Joe Eskenazi, of Mission Local, tweeted, “My sources also name the suspect in this morning’s hammer attack on Paul Pelosi as David DePape, born 1980, of Berkeley. He would appear to be a former Castro nudist protester. Things appear set to be bizarre for a while.”
The Castro is a well-known neighborhood in San Francisco.
A 2013 article in the San Francisco Chronicle mentions Depape, although his name is spelled wrong. It describes him as a “hemp jewelry maker.” That article reported that Depape was the best man at the naked wedding of a well-known pro-nudity activist named Gypsy Taub.
Linda Schneider, who has known Depape for years, told CNN that he once lived in a storage unit and had done hard drugs. She later received “really disturbing” emails where Depape sounded like a “megalomaniac and so out of touch with reality,” she told the cable news network. She stopped communicating with him “because it seemed so dangerous,” adding to CNN that he used “Biblical justification to do harm.”
Laura Hayes worked with Depape making hemp bracelets years ago.
“He was very odd. He didn’t make eye contact very well,” Hayes said to CNN, adding that he told her “he talks to angels and there will be a hard time coming.”
