Four Arizona Prisoners Dead After Being Celled with Leader of 2004 Standoff
Three Arizona prisoners were murdered at the state prison complex in Tucson on April 4, 2025, by fellow prisoner Ricky Wassenaar, 61. He claimed to have a fourth victim, too, who died in November 2024, but state Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Re-entry (DCRR) officials disputed that.
As PLN reported, Wassenaar, then 40, and fellow prisoner Steven Coy, 39, used shanks to overpower guards in the kitchen of the state prison complex in Lewis in 2004, raping one guard and holding both hostage for 15 days, in what was then the longest prison standoff in U.S. history. [See: PLN, July 2004, p.16.]
Wassenaar was serving 16 life sentences for that incident when he got into the “altercation” in the Cimarron Unit that left the other three prisoners dead, DCRR said. Two were identified as Thorne Harnage and Donald Lashley; both were found fatally injured near the dining area. The third, Saul Alvarez, was found in his cell, also fatally injured. He was serving time for a 2004 murder and sexual assault. The other two were sentenced for sex crimes involving children.
Middle Ground Prison Reform Director Donna Leone Hamm said that Wassenaar phoned her to confess that he also fatally strangled his cellmate, Joseph Desisto, 81, in November 2024. Desisto was serving time for sexual assault of a minor. Hamm called Wassenaar’s confession “the most unusual call in 41 years of prisoner advocacy that I have ever received.”
“He seemed to want to kill any person who would be put in a cell with him,” Hamm recalled, adding that she sent multiple emails warning DCRR Director Ryan Thornell, “You have to keep him in a cell by himself, he’s threatening to kill anyone who is housed in a cell with him.”
DCRR pushed back on that, saying that Desisto’s body had no injuries “consistent with trauma,” and that the Pima County Medical Examiner had ruled he died of “natural causes due to several underlying health conditions.”
After the triple murder, guards subdued Wassenaar, and he was transferred to a maximum custody housing unit at the state prison complex in Eyeman, DCRR said. The agency added that the prisoner agreed to have a cellmate when his status was downgraded to close custody in March 2024.
Sources: KNXV, KOLD, KSAZ
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