US mail bomb suspect spun records on DJ set as police closed in

The apartment block looked idyllic, but for the flash of police lights. Set by the coast in Aventura, a suburban city just north of Miami, it rose some 25 floors into the sky.

Children walked home with towels around their shoulder after a day in the water. Parents in shorts and t-shirts were enjoying the late autumn sun.

There was little to suggest these flats once housed Cesar Sayoc, the 56-year-old Trump supporter accused of orchestrating a package bomb spree targeting the pinups of liberal America - among them the Obamas, the Clintons, CNN and billionaire George Soros.

The plot, an apparent genuine attempt to take life, has gripped the country this week and forced political discourse and the divided nature of US politics back into the spotlight.

A five-day manhunt had tracked Sayoc, identified from a fingerprint found on one of the packages, to the city of Plantation around a 30 minutes drive north from this apartment block.

His white van, plastered with pro-Trump stickers and posters naming liberal hate-figures alongside crosshair symbols, was covered by police and taken away for evidence.

The episode has been seen as emblematic of the political gulf that divides the Democrat and Republican halves of America, with either side suspicious of the other’s aims and motives.

Donald Trump, the US president, has called for “unity” in the wake of the attacks. But he has also partly blamed the media and pulled few punches at public rallies.

Prosecutors who charged Sayoc with five federal crimes said the fervent Trump supporter unwittingly left behind a wealth of clues.

The bubble-wrapped manila envelopes, addressed to Democrats such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and intercepted from Delaware to California, held vital forensic evidence that was used to arrest Sayoc four days after the investigation started.

On Thursday from noon to 9pm, as the police closed in, Sayoc was working as a disc jockey at a West Palm Beach nightclub. There, he spun records from inside a small dimly lit booth overlooking a stage with performers dancing below. 

"I didn't know this guy was mad crazy like this," said Stacy Saccal, the club's manager. "Never once did he speak politics. This is a bar. We don't talk politics or religion in a bar, you know?"

But Scott Meigs, another DJ at the club, had a different experience.

He said Sayoc had been talking about politics to everybody at the club for the last two weeks, preaching the need to elect Republicans during the November elections. "I just figured he was passionate about the upcoming elections."

At a Republican rally outside Jacksonville, northern Florida, on Thursday - before Sayoc was named as the suspect - there was little blame for Mr Trump for the coarsening of political debate in America.

Kathryn Morton, the 67-year-old chairman of the Duval County Republican Party, said she scored the president’s blame for the state of politics today at about 1 in 10.

“People will not like certain phrases that he uses but they are just so unaccustomed to a president being confrontational and sticking up for himself and for his family and for his country for that matter. People are still kind of shocked about that,” she said.

“Bottom line, I don’t care if he swears or not. He is standing up for himself and he’s standing up for us and he’s standing up to America. I don’t care. It’s about time somebody got a backbone and stood up."

She also defended Mr Trump’s swipe at the media after the bomb spree, saying: “One incident on one day, which is still somewhat questionable, does not change the media and their bias and their confrontational spirit and their flat-out lies.”

Frank Nichols, a 62-year-old wearing a Hawaiian shirt featuring multiple images of the American flag, was similarly supportive of Mr Trump.

“I kind of like all the smart aleck remarks because everybody else just kind of put up with the Democrats’ tactics but he’s willing to talk to them and call them out on it,” he said.

He agreed politics had become bitterly divided in America today, but blamed the other side. “I think the Democrats started it 10, 15 years ago,” he said. “Republicans just kind of wimped out and didn’t fight back. He’s fighting back.”

Mr Trump was asked on on Friday whether he should tone down his rhetoric after the bomb attacks. “I think I’ve been toned down if you want to know the truth” he responded. “I could really tone it up.”