Anatomy of Murder - Truth Under Fire (The Capital Gazette Murders)

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

A mass murder strikes at the heart of a community when the employees of its local paper are the targets. The preplanning and reasoning propelling the horrific attack is mind-boggling.View source material and photos for this episode at: anatomyofmurder.com/truth-under-fireCan’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Attention all units, tension all units. The request of Annark County to have an ongoing active shooter at the Capitol Gazette. Anything I have right now is a white male with a shotgun. Several subjects have been shot inside. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anasiga Nikolaazi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of investigation discoveries true conviction. And this is Anatomy of murder.

Week in and week out, we present stories about the victims of homicide and the investigators and prosecutors that try to unravel the motive. behind their murders. But no matter how many stories we tell or how many cases we examine, it still seems impossible to ever fully understand the reasons why one person decides to take another person's life.

Money, jealousy, revenge, the motives, no matter how real to the killer, are never enough to rationalize the violence. That proves especially true in the cases where there are multiple innocent victims. instances of mass murder, whether we are talking about killings by gangs, terrorists, or just one individual are fortunately still relatively rare in the United States and make up just a small percentage of the total number of murders per year. But that percentage is going up, reflecting both modern weapon capabilities and the continued presence of people prepared to commit violence. In today's episode, we are going to discuss.

us a topic that we haven't touched on too much on AOM. And that is the case of a public mass shooting that claimed the lives of multiple victims. Tragically, it is a topic that has affected far too many lives in this country. So we just wanted to give a warning that today's episode could be especially difficult to anyone who has known a victim or is a survivor of a mass shooting. And Toronto County has a little bit of everything. There's suburbs. There's towns. There's rural. We have the fourth largest population in Maryland. So it's a very interesting place to live, and I've lived here for more than 30 years at this point. With us today is Anne Colt Lytis, the elected state's attorney for Anne Orundel County, Maryland,

an area outside Washington, D.C. that includes Annapolis, the state's capital. Anne holds the distinction that I think is important to mention that she is the first and only woman elected state attorney for Anna Rundle. But looking back a bit further, Anne grew up in Baltimore, and like so many career prosecutors, she knew her calling from a very early age. I actually decided when I was in high school that I wanted to be a lawyer. It came from a middle class family. My mother was a single parent, worked two jobs to support us. You know, I'd gone on field trips once to a federal courthouse and walked in the courtroom and watched a case, and I thought, I could do this. By 2018, Anne was a veteran member of law enforcement.

as the Division Chief of the Special Victims Unit in Baltimore City's State Attorney's Office. I was a leader there of both the District Court Division and the Circuit Court Division, maybe about 20 attorneys. I tried murders there, child homicides, sexual assault cases. And like so many Maryland locals, Anne often started her day by reading the hometown newspaper, The Capital Gazette. So the Capital Gazette has been in existence for a few hundred years. It covers sports, local sports, school activities, local politics. It was very involved for many, many years, really in the nitty-gritty of kind of the local scene of Annarional County in Annapolis. And one of the reasons the Gazette was so successful and so beloved is that the reporters that ran it were locals themselves who were deeply embedded and invested in the community that they covered.

Most of the staff had also been reporting to their small newsroom for years, even decades. And with its modest circulation and hyperlocal focus, it was safe to say that they weren't in it for the prestige, the prizes, or the money. They were doing it out of a love of their craft and a strong sense of civic duty. With the rise of the Internet and social media, it's no secret that even in 2018, traditional newspapers were a little bit of a dying breed. But nevertheless, the staff of the Gazette had reported for work on Thursday, June 28th, like they always did. Stories needed to be filed, and deadlines had to be met. But tragically, the reporters, editors, and support staff inside the newspaper's office on Bestgate Road were about to find themselves not covering the news, but at the center of it. Just after 2 p.m. security cameras in the parking lot recorded a lot.

a man exiting a blue Kia and approaching the building carrying a black duffel bag and what looked like a long package underneath his arm. He entered the building through a side door which led to a hallway behind the Capitol Gazette's offices. He used a tactical nylon strap to secure the door behind him. Then he approached the front door of the Gazette newsroom, revealing that the package under his arm was not a delivery, but a gun. He brought a shotgun. He brought a large bag of ammunition. He brought these things called barracudas, two heavy ones, which are metallic and slide under a door.

They're meant to keep an intruder from coming into a door. And he used them to deploy them to keep people from exiting the door. At 2.33 p.m., video surveillance would show him checking the flashlight mounted on his 12-gauge pump-action shotgun. and its dual laser sites were activated. The shooter came out from the stairwell. Surveillance video captured him tugging at the door and being unable to open it because it was locked, then blasted through.

The glass door shattered with the shotgun's first blast. He came in and immediately turned his gun to the right where Rebecca Smith, the receptionist, was seated. 34-year-old Rebecca Smith was a sales assistant who had been only on the job for a few weeks. A survivor of the attack would later tell police that she heard Rebecca say no, no, no, before the shooter racked his weapon

and discharged two rounds in her direction. She was struck in the chest, arm, back, and severely wounded. There was obvious fear and panic among the ten other staff members that were present and were trying to process what was happening. Many began to run. Others hit under their desks. 65-year-old Wendy Winters,

a longtime community beat reporter, decided to confront the shooter. The shooter continued down the aisle and witnesses said that Wendy Winters stood up, came from three rows behind in her cubicle with her trash can and her recycling can, bang them together and said, You stop that, you stop that, and came at the shooter and then was shot and fell right there.

Wendy's actions to draw the shooter's attention gave some of her colleagues a chance to take refuge between filing cabinets and underneath desks. But the shooter was showing no sign of leaving. His next victim was 59-year-old Rob Hyacson, an assistant editor and weekend columnist. Rob was shot once in the chest. He died instantly on a day that he should have been celebrating his wife's birthday. By then, people had jumped up and tried to run out the back door. It was secured with the barracuda, and they could not get out. So they began to hide.

Security footage inside the office captured the green laser sights from the shooter's gun as he swept the office, and the shooter continued to fire away. It doesn't say anything, not a word, just comes and just shoots everybody in his path. 56-year-old sports editor John McNamara had managed to get to the back of the office, but with the doors barricaded, there was no escape. John McNamara was able to get to the back and try to hide, but the shooter had gotten down to that back part of the office and had shot John right before John was able to get under a desk.

As the shooter methodically made his way further into the office, photographer Paul Gillespie saw his chance and made a run for the shattered front door. The shooter noticed him and shot at him hitting a wall and photographs frame pictures that just missed Mr. Gillespie's head by millimeters. Paul was able to escape. Sadly, 61-year-old Gerald Fishman was not so lucky. The soft-spoken arts columnist had been hiding under his desk. Right below the handmade sign, his colleagues had hung that joked.

You are now on Gerald Time, when the shooter approached. So he actually delivered those words. It's Gerald Time before shooting the victim at point-blank range in his stomach. He was short in stature. He was older. He liked opera. He was very, you know, refined kind of guy. wife was a well-known opera singer. So he was this academic kind of guy. He was an editor,

very quiet, very kind. And, you know, to die in this manner is just horrific. The shooter had taken the lives of five people in just a span of a few minutes. And many of their colleagues were still trapped in the office with nowhere to run. Their fates in the hand of an armed a stranger. But incredibly, they weren't without hope. From his hiding place under his desk, crime reporter Philip Davis texted his contact in the Annapolis City Police Department. His message read, help, shooting at office. He was texting a police officer who he knew in Annapolis Police Department saying that there was a mass shooting going on, please help. The officer's like, is this for real? Yes. At the same time, a worker in the insurance office next

store was also on the phone with 9-1-1. From his desk, he had witnessed the shooter entered the Gazette office, and he had a description of the killer. We're at 888, a skate road. There's a man shooting the Capitol Gazette office across from my office. We're dealing with a gun right now. Inside the building, it is the office of the Capitol Gazette newspaper, black shirt, green pants. He had long hair, glasses. He's got a shotgun. The description was a white man. ponytail, how tall he was, wearing military-style pants, boots, dark clothing. He was wearing shooter's glasses to protect his eyes.

He was wearing hearing protection. Other calls from people that had escaped the building also began to make their way to police. I don't know what it is, but it's terrifying, and we just often people running out of the building. Attention all units, attention all units. The request of Annark County had an ongoing active shooter at the Capitol Gazette. 888 Bestgate Drive, requesting some assistance. 888 Bestgate Drive. The only thing I have right now is a white male with a shotgun.

Several subjects have been shot inside. But the strangest call of all came from a desk in the Gazette's office. A call from the shooter himself. You know, this is your shooter. I'm unarmed to indicate that he was no longer a threat. The shooting is over. I'm unarmed. This is your shooter, but were they words of surrender or a trap meant to lure law enforcement into the line of fire?

He then put his gun down, hidden under Paul Gillespie's desk, and waited until police arrived. He had taken off his glasses. He had taken out his hearing protection. He had made sure that he didn't have any weapons on him at all when the police arrived. The goal was to survive this mass shooting and live to tell an investigation. It. On June 28, 2018, an unknown man armed with a tactical shotgun, opened fire inside the offices of the Capitol Gazette, a small local newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland. It was every community's worst nightmare, a public shooting with multiple victims and even more still in danger. They do have an active shooter. They'll have them yet. There's one down.

I was actually at a doctor's appointment. As I was coming out of the doctor's office, I heard the squad cars going by. As a mom, I'm a mom of three kids. I immediately, you know, made sure where is everybody? Within minutes of receiving multiple 911 calls from witnesses in nearby offices, as well as a reporter's text from inside. the Gazette newsroom, police were dispatched to the scene. It's very fortunate, and I think it saved lives, that there were some officers who were right at the mall. They were just, you know, a minute, less than a minute away at that mall, across the street.

And a lot of the Annapolis police officers had just had mass shooter response training. Two Anarundle County police officers and two deputy sheriffs approached the Capitol Gazette's front door. There was blood all over the glass. the doors were shattered, you could smell smoke. And as is the new protocol, there's no more, you know, waiting for the shooting to stop. There's no more waiting to respond.

They go in to try and stop, you know, an active shooter. As the officers entered the scene, they encountered their first victim, Rebecca Smith, who had suffered significant injury from two shotgun blasts. They immediately pulled her to safety. Rebecca whispered to one of the officers that she didn't want to die. While Rebecca was rushed to a nearby trauma center, the officers pressed into the Capitol Gazette's office

to confront the shooter. And so they immediately, after getting Rebecca Smith out, went and cleared the back. As officers hurried to evacuate survivors out the front door, they instructed them to avoid looking at the bodies of their murdered colleagues. But as they rescued people

From their hiding places, what officers did not encounter was the shooter himself. Was he still there lying in wait? Or was he trying to pretend he was one of the victims? They just didn't know. You could hear on the body-worn camera this description of a white male long hair and a ponytail and what he was wearing. And a rookie officer, Ashley, walked over and said, you know, what's the description again? And he couldn't tell if it was a victim or if it was the shooter. and he kind of pushed his foot with his foot

and immediately realized who it was and told him to come out, to put his hands behind his back and cuffed him. The shooter surrendered without resistance, telling the police officers, quote, I'm your shooter. In total, it had been less than 20 minutes from the beginning of the shooting until his capture.

The shooter had a stopwatch on. He had studied books. We later learned to find out how long it It took for first responders to come, and he set his watch to five minutes, and it would later show zero-zero on his wrist watch. So that was his plan to do all of this within five minutes. It was the first clue that the shooter had not entered the building in a blind rage. This attack had been carefully planned and executed. If he didn't have that five-minute window that he had assigned to himself on his watch, he could have killed every single person in there.

But he stopped. And I believe that's because he made a calculated decision that he was going to kill as many people as he could, and then he was going to lay down his gun and surrender so that he wouldn't die. Police recovered the black bag the shooter had been carrying. Inside, they found smoke bombs, flashbang devices, and even grenades. They also recovered an ammo belt with 43 unspent shotgun shells.

He had enough ammunition for three or four different events versus the one that he committed. As the smoke cleared, the grim reality of this devastating crime became apparent. It was the deadliest workplace shooting in Maryland history. So four people were dead on the police arrival. Rebecca Smith, the receptionist, despite the fact that she had wounds that were rapidly fatal seconds to minutes. She survived for some period of time up to an hour, but she died in the operating room. Five people, just going about their workday, when their lives taken in one of the most violent and terrifying ways imaginable. Among them, 65-year-old Wendy Winters, a community beat reporter who had worked at the Capital Gazette for most of her career

and had risked her life to save her fellow staff members when she charged the shooter with that trash can. Wendy Winters was a mother of four children. Many of them went into the military Naval Academy. She was like six foot plus tall, red hair, beloved in the community. 61-year-old Gerald Fishman. 59-year-old Rob Hyacin. 56-year-old John McNamara. And 34-year-old Rebecca Smith all had friends and families that love them

and unique stories that left an indelible mark on their community. Rebecca Smith was newly engaged. Gerald Fishman, I told you, was this quiet, introspective guy who loved opera and books. And John McNamara was like a beloved sports coverage writer, you know, left behind a wife who has basically taken up the mantle for gun control. Following their deaths, public candlelit vigils attracted hundreds of mourners from around the state and from all walks of life. You know, the Capitol, again, was a newspaper since 1884 and was a part of everyone's life. It was online. It was a paper copy. So it was really a part of the community. So it impacted people

and made people come out to gather and mourn together. So from a law enforcement perspective, it's easy to understand how these mass shootings can be defined by numbers. How quickly the focus shifts to facts, timelines, and the scale of the tragedy. But for those who have worked these scenes up close, it's never about the numbers. It's about the people. And, you know, when you read about these cases and the headlines or on TV, you always remember that term mass shooting. But, you know, that term, those words, it equates to people who have been injured or, like, here, murdered. And it's so important to say their names and remember their lives.

I agree, Anisega. And when the shooting stopped here in this small newsroom, even with the suspect in custody, so much work had to be done as unraveling what the full story was behind the murders, which would prove to be a unique challenge. After surrendering to police, the suspect was taken into custody. But even after admitting, I'm your shooter, he still refused to identify himself. Didn't give his name, and when he was taking to the criminal investigation division,

he wouldn't give his name for a long time. He wanted the police to figure out who he was. He acted miffed that nobody knew who he was. So early on, it was clear that investigators were dealing with a certain kind of suspect, one who perhaps might have been delusional or someone that might actually have complicated motives that were yet to be uncovered. But either way, the confessed killer seemed to determine to play out his dark fantasy and make police figure it out for themselves.

And so that's exactly what they set out to do. Crime scene texts descended on the scene to secure every bit of evidence they could, including spent shotgun shells, items of the suspect's clothing that he had abandoned, and security footage from inside and outside the building. So the car he left in the parking lot turned out to be a rental, and in the glove box they found the signed rental agreement, a wallet containing his driver's license, and of all things, a lifetime membership card to the U.S. Chess Federation, all identified the suspect as 38-year-old Jared Ramos.

CCTV footage confirmed what surviving witnesses had already described to police. Most importantly, that the man police had taken into custody was the killer. So with a name and a confession, it was clear that this case was no who done it. But for investigators and the families of the victims, there was still a mystery surrounding who Jarrett Ramos was and why he had targeted the offices of the Capitol Gazette. But after a look into Ramos's background, a dark and really warped story began to unfold because it turned out that Ramos was no stranger to Gazette staff or even to Maryland law enforcement. And then as I was sitting at home listening to the news and finding out who it was,

that's when it, you know, kind of the shock and the dread started coming over me because this is somebody I knew. In fact, Ramos had made no secret about his ongoing feud with the Capitol Gazette. His name had appeared on multiple complaints, defamation suits, and legal challenges, not to mention a barrage of angry tweets over the years. And they all stemmed from a single article that had appeared in the Gazette nearly a decade before the shooting. And like so many twisted stories, this one started on social media and originally had nothing to do with the newspaper at all. The shooter had reached out to a woman he had gone to high school with, kind of started up this conversation and private messaging. And the shooter kind of took this kind of casual

interaction with this person as if it was a real friendship. According to the target of his affections, who barely even remembered Ramos from school, his messages became more frequent and more suggestive until they finally entered the realm of harassment. And when the person was kind of like, whoa, you know, let me pull back a little bit from this kind of strange, you know, interaction. When she pulled away from him, he called up her work and sent like pictures of her Facebook post, basically to punish her for, you know, cutting him off this friendship off. Ramos had apparently created a fantasy surrounding this woman.

But the perceived slight of her rejection was very real. He had never had a girlfriend, he'd never had any kind of relationship, and he kind of took it too far, and eventually she brought criminal harassment charges against him. Accusations that Ramos did not even deny. In 2011, he pled guilty to criminal harassment charges and agreed to probation. But the case was part of the public record, and just the kind of story that is covered by a local hometown newspaper like the Capitol Gazette. Somebody from the Capital Gazette had written an article about it, and it was kind of one of those cautionary tales about, you know, the danger of connecting with somebody on the internet about like, you know, careful who you make friends with, you know, you could turn out to be your stalker. The story appeared in the newspaper on July 31st, 2011. It was entitled, Jared wants to be your friend. And he discovered the article written about his case and he was annoyed by the things that were attributed to him

as things that he had said, which he said he didn't say. He wanted a retraction. He would write in the comments, you know, this isn't true. It was not the first time someone had found fault in an unflattering portrait of them printed in the newspaper. But Ramos was particularly indignant. Angry letters to the editor. followed, Ramos complained that the Capitol Gazette had removed his comments from the online section of the paper and refused to publish his response to the article.

He demanded a few hundred dollars or a few thousand dollars for, you know, a payment and said, I'm going to sue you and I want a retraction. And he really felt like he wasn't heard. Like something was said about him that he insisted wasn't true. And he would later turn that into, you know, I'm being defamed because I don't, I didn't say what this woman says I said. which makes me look crazy. In 2012, Ramos ended up suing the Capitol Gazette for defamation, a case that was dismissed by the judge because Ramos had failed to produce any evidence that the information in the article was inaccurate. But Ramos was not satisfied.

Then he sued the lawyer involved in it, the lawyers at the Capitol Gazette, he sued the woman. I mean, it went on for a couple years. Much like in his harassment of the woman from Facebook, the rejection only fed Ramos's sense of injustice and fueled a barrage of increasingly threatening letters and posts on social media, which targeted not only the writer of the article, but the editors of the paper and other staffers.

And it's escalated in words, no threats, but he did very strange things that, you know, we're disturbing, like he used disturbing anime, and then he started this Twitter account, and he'd put weird symbols, and it made people feel frightened. And I think that he was not going to stop until he had someone admit that they shouldn't have written it or it wasn't accurate. Now on the surface, Ramos's reaction was not that different from the kind of general anger that is often directed at the press.

We see it every day online or in the comment sections of any article. You have to have a pretty thick skin to be a reporter these days. But at the same time, the press needs to be able to do their civic duty, which is to report on a they believe to be newsworthy and of value to the community, whether we agree with it or not, without the threat of reprisal. That is the core of our constitutional right of freedom of the press. Not just that you're allowed to report the news, but that you shouldn't be in danger of being sued, harassed, or threatened for doing so. And Ramos wasn't just targeting the press with his abuse either.

He got angry at us and started tweeting about us. He tweeted about me. He tweeted about the prosecutor. He tweeted about the Capitol Gazette. He was one of these people who hung around online and he criticized people online on Twitter. You know, he had a Twitter account and he'd put like weird pictures on it. And he was basically just kind of dissing everybody that ever had crossed him. So if I were the one being targeted like this, a few things would immediately set off alarms or big red flags for me.

First, proximity. This wasn't some faceless voice hiding behind a screen hundreds of miles away. This guy was local, close enough to act. if he wanted to. Then there's the detail in what he knew, names, office layouts, and even pieces of a person's personal routine. And Anasiga, that tells me he's either been watching or digging. I think you're absolutely right. You know, there's also this other component, which is that this guy's anger seems very personally. He's just not angry about someone's perspective. It's not just political or part of like this online, you know, joust, if you will, with every tweet or comment

he was writing, this guy is just seeming to seethe with the need for revenge. And, you know, some of the people that were very interested in, you know, maybe, like, should we charge this guy? Should we file criminal harassment charges? And a police detective met with them and they talked about it. The editor of the newspaper consulted with their attorneys and discussed filing a restraining order against Ramos and even recalled telling them that this is a guy who's going to come back one day and shoot us. It was ultimately decided by the people at the Capitol Gazette, who are the leaders or supervisors, that maybe it was better to just let it go.

Here was a guy that had said things that were weird and vaguely menacing, but they were not necessarily criminally chargeable. Leadership at the newspaper, as well as the state attorney's office, decided that the best way to deal with someone craving that kind of attention was to ignore him. Which is not to say that they were oblivious for the potential for an escalation. We told the sheriff's office, you know, they were notified that, hey, if this guy comes in the courthouse, you know, keep an eye out for him.

But there was never any idea that he was going to do something like this. The truth was that Ramos was a ticking time bomb. And then that bomb, he bought a gun. So this is a shotgun that. that he bought at a local store. He ordered, actually, he ordered it, and then he picked it up at the local store. You know, it's not regulated. He could buy the ammunition.

He could buy the gun. The state of Maryland has some of the strictest gun laws in the United States, including a ban on certain assault rifles, a prohibition on magazines of more than 10 rounds, and restrictions on gun sales to individuals with a criminal history or mental health issues. But many of those restrictions do not apply to shotguns and rifles, which don't require a permit and can be easily purchased at many sporting goods stores. But Ramos was not interested in hunting birds or deer.

He was looking for a weapon with extreme stopping power and tactical precision. It was a Mossburg shotgun, and he modified it. And he was not a gun person, but he put all these kind of bells and whistles on it. He had a laser on it, and he had like this kind of grenade-style grip on it. His campaign to harass the staff of the Capitol Gazette into printing a retraction of an unflattering article had proved futile. So he decided to take more drastic and devastating measures. He began stalking staffers at the paper, researching their routines and even the layout of their offices. He knew who would be, you know, working at the office, who, you know, was there every day because they would put these pictures on Facebook.

and they would name their employees. He knew where the conference room was. He knew the members of the Citizens Editorial Board. He had pictures of this one woman that he got from her Facebook page. And he labeled this lady, you know, and her kids, Orphan 1, Orphan 2, Orphan 3, because he intended to kill her. He was a man who wanted revenge, but not just against the writer he thought to famed him. He wanted revenge against the whole paper. His logic behind the plot was as twisted as his mind.

This idea that, oh, everybody will know who I am and this retribution will be divine. His logic was the Capitol Gazette will, you know, go under because nobody did anything to protect the families and warn them about me. I'm just going to sidestep into psychology for a minute here. Everybody will know who I am is exactly the type of sentiment so often discussed when talking about the individuals committing these type of crimes. In the other podcast I do, law and order criminal justice system, we looked at terrorism this season and some of these lone wolf cases, mass crimes committed by one person. And so I've spoken to experts in the field. One of them is Ari Kruglansky, who's a highly regarded social psychologist and professor at none other than the University of Maryland. He focuses on psychology of terrorism.

And yeah, what happened at the Capitol Gazette is a type of terrorism. And he says that for many perpetrators, it comes down to what they call a search or quest for significance. Like here, when someone thinks they were wronged and they need revenge, so in this case, they go to mass murder. In their brain, it makes them feel that somehow they will now be noticed and remembered. It's warped, but it's what research keeps showing. And again, without information, we can't ever possibly try to eradicate this blight. And I can't help be reminded of that as we learned more about this case. But back what happened at the paper, prosecutors had collected plenty of evidence to put Ramos at the scene with a murder weapon

in his hand. None was more frightening than the security footage that actually captured some of the shooting spray. And the most chilling thing that you see is the shooter walking up to the door. He has the laser on on his gun. He has his shooter's glasses on. He has the shotgun in his hand. And he tries the door several times. And when he is unable to open it because it's locked, blasts through. And you see him take those few steps in, turn and shoot. Towards the desk that anybody watching the video knows that Rebecca Smith had just been seen at and was sitting at. Whatever logic he used to convince himself to kill, it was clear from the video that Ramos attacked with no hesitation, no mercy, and no remorse. You can literally see the man cold-blooded expression on his face, focused.

One purpose is to shoot and find as many people as he did. Ramos even outlined the details of his plan in three letters mailed on the day of the murders. He mailed what looked like a motion to the appellate court here in Maryland. He mailed a letter to the judge who had written the appellate opinion that kind of laid out that he had no defamation case. He sent out a card to the reporter who had written the article about him in California. In the letter to the judge, he wrote, quote, welcome to your unexpected legacy. You should have died, end quote. I further certify that I did proceed to the office of the respondent, Capital Gazette communications, with the objective of killing every person

present. And that is so twisted. I mean, this is incredibly disturbing and haunting stuff. Mass shootings have become an all-too-familiar tragedy in this country. But not often has there been such explicit description of the killer's intention. And the other thing that he did, he wrote a note and stuffed it into a storage compartment of the gun that said there are very few problems in the world that cannot be solved by clear and concise communication. The remaining problems can be solved with the proper placement and application of high explosives. And I googled that phrase and found out it was actually a book on police response times for mass shootings. Another disturbing

clue that Ramos had done his research and meticulously planned an attack to both maximize damage and taunt law enforcement with the brazeness of his plan. Anne was elected as the new state's attorney after the attack. Ramos had been charged with five counts of first-degree murder and multiple counts of attempted murder. Once elected, she took on the case herself and got ready for trial. It was a case that consisted of a large amount of physical evidence and video surveillance footage that corroborated Ramos's own confession. There were fingerprints and DNA left on the murder weapon,

positive ballistic tests, and of course the paper trail of his threats, documenting his motive and intent. But for the new state attorney, this trial wasn't going to be so much about just getting a conviction, but about achieving the maximum just punishment for the perpetrator of this heinous mass murder. And for that, she would rely on more than just physical evidence. The physical things that were recovered, they were important, but to me, the most important things were the witness testimony and the video surveillance and the body-worn camera. That was different for me versus, you know, what's recovered behind the scene.

You know, this wasn't so much a fingerprint or a DNA or a ballistics case. You know, you could try this whole case without any of that. The look on Ramos's face as he methodically made his way through the office. the merciless way he targeted his victims, and even the way he seemed to boast about his accomplishment to police. These were the things that completed the full story of this killer and this crime.

I've done a lot of big cases, nothing like this. It was kind of right up my alley. I can't imagine not being involved in it or sitting back and watching other people try it. Now it was clear from the beginning that the big issue in this trial was not necessarily his gift. but his state of mind while he committed these acts of murder.

Because even though it was clear that he was the shooter, he could absolutely still argue that he was not mentally responsible to be held criminally liable for this crime. So I knew that this idea, and people had said it to me, you know, somebody must be crazy to have killed five people. And said this idea, he must be crazy. He must be like the average citizen's belief. You must be crazy, therefore.

Now, this guy was strange. He was unusual. He had excluded people from his life if they made him mad. You know, I had to be very careful not to, like, consider some label for him. Given just how shocking and unusual this kind of mass shooting is, Anne knew she might have an uphill battle proving that he was not insane or somehow detached from reality. Because what it really comes down to legally is did he know right from wrong?

And Anne knew that the proof she needed to demonstrate. that he did and therefore to be held criminally responsible was in the evidence of his meticulous and deliberate planning and the way he carried out the crime. So I knew coming into this, the police did an excellent job investigating the case and getting background information. And I took what they did and kind of ran with it and expanded on it. So, you know, they got his credit card receipts and his banking. And so they could help piece together what he was doing over the last year as far as planning and plotting and what he was doing. But then I kind of went a deeper dive, right?

So they got his credit card and figured out where he lived. And so I got his rental record to prove that he's a normal person. The paper trail painted a picture of a normal functioning citizen, albeit one with some very dark motives. The burden is on the defense to prove that at the time, he either couldn't understand what he was doing was a crime or conform his conduct, literally like you're out of control, your mental illness means you cannot control yourself. And I knew that was coming. So I was going to, like, how is this guy normal? Like, he goes to the grocery store like all of us. He pays his bills on time. He had decent credit. And while this might not sound like the proof you'd view as blockbuster, it does go a long way. I mean, this was a guy who had an

animal, a cat, that, a pet that he would regularly take to the vet, meaning care for. His vet said that he was a model pet owner. Again, just to be able to counter, if they're going to say, oh, he's clearly, you know, insane, we're like, no, no, this is the guy who took his cat for regularly scheduled visits and went over and above, right? This is the guy who took excellent care of his car and paid his bills on time.

So the ordinary things to kind of defeat this idea, oh, he's crazy, he's out of control. And I would say one of the most convincing pieces of evidence that he was not insane was the fact that he actually demonstrated some self-preservation instincts on the day of the shooting. He did not take his own life or attempt to confront police. He surrendered to police because confessing and being able to take credit for his actions was all part of this twisted plan. Not only is he not insane, but he took steps to indicate otherwise.

This is about revenge. His goal always was to, commit the crime, kill as many people as I can, exact revenge, you know, I told you so, survive it and spend a long life in prison enjoying the fruits of his labor. And so to prove, you know, that revenge, not mental illness, is the motivating factor, was something that I was focused on from the very beginning. Pretrial motions stretched on for months, and the COVID pandemic caused further disruption and delay. But Anne used that time to continue to build her case, even sending experts in to study Ramos's behavior while he was being held in a detention center awaiting trial.

Dr. Sadoff said, I want to speak to every single person that's available, whoever it is, transport officers from the sheriff's department, detention center workers, the librarian at the detention center, you know, the correctional officers at the detention center. Anybody who has interacted with this person. This was a person who was polite and cooperative, please and thank you, who would submit to, you know, direction, who, you know, would go do research in the library. As expected, Ramos did end up pleading guilty to all the charges, but not criminally responsible by reason of insanity. So the jury now had the duty to determine at the time, was he criminally responsible or not criminally responsible.

And just so it's clear here, yes, he pled guilty, but under the law, it's only after guilt has been proven would a jury then turn to whether that person, the defendant, was or was not responsible by reason of insanity, and that is the legal definition in some jurisdictions. So it's a two-step process. Ramos pled guilty to step one, but now there would be that trial all about step two. And also as expected, it was the testimony of witnesses that proved to be the most critical element of the prosecution. When we first met with the victims, the surviving victims, they were reluctant, they were clearly traumatized. And as we got to trial, you know, you're never going to push

people, but they were all so strong and empowered. I didn't need to call any of those folks, but I did because by the time we got to trial, you know, on the eve of trial, the defendant pled guilty. But I called every single one of those witnesses because I wanted the jury to see them that these are real people, these are real victims. Now, we've already. touched on most of the evidence that was presented, but I do want to highlight one item that I think speaks volumes about Ramos's state of mind. Remember that membership card to the U.S. Chess Federation I spoke about earlier and that police found in his wallet? Well, police were able to track down a credit card receipt proving that he had purchased that membership just 36

hours before the murders. He had actually cut out a paper cut out of the lifetime membership with the number and he had stuffed it in his wallet. So when the police got his wallet, they turned into evidence. Later, when we went through his wallet, we actually found it. He had memorized that number. And after he was in jail, he wrote a letter to the chess membership group and said, here's my 12 number long membership. Can you please send my magazines to the jail? We used that chest membership to show he knew he was going to commit a crime. He knew he would go to jail. And he wanted something to do while he was in jail. Not only did Ramos know what he was doing with the murders was wrong.

He expected to go to prison and he wanted to prepare for a life behind bars. He wanted to be able to play chess. For Ramos, even his own murder trial was a game and just another stage to show his ego. His behavior in the courtroom, he didn't care what the judge was doing or his lawyers were doing or his experts. It was him versus me. He literally thought he was in. like a duel with me. In the end, the jury deliberated and returned their decision, finding Ramos guilty and

criminally responsible for all five counts of murder and multiple counts of assault and the use of a firearm in the commission of a felony or violent crime. After he was found criminally responsible by the jury, he immediately sends a letter to the judge saying, I just want to go to sentencing, I don't want an investigation, pre-sentence investigation. I don't want any of this stuff. I accept, you know, the full sentence. Let's get this over with. And we were like, no, no, no, you don't get to dictate how the sentencing goes. She made it clear to the judge, it was the right of the victim's family to make impact statements before sentencing, to speak on behalf of those who could not. So he was trying to still

dictate the terms of how things were going to go, try to be in control of it. It's like, no, you're going to sit here. We're going to do it our way in the proper way, and the victim's families are going to stand up and we're going to make a pitch for the sentence. Jared Ramos was sentenced to five life terms plus 345 years in prison. He had no reaction. He didn't care. He said to the forensic interviewer that he just wanted to, like, do this crime and then, like,

have a quiet life in prison and just sleep and have peace and in jail. This case has had a lasting legacy for both its impact on so much. many survivors and friends and families of the victims, as well as its impact on the greater community. Because this murder of five innocent people was also an attack on one of the community's most beloved institutions, their hometown newspaper. And in many ways, it was an attack on civil society itself. An attempt to make regular citizens not feel safe in their own workplace. But the people of Anarundle County swore they would never forget the victims, or the impact of that tragic day in 2018.

The city of Annapolis has a memorial to the Capitol Gazette and the survivors and the victims. There is a celebration every year since this memorial was built at a nearby restaurant, and the survivors are there, their family members, people make an effort, and they gather every year to talk about it so that people will remember it in the future. I think the resilience of the human experience is pretty amazing. the transformation of people who were very traumatized at the beginning

and their healing is pretty inspirational. The Capitol Gazette shooting was a harsh reminder that places that we think as safe, schools, clinics, newsrooms can become targets without warning. What worked that day was quick, coordinated action that stopped things from getting even worse. But the bigger lesson isn't about tactics. It's about prevention.

When someone makes a threat, online or targets others through harassment, that's not just noise. It's a warning sign. And it has to be treated that way. That means better communication between law enforcement, workplaces, and mental health professionals using the tools that already exist, like something called the extreme risk protection order or red flag law. It's basically a court order that lets a judge temporarily remove firearms from someone who's been identified as a danger to themselves or others. family members, police, even medical professionals, can petition for it. It's not about punishment.

It's about buying time before tragedy happens. Because in the end, prevention isn't about one group or one profession. It's about everyone doing their part to keep people safe and make sure more of us get to go home. What do you say about a case that took five lives and was as terrifying as this? Well, I'm sure if I sat down with any one of you, we could probably talk about it for hours, the fear factor, what it says about certain aspects of our society, the psychology of someone capable of this type of violence, and how in the world do we try to stop cases just like this? Those are all worthy conversations, but for this podcast,

like each episode that we do, we end on remembering the people, the lives that were lost. Gerald Fishman, Rob Hyacson, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith, and Wendy Winters. Each of them went to work that day to do their jobs at the Capitol Gazette. Yes, they will each be remembered in part because of what happened. But here at Anatomy of Murder, Scott and I, the entire AOM team, and this AOM community, we honor the memories of each of those people and send out support. for those left to navigate life without. Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder.

Anatomy of Murder is an Audio Chuck original. Produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. This episode was written and produced by Walker Lamond, researched by Kate Cooper, edited by Ali Sirwa, and Phil Jean Grande. I think Chuck would approve.