SAN DIEGO (CNS) - Kidnap-murder suspect James DiMaggio, fatally shot in an Idaho forest preserve Saturday, may have wanted to die on the same date and under similar circumstances as his father, a friend of his said.
In several broadcast interviews Saturday, family friend Andrew Spanswick of West Hollywood said he and DiMaggio's sister worried all day Saturday that he would not be taken alive.
"I thought he was probably going to die either by his own hand or someone else's," Spanswick said. "I guess in some way it's what he wanted, but it's unfortunate that it couldn't have ended in another way."
U-T San Diego cited a 1989 San Diego Union-Tribune story detailing how James Lee DiMaggio's father, James Everet DiMaggio, was wanted by police in connection with the baseball bat beatings of two people in an El Cajon motel. He pleaded guilty to assault and was sent to prison, the newspaper said.
A prosecutor said the elder DiMaggio had broken into the home of an ex-girlfriend in a dispute over a car, but only the woman's teenaged daughter and her boyfriend were there. So the man handcuffed the boyfriend to a bed, and the girl escaped after asking to use the bathroom, the prosecutor said.
The woman at the center of the 1989 incident told interviewers that the elder DiMaggio professed his love for her when she was 16, and that he broke into her family's house when she wouldn't go away with him.
Records show James Everet DiMaggio died from a "drug-induced" suicide," on Aug. 10, 1995.
On Monday, the younger DiMaggio torched a house in Boulevard, a hamlet east of Pine Valley, took a family friend, 16-year-old high school student Hannah Anderson of Lakeside, captive and fled.
Hannah Anderson's 44-year-old mother, Christina, and her 8-year-old brother, Ethan, were found dead in the ashes.
Authorities believe DiMaggio killed the two at his back-country home off Old Highway 80 before torching the log cabin-style residence.
The FBI has not detailed the events leading to the agent fatally shooting the younger James Lee DiMaggio Saturday, but media reports said a "confrontation" with the suspect led to his being killed.
