Eva McLennan has been trying to process the unthinkable after finding out that her romantic partner propagated unspeakable beliefs about white supremacy as a neo-Nazi.
She describes it as a “God-sized problem.”
“It’s a God-sized problem to attack, to try to take the measure of his soul,” said McLennan. “To try to split the difference of good and evil. To split the difference of good and evil in him is hard, because he had so much of both. He’s a map of contradictions.”
McLennan told The Chief that for about two years, she was the girlfriend of Davis Wolfgang Hawke — who locally went by the alias of Jesse James — up until the point of his death. Several parties have also confirmed with The Chief that she and Hawke were a couple.
When she met Hawke, she knew him only as Jesse James. She, like everyone around him, had no idea about his past life as a founder of a hate group.
But there were peculiarities.
She knew he didn’t go by his real name. He warned her that he earned his living working in the then-obscure world of bitcoin cryptocurrency, that he was worth a lot of money, and that some people were seeking to hurt him.
He boasted he was worth hundreds of millions, though the true extent of his wealth — or possible lack thereof — never became known to her.
If they were to be together, he suggested she change her name.
McLennan recalls that she didn’t take it that seriously — so she went by a moniker even more fantastical than that of a legendary outlaw.
“I knew it was some absurd creation on his part to be this legend, Jesse James,” she said.
“I knew all of it was baloney, so because I knew that it was phony-baloney, I just one-upped him.”
She decided to call herself BigAbi Garbanzo. He would call her Abby, or Abigail.
With her new nickname, she thought she had bested him in a contest over who would have a more outrageous persona.
On Oct. 29, that would all change when James’ legal name would be revealed. On that day, homicide investigators would publicly identify her partner as the Squamish man shot dead and burned in a vehicle on June 14, 2017.
Officers said that the man she knew by the cartoonish outlaw alias was, in fact, Davis Wolfgang Hawke.
Word soon travelled, and Hawke was quickly linked to a person of the same name in the U.S. who started an American neo-Nazi hate group known as the Knights of Freedom.
While authorities in B.C. did not confirm Hawke to be the same person who had been branded a neo-Nazi down south, his father would later confirm his son — who was born as Andrew Britt Greenbaum — had died.
Hyman Greenbaum told media outlets, including The Chief, that he is offering $10,000 for information on his son’s murder.
Greenbaum, a Jewish man, was seeking clarity on what caused the death of his son, who he acknowledged was the creator of a white supremacist group.
He urges those with tips to contact the RCMP.
It’s been a whirlwind of events that has left McLennan torn, to put it lightly.
She has had to come to terms with the fact that she was in love with a person with an unspeakable past. Moreover, she still feels strongly for him, while at the same time recognizing that his views — at least the ones he had publicly expressed before meeting her — were abhorrent.
“I’m taking audio recordings of myself talking to him,” she said.
“So first they were super, super angry, like just super angry and swearing and crying and so on.”
In some cases, Hawke’s past put a new perspective on things McLennan heard him say in the past.
At one point he asked McLennan a question.
“He said, ‘I wonder if you would’ve like me back then. I had a long ponytail, I had a trench coat, black clothing, combat boots.’ He said something like that,” recalled McLennan.
“And I was just immediately like, ‘Probably not.’”
At the time she was confused. Hawke never told her about being a goth. She wondered if perhaps it was a costume. She asked why he used to dress like a “weirdo.”
McLennan remembered that he said he did so because it was intimidating to other people.
“In retrospect, I think that he was referring to his Nazi period and kind of wondering if I would’ve liked him then,” she said.
But while there were peculiarities, there are also many fond memories McLennan has of Hawke.
She knew him as a kind, affectionate person who valued her more than any amount of money he had made.
A man who idealized a fantasy of life on the lam, he had a special soft spot for outcasts and misfits, she recalled, remembering occasions of when he greeted the homeless, and how he shunned the trappings of wealth.
Hawke was not a shallow person, McLennan said, and he would choose department store sweatpants and beater vehicles over more flashy, expensive alternatives.
She said that, based on discussions with his friends in recent days, Hawke seemed to have left behind his white supremacist past.
“When he dropped it, he completely dropped it,” she said. “Whether or not that’s atonement isn’t for me to say. To me, it probably is not good enough.”
And what makes things even more complicated is that her feelings for him aren’t gone.
She paused for a minute when thinking about what she would say to Hawke if he was still around.
“Love is always risky to profess, and I would take that risk for you every day of my life,” she said.
But she is self-aware of how that sounds. McLennan said she knows that some people would liken their shared affection to how Hitler may have loved his dog.
“There’s good and there’s evil, and I don’t know what the sum of that is. I really don’t know.”
