The suspected Florida MAGAbomber dreamed of becoming a WWE wrestler and obsessed about women, his former roommate has revealed.
Cesar Altier Sayoc faces 48 years in prison after being accused of sending 14 pipe bombs to well-known Democrats including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
Joseph Nunn spent six years touring as a male stripper with the suspected bomber, 56, and shared a Florida apartment with him for two years.
The male dancer booking agent and Tim McGraw impersonator, 51, is speaking out for the first time about his friendship with the Trump-obsessive.
The pair were pictured together in their dancing group Hollywood’s Hottest Bodies at the now-closed nightclub Yesterday’s in Hickory, North Carolina, in 1996 or 1997.
Nunn, an MC at the event, wore a cowboy hat, while Cesar squatted on his right in just a white thong, cowboy boots and a necklace.
Nunn, who splits his time between Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and Summerlin, Nevada, said: “He did a lot of steroids and he was always in a weird frame of mind. He was 320 pounds and he wanted to be a WWE wrestler.
“He was in the gym for up to four hours day while the rest of the dancers only went for an hour.
“He gained forty or fifty pounds and I asked myself: ‘how the hell did he gain this much weight?’
“This was the nineties and I didn’t know much about steroids. His dream was to be a WWE wrestler, but he never made it happen.
“He always wanted to be a different guy, not a male stripper.
“He was shady and there was always drama around him but I would never have thought he’d send a bomb to the former President of the United States.”
Nunn first met Cesar, who he knew as Cesar Anthony, in 1993 or 1994 when they were both male dancers in Hollywood’s Hottest Bodies.
He said: “He was one of the five dancers and I was the MC. The show was in Las Vegas but we toured all over.
“We travelled all 50 states and 14 countries together. Every night we were in a different casino, theatre or night club and we shared a room.”
Cesar lived with Nunn in an apartment in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, between 1999 and 2001.
Nunn said: “He was always a go-getter, a hustler. He was always after the BBD, the bigger better deal.”
Cesar was quick to pull money-making tricks during the tour, Nunn noticed.
He said: “He was shady. Back in the day, at our Chippendale shows we had a polaroid camera to take snaps with customers.
“We charged six dollars a picture. If the picture didn’t come out clearly, we’d take another one.
“But Cesar saved all the blurry pictures and put them in a briefcase. After a couple of months, he’d have 400 or 500 of them. He’d stick them back in the polaroid case and take them back to KMart, saying that the film was faulty.
“I heard he was scamming money from management. If he was supposed to turn in $2000, he would only give $1000 saying that his tyre blew out and he needed to get it replaced or he got towed. He made up so many excuses.”
Despite noting Cesar’s ‘shady’ behaviour, Nunn insisted that he was also a stand-up guy, protective of his fellow dancers.
He said: “He was a great guy in some ways. He always protected me when we went out because he was really big. I’m 5ft7in and 175 pounds.
“He was always the biggest guy in the group. If a fight broke out, he would always stick up for us and say: ‘Don’t mess with my guys’.”
Nunn also said that Cesar never showed much of an interest in politics, despite his later obsession with President Trump.
He said: “I never heard him say that he was a Republican or a Democrat. He never even talked about politics.”
Cesar was however always possessive with women, quickly getting obsessed with new girlfriends who were often female dancers at gentlemen’s clubs.
Nunn said: “He would stalk girls. I never saw him put his hands physically on a woman but he was obsessive. Once he got his claws into a girl, he was very possessive.
“If a girl agreed to go to dinner with him, the next thing you know he was telling me: ‘I love her’. I’d say: ‘You only met her two days ago.’
“Then I’d hear girls in the clubs saying that he had been in four evenings in a row and bringing flowers and making them feel uncomfortable.
“I think it was down to insecurity. He was always talking about his mother, saying that he loved her. There was always some drama with his mother.
“He would lie about where he was from. One time he told me he was from Cuba. But then he told everyone he was Italian.”
The first time that Nunn realised his former roommate stood accused of sending potentially lethal bombs to figures including Obama, Clinton, Joe Biden and the broadcaster CNN was when he saw the news on television.
He was shocked and said that he did not realise Cesar could be capable of such a crime.
He said: “The last time we met was two years ago when we went for sushi in Fort Lauderdale. He was asking me for help finding investors for a female dancing club he wanted to set up in Florida.
“Hell no, I never thought that he would send bombs. I knew he was capable of being shady and weird, but not sending pipe bombs through the mail to more than a dozen people.”