Suspect wrote he aimed to kill everyone in newsroom

BALTIMORE — A man charged with slaying five people at a Maryland newspaper sent three letters on the day of the attack, police said, including one that said he was on his way to the Capital Gazette newsroom with the aim “of killing every person present.”

Sgt. Jacklyn Davis, a spokeswoman for Anne Arundel County police, said the letters were received Monday. They were mailed to an attorney for The Capital newspaper, a retired judge of the Maryland Court of Special Appeals and a Baltimore judge.

The letter Ramos sent to the Annapolis newspaper’s Baltimore-based lawyer was written to resemble a legal motion for reconsideration of his unsuccessful 2012 defamation lawsuit against the paper, a columnist and then-publisher Tom Marquardt.

Marquardt shared a copy of the letter with The Associated Press.

“If this is how the Maryland Judiciary operates, the law now means nothing,” Ramos wrote. He quoted a description of the purpose of a defamation suit, saying it was intended for a defamed person to “resort to the courts for relief instead of wreaking his own vengeance.”

“‘That’ is how your judiciary operates, you were too cowardly to confront those lies, and this is your receipt,” Ramos wrote.

He signed it under the chilling statement: “I told you so.” Below that, he wrote that he was going to the newspaper’s office “with the objective of killing every person present.”

In a letter attached to what appeared to be the faux court filing, he also directly addressed retired special appeals court Judge Charles Moylan, who decided against Ramos in his defamation case. Ramos sued the paper after pleading guilty to harassing a high school classmate.

“Welcome, Mr. Moylan, to your unexpected legacy: YOU should have died,” he wrote. He signed it: “Friends forever, Jarrod W. Ramos.”

Douglas Colbert, a University

of Maryland law professor, described the letters as “very powerful” evidence of intent that the state will make full use of at trial. Colbert said as long as it’s established in court that Ramos authored the letters, they will be used to show his “planning and deliberate actions” on the day of the attack.

The apparent admissions by the defendant will weaken a defense lawyer’s strategy of suggesting that he was “suffering from a mental disease or defect” that would impair his ability to understand the consequences of his actions, Colbert said.

Ramos, 38, has a well-documented history of harassing the paper’s journalists. The defamation suit was thrown out as groundless, and he often railed against current and former Capital staff in profanity-laced tweets. Police found him hiding under a desk after Thursday’s attack and jailed him on five counts of first-degree murder.

CHIP SOMODEVILLA / GETTY IMAGES Flowers and hand-written notes are placed at a makeshift memorial outside the Annapolis Capitol Gazette offices for the five employees killed by a gunman last week in Annapolis, Maryland.