PHOENIX — As Arizona prison officials investigate a triple murder at a Tucson prison, the identity of the suspected killer is raising a host of other questions.
Inmate Ricky Wassenaar is accused of killing three inmates Friday at the Arizona State Prison Complex Tucson’s Cimarron Unit. If that name sounds familiar to Arizonans, it is because Wassenaar and another inmate took over a Buckeye prison tower in 2004 in a 15-day standoff that gripped the nation. Wassenaar eventually surrendered.
‘The Department of Corrections played chicken with the wrong inmate.’
After Wassenaar was sentenced for the 2004 attack, he was sent to a prison in Michigan. Records show Wassenaar was transferred back to Arizona between 2016 and 2018.
Carlos Garcia, Executive Director of the Arizona Correctional Peace Officers Association, alleges the state should have known Wassenaar was a danger to inmates…