Friends and family of David Shane Shelby said he was a class clown and protective big brother who became confused about religion, dabbled in witchcraft and developed a hatred of homosexuals.
They don't know why he ended up in Utah, unless it was because the state is headquarters of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which he joined as a child.David Shane Shelby, 29, a fugitive from Kentucky and Indiana, was arrested in Ogden Wednesday after he allegedly tried to mail a light bulb filled with gunpowder to President Clinton and a handgun to Charles Manson.
He is accused of bank fraud in Kentucky and sending threatening letters to Clinton and Vice President Al Gore from Indiana last month. A federal grand jury in Utah is to consider next week whether he should be charged with being a "felon in possession of a firearm."
Shelby loves the outdoors, and he may have been drawn to Utah's rugged forests and mountains, friends and family members told the Standard-Examiner newspaper in a copyright story Friday.
Shelby's sister, Edna Barkley, said he was exposed to the Mormon religion by a classmate and became a member of the church by the age of 10.
She and her mother also were baptized into the Mormon Church, but all three "fell away" after several years, Barkley said.
Eventually, her older brother dabbled in witchcraft.
"He got into it pretty heavy. We talked about it, and he said he had found what he had been looking for all these years," she said.
But Raymond Shelby said his son also became religious during the three years he spent in prison on burglary and parole violation charges.
"He was confused. . . . He asked me a few times about different religions," Raymond Shelby said in a telephone interview from his home at Bowling Green, Ind.
Raymond Shelby said his son detests homosexuals. "He hated anyone who even thought about it," he said. "He was exposed to it quite a bit in prison."
Authorities say the letter Shelby allegedly sent to the vice president threatened to kill him "in a violent homosexual manner."
His son is a "gun nut" who has a vast knowledge of firearms but knows nothing about explosives, Raymond Shelby said.
Shelby was born in Kentucky and raised in rural Indiana. His parents divorced when he was a child, and his mother died several years ago.
Rob Gambill, a high school classmate of Shelby's who later was a correctional officer at the Clay County, Ind., jail where Shelby served time on a weapons charge, said Shelby talked of bizarre experiences.
"He told me he was laying in his cell, and God told him there was a demon in his stomach. He told me he expelled the demon into his stool and it was multicolored, green, purple, red, and it ran round the rim of the toilet screaming. The demon ran down the drain, and he could hear it screaming all through prison."
Gambill, who was in the same graduating class as Shelby at Clay City High School, also said that Shelby was the school clown.
The burly Shelby once plucked him off a stage at school and acted like he was going to hog-tie him, Gambill said. "I knew he wasn't going to hurt me, but it was a little bit more than I thought a prank should be."
Shelby's sister said he was a protective, loving brother. "We had good times growing up. He took care of me," she said.
Though his sister and father have not seen Shelby in more than two years, they were shocked by the charges that he threatened the president and vice president.
"It appalls me," Raymond Shelby said. "The David I knew - he wasn't the kind to send the president a threatening letter."
"We don't condone what he has done. But we're not going to disown him, either," his sister said. "We want him to know we love him and we want to be in contact with him. You just don't throw out a son or a brother because of something like this. We love him."