Suspected Attacker of Speaker Pelosi’s Husband Dabbled in Nude Activism, Conspiracy Theories: David DePape’s recent writings offered support for right-leaning conspiracy theories, but he was previousl
WSJ's take on the Paul Pelosi attacker.
Suspected Attacker of Speaker Pelosi’s Husband Dabbled in Nude Activism, Conspiracy Theories David DePape’s recent writings offered support for right-leaning conspiracy theories, but he was previously affiliated with left-leaning causes By Jim Carlton and Siobhan HughesFollow Updated Oct. 29, 2022 8:36 pm ET
TEXT SAN FRANCISCO—David DePape had been involved in nude activism, slept in a bus and espoused various conspiracy theories in recent years before his arrest on Friday for allegedly attacking the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at their Pacific Heights mansion.
Mr. DePape, 42, was in the San Francisco County Jail on Saturday, after being treated for unspecified injuries in the attack on 82-year-old Paul Pelosi, who underwent surgery for a skull fracture that police said was inflicted by a hammer. The Pelosi family said in a statement he is expected to fully recover.
Mr. DePape is set to be arraigned Tuesday on booking charges that include attempted homicide and assault with a deadly weapon. Police haven’t released a motive for the attack, which they said was targeted at the Pelosi family.
Police and FBI agents were outside the San Francisco home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi after the attack targeting her family. PHOTO: JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES Many of Mr. DePape’s recent writings on social media and his public activities offered support for right-leaning conspiracy theories. He posted messages on Facebook saying that the 2020 presidential election was illegitimate, and he offered conspiracies related to Covid-19, according to law-enforcement sources who viewed them before his page was removed.
But in previous years, he was more affiliated with left-leaning causes. Mr. DePape was a participant in nude protests in the Bay Area, where he was long associated with a self-proclaimed “body freedom activist” named Oxane “Gypsy” Taub, according to Mr. DePape’s friends and local media archives. He spent time at her home in Berkeley, Calif., which has a gay rights flag and advertises treatment for drug addiction, neighbors said.
Ms. Taub was convicted of attempted abduction of a 14-year old and related felonies in 2021, and sentenced to state prison. Efforts to reach Ms. Taub through her lawyers were unsuccessful.
Mr. DePape met Ms. Taub about 20 years ago in Hawaii, when she was pregnant with her daughter, and very soon after moved to Bay Area of California, according to a webpage written by the daughter shortly after the attack on Mr. Pelosi. The daughter, Inti Gonzalez, declined to comment on Mr. DePape. But she sent a copy of her blog post, which has since been taken down, to The Wall Street Journal.
Mr. DePape and Ms. Taub had two boys, according to the blog post. Ms. Gonzalez called him a loving, caring man who looked after her and her siblings, taking them to parks and the beach. But she also said he had a dark side in her post.
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Subscribe “There is some part of him that is a good person even though he has been very consumed by darkness,” she wrote.
Mr. DePape lived on and off over the years at a Victorian home in Berkeley that Ms. Taub shared with her children, according to neighbors. Occasionally, Mr. DePape and Ms. Taub appeared in local newspaper articles, such as in 2013 when Mr. DePape was identified in a San Francisco photograph as videotaping police making arrests at a nudist-rights rally the two attended. An Oakland Tribune article in 2008 references the couple and their children joining hundreds of others at a communal Thanksgiving dinner.
Ms. Gonzalez’s post said her mother and Mr. DePape’s romantic relationship ended after about three years, but added that he remained in the family’s lives “and helped take care of us.”
One of Mr. DePape’s social-media blogs that was taken down listed his current address in Richmond, Calif., near Berkeley. But while Ms. Taub has been in prison, Mr. DePape stayed at times at the Berkeley house, sometimes in a yellow school bus parked out front that serves as a spare room for their visitors, according to neighbors.
Ryan La Conte, who lives in an apartment behind the house, said he saw Mr. DePape by the bus only a month ago. “He was just right over there,” Mr. La Conte said motioning to the bus outside his home late Friday. “Had blankets, you got the sense that he was living here.”
Mr. La Conte added that he wasn’t surprised to learn of Mr. DePape’s arrest, judging from the unusual behavior he said of other people who live at the home. “The conversations that come out of that house late, late at night are kind off the wall crazy, like religion that leaves the aliens,” he said.
Write to Jim Carlton at Jim.Carlton@wsj.com and Siobhan Hughes at Siobhan.hughes@wsj.com