issues
Experts: Attack shows challenges in such cases
He left a years-long trail of harassment, threats and contemptuous behavior. There were dozens of warning signs that he might turn violent – including repeated threats of killing a journalist.
Although none of that was seemingly taken very seriously by authorities, Jarrod Ramos’ words and online activity offer examples that in hindsight could have prompted a stronger response from his employers, police and the court system. Ramos is now charged with killing five people at a Maryland newspaper last week.
USA TODAY reviewed thousands of pages of court records and interviewed dozens of people who knew or interacted with Ramos to build this profile. It shows an angry man who became obsessed with the people he felt wronged him, from a former high school classmate and her lawyer to the judges he appeared before and the journalists who exposed his campaign of harassment.
Experts say the attack at the Capital Gazette highlights the challenges of trying to balance the rights of people to speak freely against concerns that they could turn violent. In a court filing, Ramos said he had seen five mental health professionals for at least 75 visits before last week’s shooting.
“You can’t lock someone up because you have an inner fear about what he might do,” said Richard Barajas, executive director of the National Organization for Victim Assistance and former chief judge of the Texas Court of Appeals. “The criminal justice system is not designed for it. And the mental health system is ill-equipped to do it.”
Despite his threats, Ramos never offered any hint he would actually act on them. He had been engaged in a lengthy fight with the Capital Gazette over its coverage of a court case in 2011 in which he pleaded guilty to harassing a former classmate. In one court filing, Ramos said he wanted to kill journalist Eric Hartley but phrased it in a very specific way: “If not illegal, (I) would kill the living body of Hartley.”
Still, his behavior was enough to strike fear in attorney Brennan McCarthy, who represented the high school classmate Ramos pleaded guilty to harassing. McCarthy chillingly warned in a court filing: “There exists a very real possibility that at some point in time, Mr. Ramos will take these violent fetishes as expressed in print, and will try to carry them out in person.”
Disdain for the legal system
Ramos’ extensive court filings provide a window into his hyperbolic contemptuous attitude toward the legal system. After a judge sentenced him to counseling and probation for stalking his former classmate online, Ramos tried to have the woman prosecuted for perjury, suggested the judge should be disbarred and then unsuccessfully sued the journalist and newspaper. He criticized one court clerk for being sloppy because her mother was ill and suggested another made mistakes because she was thirsty.
Ramos titled sections of his court filings “Murder of the spirit” and “blood on their hands,” and he acknowledged he told his former classmate to “have another drink and go hang yourself, you cowardly little lush.” He emailed her boss to say she was a “bipolar drunkard leading a double life.”
The initial Capital Gazette article about Ramos in 2011 highlighted the dangers posed by online relationships, which then were still a relatively new phenomenon. Experts say that today, Ramos’ actions might have been taken more seriously.
On Monday, it was revealed that Ramos sent letters the day of the shooting – to the newspaper’s former attorney, a courthouse in Baltimore, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals and a law office – announcing his intentions to kill “every person present.”
Twitter postings were telling
On Twitter, Ramos regularly attacked the Capital Gazette, its journalists, editors and the judge who presided over the case. He centered many of his threats on the former reporter who wrote about his harassment conviction, Eric Thomas Hartley, and the retired publisher, Tom Marquardt. Ramos almost regularly posted comments on how he wanted members of the staff to kill themselves and his hopes that the newspaper would shut down. He repeatedly included the hashtag #CapDeathWatch.
In a post in September 2014, Ramos mentioned a shotgun, saying “My bullets are words.” Police say Ramos used a shotgun in the shooting.
In one haunting tweet in February 2015, Ramos’ account said, “I’ll enjoy seeing @capgaznews cease publication, but it would be nicer to see Hartley and Marquardt cease breathing.”
Ramos’ loathing of the press also extended beyond the Capital.
In 2014, he posted his thoughts on the beheadings of James Foley and Steven Sotloff and accused the press of propaganda. “Journalists making a living (literally) by participating in propaganda is nothing new,” he wrote. “Think about it.” Ramos also posted multiple times about the 2015 attack at the French magazine Charlie Hebdo, even including altered images of one magazine staff member with a bullet hole in his head and blood on his face.
In a court filing in 2014, attorney McCarthy alerted the court to Ramos’ Twitter postings and noted the threats had escalated over time.
“Of the thousands of people I’ve dealt with in court, this guy stuck,” he said. “I was extremely scared that he was going to do something to me and my family.”