Authorities are searching a muddy pond near Nogales, Ariz., hoping to find two guns used in the Moon Smoke Shop and firefighter's union hall killings, a police source confirmed last night.
Meanwhile, a man jailed in Phoenix on a separate murder charge refused to talk to detectives yesterday about the six Tucson slayings.
Divers from the Pima County Sheriff's Department's Search and Rescue Team have been searching the pond near Arizona 83 since Monday.
A witness led detectives to the pond last Thursday. The witness said the guns used in the slayings - a 9mm handgun and a .380-caliber weapon - were dumped there after the June 13 killings at the Tucson Firefighters Association Union Hall, 2264 E. Benson Highway.
Police were expected to continue their search today.
Robert G. Jones, 27, of Phoenix, refused to be questioned by Tucson detectives yesterday at the Maricopa County Jail, said Sgt. Eugene Mejia, a Tucson police spokesman.
Mejia said Jones' attorney told his client not to talk to police after a search warrant request reported in the media linked him to the investigation that already has implicated brothers Scott D. Nordstrom and David M. Nordstrom in the killings.
The brothers are each being held on $2 million bail at the Pima County Jail on murder and robbery charges.
Scott Nordstrom, 29, is charged with six counts of first-degree murder in the union hall and smoke shop killings. David Nordstrom, 27, is charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the smoke shop killings.
Jones is being held in Phoenix without bond on 33 counts stemming from the murder of a 58-year-old Phoenix man. Jones and another man were arrested Aug. 24 after a high-speed, 70-mile chase through Phoenix, Tempe and Paradise Valley.
Jones refused to talk to a reporter from his jail cell. Police say he was living and working with David Nordstrom at the time of the murders.
Detectives last week seized Jones' older-model white pickup truck, similar to the one witnesses saw leaving the Moon Smoke Shop after two people were killed there May 30.
Jones was born in Tyler, Texas, and as a teen-ager wound up living with relatives in Phoenix after an abusive home life, according to statements he made in Maricopa County Superior Court records.
Although he had worked as a salesman, repossessor and a cook at a McDonald's restaurant, most recently he said he was living on the streets, records show.
In March 1988, he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to time served for a 1988 car theft case. Within the month, he was arrested again after police spotted him with a stolen vehicle.
He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to four years in prison. The sentence ran concurrently with another sentence for a 1988 case, in which he was charged with possession of stolen property and driving on a suspended license.
He was paroled May 5, 1990.
On Jan. 30, 1991, he was arrested in another car theft case. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years in prison.
At the time, he said he wanted to quit crime, settle down, learn a trade other than burglary and theft and then get married, court records show.
In court records released yesterday, David Nordstrom admitted having a drug problem, specifically an expensive habit with crystal methamphetamine.
Arrested in March 1993 after trying to cash checks stolen from his employer, Pallet Recyclers, David Nordstrom told police he needed cash to support his drug use.
"He wanted the checks to support his crystal methamphetamine habit, since he was using an 'eight ball' . . . per day," according to a police statement. "He smoked, snorted and shot the substance and needed a lot of money to support the habit."
He told officials that he started using the drug in 1992 while participating in the Pima County jail's work furlough program.
He had been sentenced to three months in jail after violating the conditions of his probation. He was placed on probation after he admitted stealing three Datsun pickup trucks.
David Nordstrom was able to side-step urine testing that could detect the drug by telling officials at the jail that he was tested at the probation office and vice versa. Apparently, neither department confirmed his claims, according to the files.
"I'm tired of using drugs. I'm 24 years old, and I got nothing in my life," David Nordstrom said in a pre-sentencing report in the 1993 theft case.
"All I have is family and they are standing behind me now. I'm done. My criminal life has to close," he told the probation officer who wrote the report. "I'm tired of living in institutions. It's hard to stay out of the politics (gangs) . . . My time is over."
Pima County Juvenile Court records released yesterday also showed that Scott Nordstrom's legal troubles started in 1982 when at 14 years old he was charged with possession of marijuana.
In 1984, when he was 17, he was arrested for shooting another teen-ager with a shotgun after a dispute on "A" Mountain.
In that case, Scott Nordstrom was identified as the person who fired a shotgun at a group of five teens. Fragments struck one teen, but his injuries were not fatal.
The records said Nordstrom left the mountain after a dispute with the teens but returned several minutes later with the shotgun.
Scott Nordstrom, however, was not prosecuted as an adult because he already had been sentenced to the state Department of Juvenile Corrections for violating terms of his release on another case, according to the records.
In the shooting case, Deputy County Attorney Rick Unklesbay recommended that the case be dismissed because Scott Nordstrom was placed in a diversion program, records show. Last month, Unklesbay prosecuted a man accused of stabbing the Nordstrom brothers after a traffic dispute.
In a delinquency petition filed in November 1982, Scott Nordstrom was accused of burglary and theft of an 8-track player from a shed. He was placed on probation and ordered to participate in volunteer work.
In May 1994, Scott Nordstrom was charged in Juvenile Court with theft and criminal trespassing in connection with a stolen Honda ATC and a welder.
He was charged with the "A" Mountain shooting months later.
In April 1986, Scott Nordstrom was charged with domestic violence and assault for a fight he had with his father, Richard A. Nordstrom Sr. Those charges were dropped.
About a week after the union hall killings, the brothers found themselves in an unusual position with the law - victims.
On June 21, the Nordstroms were stabbed after a traffic dispute on East Benson Highway.
Yesterday afternoon, the man who stabbed them, Wally Godfrey Jr., 27, talked about the attack in the office of Alicia Cata, an assistant legal defender who represented him.
Cata said Godfrey stabbed the brothers in self-defense. A jury agreed in December, acquitting Godfrey of aggravated assault charges that could have sent him to prison for seven to 21 years.
Godfrey, a landscape worker, said he arranged to talk with reporters because he was tired of media queries at his home and work. He also asked that no information about his family be released because he worries about retribution from acquaintances of the Nordstrom brothers.
"It was real horrifying. It was a real bad feeling in my stomach," Godfrey said describing his actions in defending himself from the attack.
Godfrey said he was driving from a southside Chinese restaurant with two friends in the bed of his pickup truck when the Nordstrom's began honking and chasing his vehicle.
The stabbing left Scott Nordstrom hospitalized for a month. Police say he uses a colostomy bag and will need more intestinal surgery.
