A RUSH OF BLOOD TO THE HEAD
CESAR SAYOC NEVER thought that he would be caught for sending pipe bombs to prominent US Democrats, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Robert De Niro, because he felt invincible. He proudly texted his steroids dealer a link to a New York Times story about the suspicious package that he had sent to billionaire Democrat donor George Soros. It wasn’t until Sayoc saw the FBI manhunt for the ‘mail bomber’ on TV that he realised: that was me!
A small, stuttering child who was targeted by bullies and sexually abused at a Catholic boarding school, Sayoc started taking steroids when he was 15 in the hope that he would stop being victimised. Later, fellow steroids users inducted him into the exotic dancing industry, where he worked as a bouncer and entertainer, touring the US. By 2012, he was living in a van in Florida, delivering pizza, using steroids on and off and listening to Donald Trump’s motivational tapes.
In 2018, aged 56, Sayoc increased his dosage to bulk up for a doorman job at a gentlemen’s club. He became obsessed with the idea that liberals were targeting him. And shortly before the November mid-term elections, he made what his defence called ‘the biggest mistake of his life’. Sayoc had been arrested a few times for shoplifting during his decade of van living, and he had once threatened to blow up a power company if it cut off electricity to his ill-fated drycleaning business. But he had never done anything like this. And he never would have, testified
