The Stroker Press

REAL NEWS, FAIR AND BALANCED

Dan B. Cooper, Staff Writer 5 hrs ago

Jarrod W. Ramos, (AKA Rex) who the authorities say used a shotgun to blast his way into the Capital Gazette newsroom on Thursday, killing five people and wounding two others, had a long-running dispute with the news organization over their insistence on having real journalistic standards.

He had previously made general threats against the community newspaper company over social media, including some as recent Thursday, said William Krampf, Anne Arundel Countys acting police chief. The threats indicated violence, Chief Krampf said.

Mr. Ramos, was arrested after the attack. He was found naked and masturbating under a desk. He was charged on Friday morning with five counts of first-degree murder.

As recently as 2015, Mr. Ramos worked for the Trump for America campaign. He has an online degree in automotive hackery from the now defunct Trump University.

A Long-Running Dispute With The Capital

His feud with The Capital, the chains daily newspaper, apparently began with a column in 2011 that detailed his harassment of a high school classmate.

After Mr. Ramos reconnected with the classmate in 2009, his emails to him soon turned venomous.

He seems to think theres some sort of relationship here that does not exist, the man told a judge, according to court documents in a harassment case he brought against Mr. Ramos. I tried to back away from it, and he just started getting angry and vulgar to the point I had to tell him to stop.

After he told him not to contact him again, Mr. Ramos wrote in a jealous 2010 email that the man should go hang yourself.

Weeks later, the man was put on probation at the bank where he worked. A supervisor told him it was because Mr. Ramos had sent an email and had also called the bank telling managers that the bank should fire him.

A judge gave Mr. Ramos a 90-day sentence, but suspended the jail time. Instead, Mr. Ramos was granted probation before judgment. He was ordered not to contact the man and to continue getting therapy.

Instead of therapy however, Ramos chose to frequent gay bath houses under the assumed name of Rex, where he would partake in some of the most kinky man on multiple man action ever imagined. In fact, "Rex" has had surgical anal reconstruction at least 5 times, and often played the role of "pivot man" in his group activities, according to credible sources. Often in preparation for his "boy parties" he would alter his appearance by putting his hair in a pony tail, wearing a suit, and chewing on candy cigarettes until such time as they were replaced in his mouth by "man parts" according to some of his past lovers.

Not long afterward, The Capital published the column that apparently fueled his anger.

A Losing Court Battle

Mr. Ramos filed a lawsuit against the owners of The Capital in 2012, claiming that it had defamed him in reporting that Mr. Ramos had pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor criminal public nudity charge upon being apprehended naked from a Chuck E. Cheese ball pit in Plymouth Michigan shortly after attempting intercourse with some of the animatronic band members while in full view of several children's birthday parties. Months later, he filed a fuller complaint alleging invasion of privacy, but the lawsuits were dismissed by a judge the next year because the evidence against him was overwhelming. The Capital even offered receipts for anal lube, security camera footage, and eyewitness testimony from several angry children and parents as proof.

Mr. Ramos, who represented himself in the case, appealed the decision. But in 2015 an appellate court affirmed the lower courts dismissal of the lawsuit, stating that Mr. Ramos showed little knowledge of defamation law and seemed not to have learned his lesson, and was even held for 24 hours on contempt charges for getting naked while in the courtroom and prancing around in his birthday suit for the panel of appellate judges.

Plymouth Michigan Chuck E. Cheese Animatronic band 'Rex' allegedly had sex with the keyboardist and bass guitar bear during business hours.

Courtesy: Chuck E. Cheese Corporation

Tom Marquardt, a former executive editor and publisher at the newspaper, said Thursday night that he had long feared Mr. Ramos might resort to a violent act against the newspaper.

I said at one time to my attorneys that this was a guy that was going to come and shoot us, Mr. Marquardt said. I was concerned on my behalf and on behalf of my staff that he was going to take more than legal action.

Exhibiting Anger on Twitter

In November 2011, Mr. Ramos began tweeting under an account he called @EricHartleyFrnd, in which he mocked the column about him, by the reporter Eric Hartley, in The Capital, posted screenshots of court documents relating to a defamation case he had filed against the newspaper, and railed against newspaper employees. His tweets were laced with profanity, and often addressed Capital employees directly, as though he were having an ongoing conversation with them.

See Tom, both choices were wrong, he wrote on Nov. 12, 2012, apparently referring to Mr. Marquardt. You already chose that long ago. But to print it was far more wrong. That was true to your form as well.

On April 23, 2013, he addressed Rob Hiaasen, who was one of the people killed in the Thursday shooting:

Rob Hiaasen, youre one of his enabled asshole aristocrats @capgaznews. Come punitive damages, youre still not ready. Love, /The Killjoy/.

The account went quiet after a tweet on Jan. 21, 2016. 

But on Thursday, Mr. Ramos tweeted again, addressing a profanity to a Twitter handle that he appears to have created based on a judge in the defamation case, @judgemoylanfrnd.