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”.
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 Aled Evans.
Where was Daniel San Diego found?
Maenan sits just off the A470, one of the main roads running through north Wales, about 10 miles (16km) from Conwy.
It is a sprawling community of farms and isolated cottages, many of which are now holiday homes or holiday lets. There is no shop or village pub.
Many of the properties that you pass on the way to Llidiart y Coed appear to be holiday homes.
Two of those that do live close by reported little or no contact with a man who had been on the run for 20 years.
One identified a black Seat Leon car parked nearby as belonging to San Diego.
Neither seemed to have any direct contact to him.
The house in question is a white villa with a balcony offering striking views of rolling hills and a well-manicured garden.
When the BBC visited, a bunch of keys was hanging from the lock on a glass door on the inside, and pans and crockery were spread over the kitchen sink and worktop.
You are greeted by a chalk message on a slate board as you walk down the garden path left for the binmen well-over a year ago by the family of four who previously lived here.
Mr San Diego was, it seems, in no hurry to make the place his own.
Just inside the door a pair of heavy duty wellies stood abandoned among a small debris pile of clothes, unopened post and a range of high-end power tools.
All the signs were that this was a home that had – in the best detective story tradition – been left in a hurry.
Mr Evans said the house 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.
Mr 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 American,” he said, describing him as softly spoken.
He told BBC Radio Cymru’s Dros Frecwast 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 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 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.”
Mr Evans’ partner Suzanne Thomas said she remembered making conversation with Mr San Diego, describing him as “genuinely a nice chap”.
She added: “I know that his main residence was in Mold at the time, I think that’s what he said.
“It was as if he’d found his place, if you like. I think he fell in love with it really.”
She did, however, admit to having suspicions when Mr San Diego’s solicitor did not ask for planning checks or other usual requests involved in a house purchase.
Ms Thomas said he had made friends in the area, though, adding: “Just this morning I spoke to a lady, quite by chance.
“I said what had happened to our property and she said ‘I know him, Danny Webb’.
“She said she’d been to the pub with him, her husband had gone climbing with him. They’d spent quite a bit of time with him over the last few months.
“He was clearly socialising and enjoying the environment.”
FBIWhen the FBI finally got their man he was found living at the end of a long, narrow track which forms part of the footpath on a steep, thickly-forested hill leading towards the popular Cadair Ifan Goch viewing point and the stunning views it offers across the Carneddau mountains of Eryri.
Llidiart y Coed benefits from the same breathtaking scenery.
Large swathes of the Conwy river are clearly visible below, snaking its way to the sea a few miles to the north, while the icy face of Carnedd Llewelyn glistens in the distance beyond.
Only the low-level hum of traffic rising from the A470 reminds you just how close you are to modern life.
Llidiart y Coed was once just a small, two-storey Welsh cottage. But a large, single-storey flat roof extension, glazed over with a late November frost, now provides the main living area.
Details of how the man known locally as Danny Webb lived in this Welsh idyll will, perhaps, emerge in the days to come. There are suggestions he was a keen mountain biker and a wetsuit hanging just inside a door indicates a man who enjoyed the great outdoors.
But after 20 years on the run, Daniel Andreas San Diego’s next home, presumably in a prison cell, will be very different.
Why did the FBI want Daniel San Diego?
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.
Who is on the FBI’s most wanted list?
Getty ImagesMr 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.
Michael J Heimbach, the FBI’s assistant director of the counter-terrorism 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.
Additional reporting by Antonia Matthews