Sacramento Area Local News

LA PAZ, Bolivia (AP) ― Bolivian police were puzzling Thursday over the possible motives of a Northern California man from El Dorado county accused of killing two people and wounding at least seven by setting off bombs in Bolivian hotels. He described himself as a Saudi Arabian lawyer, a pagan reverend, even a vampire, having adopted the name of the main character in Anne Rice's dark novels.

Triston Jay Amero -- who also goes by the name of John Scheda -- is in a Bolivian jail after being arrested yesterday. He said he was running from the law in California, where he served time in juvenile prisons, and has tried for years to renounce his U.S. citizenship while wandering around South America on a shoestring, looking for women -- and getting into more trouble. He said he was jailed in Argentina where authorities said he tried to bomb an ATM machine.

Previously known as Triston Jay Amero, he also goes by John Scheda and Lestat Claudius de Orleans y Montevideo -- Lestat being the name of Anne Rice's vampire, played by Tom Cruise in the movie. But this Lestat admitted he's not the Hollywood type. In a blog from Colombia two years ago, he described himself as "so repulsive in apearance and dress and religeous practice to the women of Colombia that even prostitutes wilnot take My Money."(sic)

Amero's mother, Dawna Scheda still lives in Placerville. CBS 13 spoke with her this morning. She told us Triston Jay Amero is his real name and that he had lived with her in Placerville, but moved out several years ago. Scheda did say he did not attend high school in Placerville, but would not elaborate further. She also told CBS 13 she's spent the morning trying to get more information about her son and the case from the U.S. State Department.

"I really have no idea what's going on," Scheda told the AP. "Of course we don't believe he would do something like this. He's my son."

The 24-year-old was detained Wednesday alongside his girlfriend Alda Ribeiro, 45, of Uruguay. Police paraded the handcuffed pair in front of the press; Lestat, slightly overweight, with a ponytail and glasses, showed no emotion before onlookers.

The American suspect had applied for a "world passport" in 2003 under the name Amero, then applied for a new one in 2004 under the name Lestat Claudius de Orleans y Montevideo, said David Gallup, president and general counsel of the World Service Authority, a Washington D.C.-based advocacy group whose passports carry none of the privileges of a nation's passport. The group's Web site contends that its passport "represents the inalienable human right of freedom of travel on planet Earth."

Details of this Lestat's travels are documented in an extensive file kept by the World Service Authority. He regularly sent copies of visas and other state documents tracking his activities in Latin America. His visas show travel to Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina and Bolivia.

"It's been a while that he's been trying to get out of the U.S. system," Gallup said. "Finally he made it to Latin America."

La Paz district attorney Jorge Gutierrez said the couple entered Bolivia overland from Argentina and perpetrated attacks in other Bolivian cities that left no victims. They also tried to bomb an ATM machine in Jujuy, in northern Argentina, police said.

In January, he applied for Bolivian residency, according to Gallup and Isaac Pemintel, Bolivia's national police chief.

He told Gallup he was passing the New Year in Potosi, Bolivia, a mining community where sticks of dynamite are sold out of stalls at a market open to all. And in the weeks before the blasts, his Uruguayan partner had been promoting a Bolivian business selling and exporting "explosives, fireworks and liquor."

She was giving away promotional calendars to businesses in La Paz, with a picture of herself naked with a cardboard box of explosives perched on her knee, according to Marta Silva, who owns a corner store across from the second hotel.

The bombings killed a Bolivian man and woman and severely damaged two low budget hotels frequented by foreign tourists in La Paz's historic city center. A U.S. citizen, identified as Jessica Wilson, was treated and released from a hospital, and the other injured people are Bolivian, police said.

Police said they managed to evacuate the second hotel before the blast hit at about 2 a.m. (0600 GMT) Wednesday, and that they thwarted the couple's plans for a third bomb attack on the Chilean consulate here on Saturday.

Authorities were left scratching their heads as to the pair's motive, finally saying it may have been "religious." Police said he told them he was a practicing pagan reverend.

He was conscious of his acts and hoped the bombings would get him wide media coverage to gain allies, district attorney Carlos Fiorilo Thursday.

President Evo Morales vented his anger earlier Wednesday, denouncing the crimes as an attack on Bolivia's democracy.

"This American was putting bombs in hotels," Morales said. "The U.S. government fights terrorism, and they send us terrorists."

But in his blog from Colombia and his communications to the Washington advocacy group, Lestat repeatedly describes himself as a loner, a "political refugee" and "the Superman of Loosers" whose strongest desire is to distance himself from the United States.

"I was once a United States Citizen, but am now stateless," he wrote in a December 2004 entry on a Yahoo users group. "You can escape from the United States very easily."

(© 2006 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)