The man charged with killing five people at an Annapolis newspaper sent three letters announcing his murderous intentions to kill "every person present," police confirmed Monday.
Anne Arundel County police said the letters were sent Thursday — the day of the shootings — and signed by Jarrod W. Ramos, the shotgun-toting suspect alleged to have fired the fatal shots in a spite-inspired rage over the newspaper's prior coverage of his harassment case against a woman.
The Baltimore Sun,owned by the same company as the Capital, reported that one of the letters was sent to the newspaper's former attorney. Thomas Marquardt, the Capital’s former publisher, said the attorney turned the letter over to police, the Sunreported.
Sgt. Jacklyn Davis, a spokeswoman for Anne Arundel County police, confirmed that police have the letters in evidence. She says one was sent to the courthouse in Baltimore and a second was sent to the Maryland Court of Special Appeals. She says a third was sent to a law office.
Tom Marquardt, the onetime publisher of the Capital Gazette, told the Associated Press at slain journalist Rob Hiaasen’s memorial Monday that Ramos, 38, sent one letter to a company lawyer on the day of the attack saying he was on his way to the newspaper “to kill as many people” as he could.
The document received by The Capital’s former attorney was written to look like a court filing, but it was not clear Monday whether it was actually filed, the Sun reported. It purported to be a “Motion for Reconsideration” by Maryland’s top court, which in 2016 refused to hear a defamation case Ramos had filed against the Capital.
“You were too cowardly to confront those lies, and this is your receipt,” the document says, according to the Sun. “I told you so.”
“I further certify I then did proceed to the office of respondent Capital-Gazette Communications … with the objective of killing every person present,” the document says, which was provided to the Sun by Marquardt.
A letter attached to the filing is addressed to retired Judge Charles Moylan Jr. Moylan, who previously wrote a scathing opinion against Ramos as part of the defamation case.
“Welcome, Mr. Moylan, to your unexpected legacy: YOU should have died,” the letter says, according to the Sun. “Friends forever, Jarrod W. Ramos.”
Court papers show that Ramos had filed a defamation suit against the newspaper in 2012. But a judge threw out the lawsuit and said Ramos "fails to come close to alleging a case of defamation." A Maryland appeals court further concluded that everything printed in the July 31, 2011 newspaper story about Ramos appeared to be true.
According to the court case, Ramos had pleaded guilty on July 26, 2011 in Anne Arundel County on a charge of criminal harassment and got a 90-day suspended jail sentence. Five days later, the Capital ran a story by staff writer Eric Thomas Hartley under the headline "Jarrod wants to be your friend."
The story described a harrowing situation of a woman who was continually harassed by Ramos after he contacted her on Facebook.
"If you're on Facebook, you've probably gotten a friend request or message from an old high school classmate you didn't quite remember," Hartley wrote in the story. "For one woman, that experience turned into a yearlong nightmare."
