Sayoc, 56, who is accused of sending a slew of packages containing explosive devices to high-profile liberals was abandoned by his father as a child and 'told his mother that he hated her,' Miami lawyer Ronald Lowy said.
'This was someone lost, he was looking for anything and he found a father in Trump,' Lowy told CNN.
Sayoc’s father is Filipino and his mother is Italian. However the steroid-abusing bodybuilder claimed to be of Native American descent because he was trying to create an identity - which he found by becoming obsessed with Trump, Lowy revealed.
'He doesn’t seem to recognize reality. He lives in a fantasy world,' Lowy said to local outlets.
'The signs of mental illness are clearly there'.
Sayoc, 56, was taken into custody on Friday morning in Plantation, Florida and he faces 48 years in prison for mailing 14 pipe bombs to liberal elite including Hillary, Obama, CNN, Joe Biden and George Soros.
More details emerged about the former male stripper’s chequered history tonight, including his criminal past which started nearly 30 years ago and includes arrests in 2002 for threatening to ‘blow up’ Florida Power and Light and an arrest in 1991 for grand theft auto.
Lowy, who represented Sayoc in four prior criminal cases, said the suspected mail bomber had trouble articulating concepts and 'doesn’t live life in a normal way'. He also claimed that Sayoc demonstrated 'a complete lack of comprehension of reality'.
'You talk to him and he speaks like a 15-year-old, like a child. This seems like such a sophisticated crime, I have trouble believing he had the mental capacity to create operating bombs'.
Sayoc’s mother found out her son had been arrested when she woke up from surgery Friday, Lowy said.
'My heart goes out to these people because you couldn’t imagine a more decent and loving family. They did everything they could,' he said.
Disturbingly, Sayoc’s former boss at a pizza restaurant told how he openly admitted being a ‘white supremacist’ who was anti-gay, anti-Jewish and ‘wanted to purify society’.
Debra Gureghian said Sayoc worked as a delivery driver at New River Pizza & Fresh Kitchen in Fort Lauderdale for more than a year before quit in January.Gureghian said he told her that because she is a lesbian she is 'deformed' and she should be 'put on an island with all the other gay people and burned.'
She told CNN tonight: ‘I knew he had issues. He really was not, he definitely beat to the beat of his own drum.
‘He was anti-gay, anti-black, anti-Jewish, you name it, everybody that really wasn’t white and wasn’t a white supremacist didn’t belong in the world, that’s what he used to say to me all the time.
He used the same white van that was prominently featured in national news broadcasts and splashed on news sites on Friday to deliver pizzas, she said. The van was adorned with 'a billion stickers,' she said.
eplied.
She added: 'He said that the people that he labeled were very weak and that he would — that he wanted to purify society.
‘So, in order to do that, he would have to get rid of the gays and the lesbians and the transgenders and the blacks and the Jews and whoever else didn’t follow his suit, whoever else didn’t follow his policy and political views'.
But federal authorities said the 14 pipe bombs Sayoc, of Aventura, Florida, allegedly sent through the US mail are real, and were a danger to the people he mailed them to in recent days.
He told investigators after he was arrested in Plantation that the pipe bombs wouldn't have hurt anyone, and that he didn't want to hurt anyone, according to a law enforcement official.
Sayoc was being held Friday night at a federal detention center in Miami.It appeared that he had been living in the white Dodge van where he was found and arrested Friday morning, the law enforcement official said tonight.
According to Sayoc’s Facebook page, he is a diehard Trump supporter and has photos and videos of himself at one of the President’s rallies in October 2016.
He had been using social media to promote wild conspiracy theories targeting the Clintons, former President Barack Obama and Muslims.
And today an associate described how Sayoc faulted the Democrats and Barack Obama for 'American culture going down the toilet'.Sergio Menezes, who had a long conversation with Sayoc in his neighborhood as recently as August, claimed he was angry about ‘losing real estate ground’ to foreigners moving to Miami and displacing him towards the Everglades.
Speaking exclusively to DailyMail.com from Florida, he said Sayoc wasn’t happy that students stopped saying the pledge of allegiance and that immigrants weren’t learning English.
‘He said he lived near the beach for years, but because rich foreigners were buying up everything, he was having to keep moving west, in less valuable areas, because he couldn’t afford living here,' Menezes said.
‘I was born in Brazil, so I was interested in what he had to say since he sorta was talking about people like me'.
Sayoc faulted the Democrats for that situation, said Menezes, who met him in the parking lot of an LA Fitness in Miami.
He said the culprits were Democrats in general, and (Pres. Barack) Obama in particular,’ Menezes said.
‘He said Democrats were allowing this to happen. He was very negative towards the Democrats, and went on and on about that’.
Menezes said Sayoc was tired also of watching American culture 'going down the toilet'.
‘He said he wasn’t happy that people stopped saying the pledge of allegiance in school, that immigrants weren’t learning English.
The funny thing, Menezes said, is that he felt bad for the man.
He added: ‘I’m more left of center, but I felt for him. He looked like one of these older guys that nobody can relate to, that people would pass by without noticing. He looked out of place.
‘I understand where he was coming from. I told him the world is changing, but he had a hard time accepting that’.
‘He was angry but logical enough,' Menezes said. 'I’d never have thought he’d do something like this’. Sayoc was also prolific on his two Facebook accounts and three Twitter feeds. One picture from a video clearly shows the suspect with Trump in the background speaking on stage at what appears to be a campaign rally in 2016. Another appears to have been taken at Trump's inauguration.
In other posts, Sayoc shared several conspiracy theories, memes and articles slamming Hillary Clinton, who ran against Trump.
He also posted virulently anti-Muslim memes and published the address of George Soros and photos of the homes of some of the individuals who later received bombs in the mail.
He also has a past marked by encounters with law enforcement. He had been arrested nine times before Friday, mostly in Florida.
Notable among them was a 2002 arrest when Sayoc threatened to bomb the Florida Power and Light Company, Miami police alleged. Sayoc apparently warned authorities the attack 'would be worse than September 11'.
‘The defendant contacted a rep (from) Florida Power and Light Co by telephone and threatened to blow up FPL,' a Miami Police Department report about the incident reads.
Sayoc had worked as a DJ at Ultra Gentleman's Club in West Palm Beach, the same strip club where Trump accuser Stormy Daniels performed in April.
WPTV spoke to Ultra manager Stacey Saccal who confirmed that Sayoc worked as a DJ Thursday afternoon, the day before he was arrested in Plantation. She said Sayoc had worked there for two months as a DJ and doorman.
Saccal said there had been no complaints about Sayoc from other employees prior to his arrest Friday.
She said that they are in 'shock and disbelief' after learning about the arrest and described him as a 'nice guy.'
'I never knew that his van was covered in political stickers. I thought it was an ice cream truck,' Saccal said, noting that he parked far from the club.
Scott Meigs, a co-worker of 20 years and fellow DJ, said on Sayoc's last day on the job he brought in two duffel bags and a cooler.
Meigs characterized Sayoc as an extremely nice guy who volunteered to work for him so he could take his son to Fright Nights at the South Florida Fairgrounds.A report published tonight described how Sayoc was 'fitness-obsessed' and dreamt of becoming a male stripper.
He apparently traveled to jiggle joints across the country during the nineties, Ohio event promoter Tony Valentine told theWashington Examiner.
Valentine said the 56-year-old was a 'big muscle head' who 'wanted to be a professional wrestler — that was his dream'.
'He really couldn’t find his niche in life, and I guess he found it now,' Valentine told the Examiner. 'Back in the nineties, he was running around from Minnesota to the Carolinas to Florida. He was like a gypsy'.He would show up and do an individual act and leave, he added. He was dancing for a guy out in Oklahoma, too'.
Valentine vouched for Sayoc in his grand theft auto case in 2014 when Sayoc was employed as a strip club manager while also dancing at the all-male strip club.
Valentine said he wouldn’t hire the Aventura, Florida, resident again.
'He’s like 900 years old now, he said. I wouldn’t hire a 50- or 60-year-old stripper'.
Meanwhile, Sayoc’s cousin told NBC News that he worked as an exotic dancer and a bouncer at many strip clubs.
He was a 'loose cannon' and a 'lost soul' who didn’t speak to his family and had a problem with steroids, the unidentified cousin, who lives in Florida, said.
'He’s been in the strip clubs since he was 22, that was his life,' the cousin said.
'He was a male dancer and he wanted to be a wrestler. He was taking steroids. He was all buffed up, he was built like a rock'.
Sayoc seemed proud of his body. In 2010, he posted a photo collage on Facebook showing himself shirtless and flexing his muscles.
'If birds didn't fly south for the winter and sun didn't rise in the east would tomorrow come,' he bizarrely commented on the photo.
Court records show that Sayoc filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in 2012. The filing said he 'lives with his mother' in Aventura and had been working for a year as a 'store manager' of an investment company in Hollywood, Florida.However childhood friends of Cesar Altier Sayoc painted a different picture of his character, saying he was a well-liked, softly-spoken child who never got into trouble.
David Templer, who remembered him from school, told DailyMail.com: 'I don't think you will find anyone that knew him back in the day who will suggest this was expected.
'Cesar was not weird or off in any way that I recall. He and his sister we're both nice and well-liked. But, like I said, things can change in 40 years, assuming the Feds got it right.'
A former classmate, who asked not to be named, added: 'All I can tell you is he was a nice boy and I played soccer with I'm in high school.
'He never was in trouble when we were in high school he was a good kid. He had a younger sister Sabrina.
'Very surprised all of my classmates are in shock!! Nice family, he was a quiet kid but had a lot of friends.'
Sheri Holtzman Tapia wrote on Facebook: 'I remember him being nice and kind of quiet.'
Jamie Grapin Rubenstein added: 'Super nice guy played soccer.'
And Stuart Collins agreed, writing: 'I'm shocked too. Really soft spoken nice guy. wtf happened?'
'He was a nice kid, very quiet,' Cindy Krantz Grafman added. 'I cannot believe it!'Sayoc graduated 1980 from North Miami Beach Senior High, according to a yearbook entry.
His grandmother lived in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, according to a 2006 obituary.
Corporate records show Sayoc has owned companies called Native American Catering & Vending, as well as Proud Native America One Low Price Drycleaning.
The suspect was arrested in front of an AutoZone store in Plantation, a police source tells DailyMail.com.
Michelle Taylor, a nurse at the Senior Medical Associates clinic across the street from the AutoZone, saw police taking a vehicle believed to be Sayoc's into custody.
'We've been in the office for an hour and we're so nervous,' she said. 'The police were surrounding some kind of a van. Thank god we're done with our patients for the day and there's only two of us in here.' Photographs circulated of Sayoc holding a placard at a Trump rally and wearing a red 'Make America Great Again' baseball cap at his inauguration.
Among the stickers on his van was one with Hilary Clinton’s face in a simulated gun-sight.
Last night Donald Trump was at pains to deny there was any link between his inflamatoory language and acts of violence that were perpetrated by Sayoc.
Speaking to reporters before he addressed a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, POTUS said : ‘I heard he was a person that preferred me over others,' Mr. Trump told reporters.
'There’s no blame. There’s no anything. I think I’ve been toned down,' the president said before adding: 'I could really tone it up'.
Trump continued to scapegoat the news media in Charlotte, saying that the focus on Sayoc’s political leanings was a product of their trying to start a political attack.
‘We have seen an effort by the media in recent hours to use the sinister actions of one individual to score political points against me and the Republican Party,” Mr. Trump said at the rally.
‘The media has tried to attack the incredible Americans who support our movement to give power back to the people.”
Eearlier today, Mr. Trump projected a grave and more sombre tone as he voewed to bring the perpetrator of the crime to justice.
‘These terrorizing acts are despicable and have no place in our country,' he said, speaking from prepared remarks.
'We will prosecute them, him, her, whoever it may be to the fullest extent of the law. We must never allow political violence to take root in America. We cannot let it happen'.
No comments:
Post a Comment