The B.C.-raised man accused of breaking into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's California home and severely beating her husband with a hammer appears to have made racist and often rambling posts online, including some that questioned the results of the 2020 election, defended former U.S. president Donald Trump and echoed QAnon conspiracy theories.
David DePape, 42, grew up in Powell River before leaving about 20 years ago to follow an older girlfriend to San Francisco, according to family. The Globe and Mail reported that he also spent some time in Armstrong, a small town in B.C.'s Interior, graduating from Pleasant Valley Secondary School in 1998. A street address listed for DePape in the Bay Area college town of Berkeley led to a post office box at a UPS Store.
DePape was arrested at the Pelosi home early Friday. San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said she expected to file multiple felony charges, including attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary and elder abuse.
Stepfather Gene DePape said the suspect had lived with him in Powell River until he was 14 and had been a quiet boy.
“David was never violent that I seen and was never in any trouble although he was very reclusive and played too much video games," Gene DePape said.
He said he hasn’t seen his stepson since 2003 and tried to get in touch with him several times over the years without success.
“In 2007, I tried to get in touch but his girlfriend hung up on me when I asked to talk to him,“ Gene DePape said.
David DePape was known in Berkeley as a pro-nudity activist who had picketed naked at protests against local ordinances requiring people to be clothed in public.
Gene DePape said the girlfriend whom his son followed to California was named Gypsy and they had two children together. DePape also has a child with a different woman, his stepfather said.
Photographs published by The San Francisco Chronicle on Friday identified DePape frolicking nude outside city hall with dozens of others at the 2013 wedding of pro-nudity activist Gypsy Taub, who was marrying another man. Taub did not respond Friday to calls or emails.
A 2013 article in The Chronicle described David DePape as a “hemp jewelry maker” who lived in a Victorian flat in Berkeley with Taub, who hosted a talk show on local public-access TV called “Uncensored 9/11,” in which she appeared naked and pushed conspiracy theories that the 2001 terrorist attacks were “an inside job.”
A pair of web blogs posted in recent months online under the name David DePape contained rants about technology, aliens, communists, religious minorities and global elites.
An Aug. 24 entry titled “Q,” displayed a scatological collection of memes that included photos of the deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and made reference to QAnon, the baseless pro-Trump conspiracy theory that espouses the belief that the country is run by a deep state cabal of child sex traffickers, satanic pedophiles and baby-eating cannibals.
“Big Brother has deemed doing your own research as a thought crime,” read a post that appeared to blend references to QAnon with George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”
In an Aug. 25 entry titled “Gun Rights,” the poster wrote: “You no longer have rights. Your basic human rights hinder Big Brothers ability to enslave and control you in a complete and totalizing way.”
The web hosting service WordPress removed one of the sites Friday afternoon for violating its terms of service.
On a different site, someone posting under DePape's name repeated false claims about COVID vaccines and wearing masks, questioned whether climate change is real and displayed an illustration of a zombified Hillary Clinton dining on human flesh.
There appeared to be no direct posts about Pelosi, but there were entries defending former Trump and Ye, the rapper formerly known as Kayne West who recently made antisemitic comments.
In other posts, the writer said Jews helped finance Hitler's political rise in Germany and suggested an antisemitic plot was involved in Russia's recent invasion of Ukraine.
In a Sept. 27 post, the writer said any journalists who denied Trump's false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election “should be dragged straight out into the street and shot.”
Teresa DePape, Gene's wife, said David was a normal kid when he grew up in the coastal community.
Teresa said she began getting calls from American journalists later Friday morning, though had no details of what happened or the allegations against David. She eventually contacted a sheriff in San Francisco to learn more about how her stepson would be processed in the system there.
David kept in touch with some B.C. relatives but never returned to Powell River after moving to California, she said.
As a child, “David was a good kid. He went to school. He came home, he turned on the TV just like any normal kid,” she said. “We haven’t seen him here in over 20 years.”
But she also said “he didn’t socialize much at all.”
Asked if David was into politics, she said: “This is one of the things I liked about him. He always had an opinion about everything. And I can’t see him socializing with politicians. But I don’t know him now.”
Reports that David had been posting about conspiracy theories on Facebook didn’t surprise her, she said, adding that most of her family members are into the same theories.
“Who isn’t these days? So I don’t think that’s a valid accusation,” she said. “We just hope that if he is in trouble he will call us. The door is always open for him here.”
— With a file from the Vancouver Sun
