Authorities have captured a second “JihadJane” — a Colorado woman who allegedly got mixed up in an international plot to kill a Swedish cartoonist after converting to Islam and marrying a Muslim man in New York, according to a report.
Jamie Paulin-Ramirez, 31, was being questioned in Ireland along with six other people in the scheme to off Lars Vilks, who outraged many by depicting the prophet Mohammed as a dog in his drawings, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.
“I’m angry with her right now,” said Paulin-Ramirez’s mom, Christine Holcomb-Mott. “I’d like to just choke her. But I’m worried about her, too. I love my daughter.”
The original “JihadJane,” Colleeen LaRose, 46, of suburban Philadelphia allegedly agreed to move to Sweden to help kill Vilks and has been in federal custody since October.
One of the men in custody, an Algerian, is believed to be LaRose’s main contact. He also has a relationship with Paulin-Ramirez, but it is not clear if they are married, according to the paper.
Paulin-Ramirez, a Kansas City-born mom of a 6-year-old boy, allegedly went from average American to Islamo-loon in the span of a year — with her interest in the religion coming out of “left field.”
The Colorado woman, who has not been charged, started taking classes on Islam and posting messages on Facebook such as “STOP caLLing MUSLIMS TERRORISTS!”
She even updated her profile to show her wearing a black veil that covered everything but her eyes.
Paulin-Ramirez became so radical that at one point her stepfather, himself a convert to Islam, became worried, according to the Journal.
He confronted her, saying: “What are you going to do, strap a bomb on and blow up something?”
According to the Journal, she responded by saying, “If necessary, yes.”
Her aunt, Cindy Holcomb Jones, said that when she saw pictures of LaRose wearing Islamic garb after the arrest last week, she immedately thought of her niece.
“When I saw pictures of that woman, I thought — that’s what Jamie is doing. Jamie is wearing the same outfit that woman is wearing.”
Paulin-Ramirez told her family that she converted to Islam last Easter.
By May 2009, she was so into Islamic fundamentalism that she wanted to wear a scarf-style veil to her dad’s funeral, but her aunts pleaded with her not to.
Paulin-Ramirez later spent the summer endlessly talking online about Islam and began wearing a Saudi-style head cover, the paper said.
She then vanished with her son last Sept. 11 from her home in Leadville, Colo., leaving behind a $31,000-a-year job as a medical assistant.
She is believed to have first gone to Denver and then on to New York. Afterwards, Paulin-Ramirez sent her parents a forwarding address in Waterford, Ireland.
Her family went to police and told them they feared she had been radicalized. They also feared the boy was being brainwashed to become a “terrorist,” the Journal reported.