Sunday, August 24, 2008

BOBBER FANTASY UNRAVELS!

FBI special agent Clarice Starling outside Triki Bobber's cell, which is
made of inch-thick, bulletproof glass. AWP Photo/Cap Lensgraf

BOBBER FANTASY UNRAVELS!

From Bob Hitler to Bobby Appleseed to Bobham Young

By Ariel Mutha-Tafoya, Fantasy Sports News

At a remote federal detention facility — the place that, according to the warden, houses the “worst of the worst, al Qaeda, Honduran gangs, opponents of the Bush administration, you name it — Triki Bobber’s fantasy world began to unravel.

Bobber, the suspended, criminally insane owner of the NFFA’s Fidalgo Island Sea Hogs, had suggested in his communications over the past year that he was living the opulent life of a jet-setting Bond villain. The reality was far different, as authorities learned after Bobber was apprehended earlier this month in a rundown, neo-Nazi compound in northern Idaho.

Locals around Coeur d’Alene knew Bobber as “Bob Hitler,” a scraggly, bearded who claimed to be the son of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, a legal scholar, former neighbor of Bill and Hillary Clinton, and the owner of a professional football team. Federal authorities said they were led to the neo-Nazi compound after “Bob Hitler” attempted to organize what he termed a “beer hall putsch” in a local tavern to take over the municipal government of Coeur d’Alene. It was only then that FBI agents discovered the true identity of Bobber, who has been on the most wanted list of fugitives after U.S. troops stormed Fidalgo Island in 2007.

But “Bob Hitler” was only the final chapter in a sordid story that winds its way through the Pacific Northwest through Utah, Arizona and southern Texas — where, coincidentally, he was savagely beaten and nearly killed by the grandmother of fellow NFFA owner Thurman Murrman.

This reporter gained an exclusive interview with Bobber, who was straitjacketed and held behind a partition of inch-thick, bulletproof glass, under the auspices of FBI special agent Clarice Starling. During a two-hour session, Bobber revealed details about his time on the lam that led him ultimately to Idaho.

“Obviously,” said Agent Starling, “we don’t take anything Bobber says at face value. The man is criminally insane. But his story checks out as near as we have been able to determine.”

Bobber said that, before assuming his neo-Nazi identity, he had been a member of the radical environmental group, Planetary Defense Brigades, in Washington State. There, he said, he had lived in a tent in the woods and went by the name “Bob Appleseed.” The Planetary Defense Brigades, Starling said, are a violent ecoterrorist group whose acts range from spiking trees to injure loggers using chainsaws to burning a new resort property to the ground in the Cascades.

“It was a great cover for him (Bobber),” Starling said. “People we interviewed said that when Bobber would start babbling about the yacht and football team he owned, and how the U.S. Special Forces had invaded the island that he ruled, it just made him sort of blend into the group.”

At the beginning of the interview, Bobber refused to speak. Then, this reporter showed him one of the Sea Hogs’ NFFA Championship rings from last season. At that point, Bobber excitedly began repeating, “The precious! My precious!” — and the stories began to flow.

Next chapter: Bobham Young in Colorado City, Arizona.