Update, 12 p.m. Monday: David DePape’s one-time partner Oxane “Gypsy” Taub said a history of mental illness and drug use had caused DePape to deteriorate so profoundly that he believed “he was Jesus for a year,” and that at one point he started “living on the streets” and grew “paranoid that someone was watching him,” The San Francisco Chronicle reported on Monday.
In an hour-long phone interview given Sunday from the California Institution for Women in Corona, Riverside County, where she is incarcerated for attempting to abduct a 14-year-old boy in Berkeley with whom she had become obsessed, Taub said of DePape “he has never been able to hold a job. This person really does suffer from mental illness and that is probably why he was there at 2 a.m.”
Addressing DePape’s political views, Taub said, “I don’t think he became a Trump supporter. He was against the government, but if anything he was opposed to the shadow government, against the people who really run the government and use politicians as puppets. Like Trump was a puppet. David and I were against the shadow government.”
Taub said that after they broke up, DePape was living on the streets in the East Bay and eating meals at the McGee Avenue Baptist Church in Berkeley, where she said a friend who served DePape meals at the church told Taub he mumbled nonsensically and had “completely lost his mind.”
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said in a news conference that DePape remained locked in a secure ward at San Francisco General Hospital on Sunday where he was receiving psychiatric treatment. Jenkins has said multiple felony charges would be brought against DePape.
Original post, 6:45 p.m. Friday: The 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 President Donald Trump and echoed QAnon conspiracy theories.
David DePape, 42, grew up in Powell River, British Columbia, before leaving about 20 years ago to follow an older girlfriend to San Francisco. 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 Canada 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.