The Jay Shaw who moved to Marsing more than a decade ago was a city boy with street smarts, but he lacked the sense common to most people in this outer edge of the American West: how to raise cows, work a pasture and run a farm.
Shaw admitted Wednesday in Boise federal court he was actually Enrico M. “Rico” Ponzo, 42, whom the FBI has been seeking on mob-related charges for 17 years.
But Jessie Jackson knows him as the first neighbor of her Hogg Road home 11 years ago. She can’t reconcile her “Jay” with his real identity.
“I believe Jay shut that door,” Jackson said. “The man I knew, he shut that door behind him.”
On Wednesday, trucks slowed as they passed the 12-acre homestead where Ponzo lived for years with his girlfriend Cara Lyn Pace and two young children, a 7-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl.
But she and the kids moved out before Christmas — and Wednesday their sage-green home and garage stood quiet in the distance, up a scraggly hill from irrigation equipment and a kelly green cattle gate.
His neighbors are feeding his cows and two roaming dogs and wondering how this all came to pass.
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