Aled EvansA man who sold his rural home to someone who turned out to be on the FBI’s most wanted list has said it was the ideal location “if you wanted to keep your head down”.
Aled Evans said Daniel Andreas San Diego paid £425,000 for the house near Llanrwst in north Wales, in August 2023 using the name Danny Webb.
On Monday, Mr San Diego – who had a $250,000 (£199,000) bounty on his head – was arrested in Maenan after 21 years on the run following two explosions in San Francisco in 2003 he was suspected of being behind.
“He was quite excited because there was a big woodland at the back he was into his mountain biking and that’s what sold it to him, apparently,” said Mr Evans.
“It sounded like the ideal place he wanted – but he wanted it for other reasons,” he told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast.
Maenan sits just off the A470, one of the main roads running through north Wales, about 10 miles (16km) from Conwy.
It is a stretch of road with a number of houses on it with no shops or local pub.
The house in question is a white villa with a balcony offering striking views of rolling hills and a well-manicured garden.
Mr Evans said it was not “in the middle of nowhere” but was along an unmade track on “quite a busy” public footpath through the wood.
He added that Mr San Diego offered £15,000 over the asking price.
“The day of the viewing he spent considerable time on the balcony looking at the view and that’s what sold it to him, apparently,” Mr Evans said.
He told the BBC that “Danny” was excited about using the woodland at the back of the house for mountain biking, but thought it was strange that he did not seem worried about unfinished repair work to a damaged summer house.
FBIMr Evans described Mr San Diego as a likeable, quiet man who told him his work in IT had brought him to Wales.
“I thought he was a Canadian and not an America,” he said, describing him as softly spoken.
He told BBC Radio Cymru’s Dros Frecwast that he saw Mr San Diego for about 20 minutes on the day he moved in.
“He wasn’t in a hurry and was very cool about the whole situation,” adding that the neighbours “never saw him”.
He only found out about Mr San Diego’s arrest after a former neighbour phoned him to tell him the shocking news.
“It’s hasn’t sunk in yet. But it hasn’t affected us, of course. You couldn’t make it up.
“It was a perfect place to hide and he was besotted with the view from the house. His view for the foreseeable future won’t be half as good.”
The FBI has accused Mr San Diego of being “an animal rights extremist” involved in a series of bombings in San Francisco.
The first bombing happened in August 2003, outside the Chiron Life Science Center in Emeryville, California.
A second bomb was found at the site by authorities but exploded before it could be defused.
The agency said that raised the possibility the device was planted specifically to target first responders.
Less than a month later, in September 2003, a nail bomb exploded outside a nutritional products corporation based in Pleasanton, California.
He became the first “domestic terrorist” to be added to the agency’s most wanted terrorist list, created by then-President George W Bush in October 2001 in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.
Mr San Diego appeared on the list alongside Osama Bin Laden, who is believed to have ordered the 9/11 attacks, and was killed by US forces in Pakistan in 2011.
Getty ImagesMichael J Heimbach, the FBI’s assistant director of the counterterrorism division, said the suspect had committed “domestic acts of terror planned out and possibly intended to take lives”.
According to reports, the agency’s last sighting of him was in 2003 when FBI agents were close in downtown San Francisco.
“He parked his car, got out of his vehicle and started walking down the street and, if I’m not mistaken, he went into a Bart [train] station and that was the last time we’ve seen him,” FBI agent David Johnson said in 2013.
