S34 E2: Highlander | Dirtbag Climber

Summary

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Podcast Summary: Dirtbag Climber | S34 E2: Highlander

Podcast: Dirtbag Climber (Uncover, CBC)
Episode Title: S34 E2: Highlander
Date: September 15, 2025
Host: Stephen Chua

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Brief Overview

This episode of Dirtbag Climber deepens the investigation into the unsolved murder of a rock climber known as "Jesse James"—later identified as Andrew Britt Greenbaum—discovered dead in Squamish, BC. Journalist Stephen Chua explores Greenbaum's troubled and complicated past, returning to his roots in Massachusetts to speak with family, friends, and experts in an attempt to reconstruct the identity of a man with many aliases. The episode examines Greenbaum’s formative years, early signs of social disconnection, intellectual brilliance, fascination with extremism and violence, and ultimately, his dangerous embrace of neo-Nazi ideology—despite being Jewish. The narrative paints a startling portrait of a person whose dualities and provocations grew more severe over time.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Identifying the Victim and Early Investigation

• 2017 Murder in Squamish: Jesse James found dead in a burned-out car; real identity unknown for years.
• Unmasking "Jesse": DNA connected the victim to the Greenbaum family in Medfield, MA, revealing his birth name: Andrew Britt Greenbaum.

  "The truth about Jesse was finally uncovered when police were able to match his DNA to the DNA of a family in Medfield, Massachusetts." (Stephen Chua, 01:13)

2. Family Perspectives and Dynamics

• Father's Grief: Hyman Greenbaum is revealed as Jesse/Andrew's father, still searching for answers about his son’s death.

  "Well, I mean, I wanted to know how and who. I mean, I still want to know who." (Hyman Greenbaum, 04:47)

• Memories of Childhood: Warm moments in their relationship are recalled, such as hiking and tennis.

  "Think about all the fun things we used to do, you know, the mountain climbing, the tennis, the church, that sort of stuff." (Hyman Greenbaum, 05:05)

3. Troubling Youth: Isolation, Bullying, and Precocity

• Childhood Bullying: Peggy Greenbaum describes relentless bullying and physical abuse that shaped her son’s psyche.

  "They would throw his papers, his essays and so forth in puddles... Eventually they started teasing him and then the teasing turned into physical abuse..." (Peggy Greenbaum, 07:08)

• A Mother's Insight: Peggy connects her son's anger and later personality issues to the trauma endured.

  "That's probably the biggest part of the story of how a child builds up so much anger over the years and resentment that it explodes one day..." (Peggy Greenbaum, 07:44)

4. High School Years: Chess, Social Disconnection, and Identity Shifts

• Social Outsider: Former classmates describe Britt as intelligent, eccentric, and disinterested in social activities.

  "He never went to parties, he never went to dances... But we would never invite him. Nor would he be expecting us to invite him." (Zachary & Mark Seraphim, 13:13–13:25)

• Chess Prodigy: Britt’s superior chess skills set him apart but also created friction and unease.

  "He played for something else. He played for the—I think it allowed him to demonstrate his superior tactical intelligence." (Michael DeLuca, 15:04)

• Highlander Obsession: Fascinated with immortality, weapons, and the movie "Highlander," Britt emulates fictional anti-heroes.

  "He actually thought he was a character in Highlander... it's a guy who lives, like, forever. He doesn't die…" (Zachary, 16:33)

5. Escalation into Extremism and Early Warning Signs

• Weapons and Risk: Accumulation of swords, knives, and “hit lists” alarms peers.

  "One thing... he had a hit list... of students and teachers who he carried grudges against... he showed it to us..." (Mark Seraphim, 20:36)

• Hacker and Prankster: Known for malicious computer pranks and bullying teachers with tech.

  "He was a whiz. He was a hacker extraordinaire. The man was phenomenal." (Zachary, 19:49)

• Embrace of Racism: Develops open admiration for the Confederacy and later, neo-Nazism.

  "By senior year, everybody knew about him. He was that kid who was the Neo Nazi." (Zachary, 22:32)

• Local Provocation: Distributes racist flyers and founds a “pro-white” group, the "Knights of Freedom."

  "He and a friend... distributed racist, anti-government and anti-immigrant fliers in Norwood, Massachusetts." (Marilyn Mayo, 23:45)

6. Conflicted Identity: Neo-Nazism and Jewish Heritage

• Conflict with Heritage: Despite being Jewish, Britt openly embraced white supremacy, confusing and shocking those who knew him.

  "There’s one more thing you need to know about Britt... Andrew Britt Greenbaum was Jewish." (Stephen Chua, 27:54) "I don't think he ever saw it as a conflict. I think he saw it as a rejection of his background." (Mark Seraphim, 28:02)

• Parental Reactions: Hyman seems detached, believing the ideology was a con; Peggy expresses shock and devastation.

  "For a while he was into this Nazi type stuff. I mean, I don't think he ever took that very seriously. I think it was more just to con people." (Hyman Greenbaum, 30:13)
  "I was in such shock because it's not the child that I knew." (Peggy Greenbaum, 30:06)

7. Transformation and Renaming

• Name Change: Before heading to college in South Carolina, Britt legally becomes Davis Wolfgang Hawk, foreshadowing further transformations.

  "When he turned 18... he changed his name to Davis Wolfgang Hawk." (Stephen Chua, 26:42)

8. Foreshadowing Dangerous Consequences

• Deepening Extremism and Criminality: The episode ends by previewing how Britt’s beliefs and behavior set him on a path to greater criminal activity and notoriety.

  "As Davis Wolfgang Hawk, federal authorities had other ways of describing him. Conman, scammer, domestic terrorist." (Stephen Chua, 31:00)

• Ominous Hint at Future Violence:

  "There’s a fella that came all the way from Kansas. He was another neo Nazi, and he was there to kill him." (Hyman Greenbaum, 31:27)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On bullying as root trauma:

  "That's probably the biggest part of the story of how a child builds up so much anger over the years and resentment that it explodes one day and you all of a sudden you have a monster."
  (Peggy Greenbaum, 07:44)

• On social alienation:

  "He never went to parties, he never went to dances... But we would never invite him. Nor would he be expecting us to invite him."
  (Zachary & Mark Seraphim, 13:13–13:25)

• On Britt's self-image:

  "He actually thought he was a character in Highlander... He thought he was a Highlander at one point. That was very interesting."
  (Zachary, 16:33–17:02)

• On growing extremism:

  "By senior year, everybody knew about him. He was that kid who was the Neo Nazi."
  (Zachary, 22:32)

• On neo-Nazism and Jewish identity:

  "I don't think he ever saw it as a conflict. I think he saw it as a rejection of his background."
  (Mark Seraphim, 28:02)

• On parental bewilderment and detachment:

  "Well, yeah, I mean, for a while he was into this Nazi type stuff. I mean, I don't think he ever took that very seriously. I think it was more just to con people. But no, I think he just got a kick out of it."
  (Hyman Greenbaum, 30:13)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• 00:35–03:30: Overview of murder case, identification process, and intro of Greenbaum family
• 04:21–06:51: Hyman and Peggy recall Britt’s early childhood
• 07:08–08:21: Peggy on bullying and impact on Britt’s psyche
• 11:03–16:07: High school classmates reflect on Britt’s personality, habits, and social standing
• 16:26–18:12: Highlander obsession, weapons collection, and behaviors
• 19:49–21:24: Hacking exploits and emergence of disturbing behaviors
• 21:29–23:23: Overt racism, Confederate/neo-Nazi sympathies
• 23:23–24:33: Anti-Defamation League expert details early extremist activities
• 27:54–29:16: Jewish heritage and internal contradictions
• 29:16–30:35: Parents’ reflections on discovering Britt’s neo-Nazi activities and motivations
• 31:27–End: Teaser for future episodes; Hyman recounts threats from other extremists

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Tone & Storytelling Style

The episode maintains a reflective, investigative tone, combining empathy for those impacted by Britt's actions with a candid, sometimes unsettling look at his radicalization and self-destruction. Stephen Chua purposefully centers authentic voices—family, classmates, experts—presented with minimal editorializing yet clear focus on the broader social implications and mysteries yet to be unraveled.

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Transcript

[Gavin Crawford]

Hey, I'm Gavin Crawford from the podcast Because News, a podcast for people who love to know what's going on, but realize sometimes getting your news from comedians is just a little softer than the real thing. On this week's episode, Eric Peterson, Andrew Fung, and Carly Thorne are on the panel, each vying for a spot in the End of the World Diefen Bunker.

[Zachary]

What's that?

[Gavin Crawford]

Well, it's a rebranded luxury Cold War fallout shelter in Nova Scotia. Why get depressed alone when you can get depressed with us at Because News. Get Because News wherever you get your podcast, which I'm presuming is here.

[Stephen Chua]

This is a CBC podcast. It's early July, and a heat wave is bearing down on the east coast of the US Producers Kathleen Goldhar and Chris Kelly are walking up to a house that has seen better days. Very strange house in this suburb of Boston. The houses are all far back from the winding road, and the tall evergreens offer a bit of relief from the intense heat.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

I don't think anybody's here right now.

[Stephen Chua]

They are here looking for a dead man's dad. I'll be providing an update on a homicide case that happened in 2017 out of Squamish, BC. In 2017, a rock climber known as Jesse James was found dead in his burned out in a campground in Squamish, bc, where I live. The victim's actual name remained unknown until recently. It took three years for police to reveal his true identity because, surprise, surprise, Jesse James was not his real name. The truth about Jesse was finally uncovered when police were able to match his DNA to the DNA of a family in Medfield, Massachusetts. They had reported their son missing in 2006. This connection revealed that Jesse was born Andrew Britt Greenbaum.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

Well, we can.

[Mark Seraphim]

We can pull out into the side.

[Stephen Chua]

And just wait maybe half an hour or so, eh?

[Peggy Greenbaum]

Yeah.

[Stephen Chua]

Through private investigator reports, we were able to connect the Greenbaum family to this house, but we had yet to connect with anyone who lived here. In reality, we're not even sure if Jesse's dad is still alive.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

I could also leave a note.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

Yeah, we could. Yeah.

[Stephen Chua]

So we leave a note in the mailbox, hoping a Greenbaum comes back to receive it. It reads, we would very much like to speak to you. We know this is a tragic story, but this is the only way we can keep the story in the public eye. After the initial flurry of news, when Jesse, or should I say Andrew's body was discovered, like most news stories, it kind of fell off the agenda. But when police finally figured out who he was. The story found new life. Three years after he was shot, police.

[Marilyn Mayo]

Revealed that the man known as Jesse.

[Stephen Chua]

James was actually an American running from his past. Once his real name was figured out, we learned that he had been using aliases for years. Jesse James was just one of the last. And with each new name, a new Persona, all of them very different from each other. The question now is, which one of those identities got him killed?

[Peggy Greenbaum]

You have one new voice message.

[Stephen Chua]

To answer this, we have to ask, who was he first? Who was Andrew Britt Greenbaum?

[Hyman Greenbaum]

Hello, this is. Hi, Greenbaum. I got your note in my mailbox, and, yeah, I'd be happy to talk to you about my son Brett, or Jesse James or whatever name he was going by up there.

[Stephen Chua]

I'm Steven Chua, and this is Dirtbag Climber from cbc. Uncover Chapter Two Highlander.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

Okay. Hello. Hi, how are you?

[Stephen Chua]

Hyman Greenbaum has lived alone in this house ever since his wife Peggy, died in 2019.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

Probably easiest to sit right in here.

[Stephen Chua]

Here in his living room, it sure feels like not a lot has changed over those years. The air is a bit stale, the house is tidy, but the decor is tired. And Hyman is still waiting to learn who might have killed his son.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

Well, I mean, I wanted to know how and who. I mean, I still want to know who.

[Stephen Chua]

You can still see and hear the sadness of a man who has lost his child. But there are moments when it lifts, especially when Hyman thinks about sharing some of their favorite activities.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

Think about all the fun things we used to do, you know, the mountain climbing, the tennis, the church, that sort of stuff.

[Stephen Chua]

Hyman knew his son lived outside of society's norms, even outside the law. But it's very clear that Hyman loved his boy, even the parts of him that might have, in the end, contributed to his death.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

He rented a place in Pawtucket, and while he was down there, he joined a tennis league there. And he was having a good time in the tennis league, so he asked me if I wanted to play. I said, sure. And then he says, oh, and by the way, my name there is Johnny Maverick. So I had to enter it, but I had to enter it as Hank Maverick.

[Stephen Chua]

Are you serious? Right, so for the weekend, you were.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

Johnny and Hank Maverick? Yeah. See, that's my wife, and this is my son as a baby.

[Stephen Chua]

Andrew Britt Greenbaum, their only child was born in Newport, Rhode island, in 1978, but he was known as Britt.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

My wife and I were living down there. I was working for the. Well, what's now the Naval Undersea Warfare center down there.

[Stephen Chua]

They had a stint in Lakeville, Massachusetts and then moved to the suburbs of Boston.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

We were so close. He was the only child and we were just very, very close.

[Stephen Chua]

We never got a chance to speak to Peggy, but she did talk to journalist Brian McWilliams back in 2002 about her son, whom she clearly loved very much.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

He was a very precocious, as his pediatrician told me. He had never seen a child as smart as Brett and pediatrician was in his 50s.

[Stephen Chua]

The move to the suburbs of Boston, that was Peggy's idea. She was worried about her son.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

They would throw his papers, his essays and so forth in puddles. This is a long duration thing, which is why we left Lakeville. Eventually they started teasing him and then the teasing turned into physical abuse where two boys would hold his hands down in homeroom and the other boy would hit him as hard as he could on the top of his hand. He was thrown over chairs.

[Stephen Chua]

With hindsight, Peggy seems to believe that the bullying was behind her son's personality problems later in life.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

I'm sure Britt would not want, you know, it to be known, for instance, that he was so terribly te, you know, and physically abused in grade school and right on into middle school while we lived in Lakeville. I mean, he wouldn't want the world to know that. And yet that's part, that's probably the biggest part of the story of how a child builds up so much anger over the years and resentment that it explodes one day and you all of a sudden you have a monster.

[Stephen Chua]

Britstad Hyman, on the other hand, wasn't quite as concerned.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

My wife thought he was being bullied. I never really saw it myself, but she thought he was. So she decided we should move up to Westwood.

[Stephen Chua]

This dynamic of Peggy being concerned while Hyman kind of laughs things off. It seems to have been a dynamic between the couple.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

My wife thought he was crazy, but she was a little crazy too, so I don't know.

[Stephen Chua]

With their move to Westwood, the bullying did seem to stop and Britt was able to find success in other places.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

He got into chess at an early age and my wife and I both played. And so she says he got interested because at about age 3 or 4 he was always moving the furniture around and quite creating blockades. And she thinks that started his interest in chess. So she started playing chess with him together.

[Stephen Chua]

The family would travel to tournaments.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

Well, he started beating me maybe when he was about 12. I think he's beating my wife when she was about 10. So after that he would play with us, but it was just playing.

[Stephen Chua]

Hyman describes Britt's childhood as peaceful. Throughout the house, there are pictures of Britt and his dad atop a mountain cuddling a dog, playing tennis.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

Yeah, I mean, I used to take him up to the White Mountains a lot in New Hampshire to do hikes. We did a lot of hikes together.

[Stephen Chua]

All supporting the idea that their lives were peaceful. But Peggy started to see a change in her son when he started high school.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

One day he just. When he was 16, he woke up and he was a different person. And I didn't know, of course, about a lot of the things that were going on. I had no idea. But I know now that it was 16 when all he started doing some, well, acting out, I guess is the only way to put it. Acting out in a big way.

[Mark Seraphim]

This lower building is original. That is all new.

[Zachary]

The school was here, the whole school.

[Stephen Chua]

Our team traveled to Massachusetts to try and unearth the origins and character of Andrew Britt Greenbaum. We've talked to his dad, but parents only know so much about their kids.

[Mark Seraphim]

Our graduating class was about 120, 120. Now, I think that the classes are about over 200, so they needed more space. The football field's in the same place. Right. Mark?

[Zachary]

Wasn't that football field?

[Stephen Chua]

This is an old classmate we were calling Zachary. We're not using his real name because he's worried about repercussions he'll have being associated with Greenbaum.

[Zachary]

The football field's in the same place. Yes.

[Stephen Chua]

And this is another former classmate, Mark Seraphim. Both Mark and Zachary only ever knew Andrew as Britt.

[Mark Seraphim]

We knew that he was Andrew Britt, but he identifies.

[Zachary]

He always went by Britt. Yeah, he goes, just call me Britt.

[Stephen Chua]

In 1992, at age 13, British Brit Greenbaum was the new kid joining mark and Zachary's 9th grade class at Westwood High School.

[Mark Seraphim]

He joined our class at the very beginning of freshman year.

[Zachary]

He didn't strike me as either good or bad. First impression was that maybe he was, you know, one of those quiet types that was actually, you know, super intelligent ideals. You know what I mean?

[Mark Seraphim]

Yeah, I would agree with that. He immediately gave off the impression of being quiet, shy, maybe a little introverted. I'll say nerdy, although I don't like that word. But he wasn't. No, I mean, he wasn't shy and he wasn't introverted, and I don't think he sort of engaged anyone on his own. Right. I don't think he was sort of outgoing. You engaged him. He was not shy.

[Zachary]

He was like lanky, you know, it was like very skinny.

[Mark Seraphim]

I mean, he dressed somewhat uniquely or unusually for a high school kid in the 90s. He would always wear like sort of long pants, never jeans. He always wore a button down collar shirt.

[Zachary]

He always came to school ready to go to work. It was really funny.

[Stephen Chua]

Mark and Zachary's assessment is pretty spot on. In Britt's 1996 yearbook photo, he's dressed in a suit and tie, hand under his chin. Picture an author photo on the back cover of a book. Below it reads, likes none Pet peeves cops. Right from the beginning, it seemed to Mark and Zachary that this new kid wasn't super interested in developing deep relationships with his classmates.

[Zachary]

He never went to parties, he never went to dances. He never went, right?

[Mark Seraphim]

No, not one.

[Zachary]

But we would never invite him.

[Mark Seraphim]

No, no.

[Zachary]

Nor would he be expecting us to invite him. It's not like even if we invited him, probably he wouldn't come anyway.

[Mark Seraphim]

From an in school perspective, we were all top students. We were all in the top classes. And again we had a small class. There weren't a lot of us and so we were kind of all together all the time. Right. So in school we would hang out.

[Stephen Chua]

Zachary and Mark don't remember Britt doing a lot of talking during class, but it was clear he was a smart guy, if not a bit lazy.

[Zachary]

He was intelligent.

[Mark Seraphim]

Yeah, you are.

[Michael DeLuca]

He was smart.

[Zachary]

He was smart but didn't like, you know, skyrocket, top of the class type, deal grade wise or anything. Could have been lack of effort.

[Stephen Chua]

His smarts showed up in other ways.

[Mark Seraphim]

When he came to school, we learned, I don't know how we learned, but we learned about sort of his chess sort of prowess, right?

[Zachary]

Yeah. No, Brit was above, I mean way above. Nobody could approach him on that level. Yeah, And I mean in the state. I'm not talking about just in the school.

[Stephen Chua]

There's actually a lot about Britt's chess career online through sites like uschess.org you can track tournaments. He played in his every move. Chess was one of Britt's true loves. He played it throughout his life, even in Squamish. And there's a photo of him playing in Vancouver on his Instagram. By the age of 16, he had a rating of 1800, first title. That's just a couple categories below master.

[Mark Seraphim]

It was always kind of fun, like when we would play and how quickly he would beat all of us and he would laugh about it. Sort of, like sheepishly laugh about it. We thought it was hilarious.

[Zachary]

Yeah, wealthy he was.

[Mark Seraphim]

And how quickly he would kill us.

[Zachary]

We tried to learn from it, honestly, but he was just too fast.

[Stephen Chua]

But not everyone in the chess club thought it was fun being matched against British.

[Michael DeLuca]

I played for fun, and he played for something else. He played for the. I think it allowed him to demonstrate his superior tactical intelligence.

[Stephen Chua]

This is Michael DeLuca, another classmate of Britt's. He was a freshman when Britt was a sophomore.

[Michael DeLuca]

I met him at chess club. He didn't want to play against me because I was. So he perceived me as inferior. And then eventually, after I challenged him three or four times, he, like, groaningly accepted because of protocol. Like, the club required him to accept all comers. And I was a comer. So he was listening to some heavy metal or something on his headphones and, like, barely looking at the board, and he beat me in, I'm gonna guess, under 30 moves. I think I conceded. It was embarrassing. And that was my introduction to Britt.

[Stephen Chua]

Britt's superiority wasn't just reserved for the lower grades. It extended to Mark and Zachary, too.

[Mark Seraphim]

And I feel like he kind of looked down on us.

[Stephen Chua]

All through high school, Britt tended to stand a bit to the side of social norms. In ninth grade, he just seemed a bit strange, a bit too smart, a bit socially awkward. But as Britt got older, he started to stand out in other ways.

[Zachary]

Remember, he was into movies, and he was into that one movie that. Oh, I forgot about Highlander. Highlander. That's the word.

[Mark Seraphim]

Highlander.

[Zachary]

He was into Highlander.

[Mark Seraphim]

I forgot he was into Highlander.

[Zachary]

He actually thought he was a character in Highlander. You know, the guy who. I don't know if you guys see the movie, but, like, you know, it's like, it's. He's. You know, it's a guy who lives, like, forever. He doesn't die. And the only way, like, you can kill these people is, like, by chopping their heads off.

[Stephen Chua]

Because you were born different, men will.

[Zachary]

Fear you, try to drive you away.

[Stephen Chua]

You must learn to conceal your special gift and harness your power.

[Zachary]

And he thought he was. He was a Highlander at one point. That was very interesting.

[Stephen Chua]

Living forever would become an obsession of Brits, maybe because of all the hours he spent watching moments like this in Highlander. With all the talk of being different and harnessing special powers, he took it to heart. Especially in Squamish, where he lived on a regimen of supplements and would espouse their everlasting benefits on social media and his blogs. No one has ever lived past 130 years. But nobody with my genes or diet or knowledge or supplement regimen or commitment or lifestyle has existed in the past 13 billion years. Not one person identical to me ever. He was posting about things like biohacking his body long before tech bros started hyping it on every podcast. As you'll see throughout the series, Brit or Jesse was into the manosphere before manosphere was even a word. But as a teenager, he was primarily interested in the weapons of Highlander.

[Zachary]

So he actually bought a real sword.

[Mark Seraphim]

Yeah, he collected swords.

[Zachary]

He collected swords. This was after that movie? Yeah, yeah. Apparently one person who was not part of our group, but I remember hearing in the hall, they're like, yeah, you know, Brit came out of the woods with a sword the other day. I just remember hearing that. And I just remember thinking, you know what? Yeah, for us, I'm really surprised.

[Stephen Chua]

And this interest in weapons didn't stop at a sword or two.

[Mark Seraphim]

So I was in his bedroom, and I don't know if he wanted to shoot me. His weapons collection, but that was what we did. Right. This is, I want to say, junior year now. And at this point, he would bring weapons catalogs to school, and he would flip through them in school and he would talk about them.

[Zachary]

Remember the ninja stars?

[Mark Seraphim]

Yeah. And it was always, like, samurai. It was always swords. It was never firearms. Right. But he brought me into his room, and I saw some of his weapons collection, and it freaked me out. I did feel unsafe. I remember him taking, like, a bowie knife of some sort and doing one of those things where he would slam it into his desk right in front of me.

[Stephen Chua]

Police in Westwood were also aware of Britt's affection for weapons. Once Britt got pulled over and he admitted to having a sword in the trunk, the police report says he told them it was used for, quote, training. The officers report goes on to say that Britt opened the trunk and, quote, showed me a sword approximately four feet in length. There were other reports of police finding knives on him more than once. It seemed as though whatever Britt was interested in, he was drawn to the darker side of things, including the dark side of computers.

[Zachary]

He was a whiz. He was a hacker extraordinaire. The man was phenomenal.

[Mark Seraphim]

Maliciously.

[Zachary]

He was actually very maliciously.

[Mark Seraphim]

Like, he would install software on the. On the school computers.

[Zachary]

He would remember that program. When he went, that poor teacher, he did some kind of a program where it calls this particular number every five minutes.

[Mark Seraphim]

Yeah.

[Zachary]

He, like, bullied a teacher. He bullied a teacher for a while.

[Stephen Chua]

Is that how it was?

[Mark Seraphim]

Was it through an auto robocall thing?

[Zachary]

And apparently nobody knew how to, like, you know, take it on or off or anything like that. There were a lot of tech savvy people, but I would argue he was probably the most.

[Stephen Chua]

When Zachary and Mark talk about Britt and what he was like at school, you can still hear the boys. They were impressed with his abilities and attitude, but still a little scared, maybe.

[Mark Seraphim]

One thing, that. One thing that I remember very clearly, he had a hit list of. In a notebook written down. Right. Of students and teachers who he carried grudges against. Right. This was before Columbine. So nobody. Everybody, again, just laughed at it. Right. Everybody just laughed at it. And he showed it to us. I don't think we were on it.

[Zachary]

We were on. We were not on it.

[Mark Seraphim]

Yeah, but he would show it to us. But it's one of those things where if it was after Columbine. Right. It would have been suspended or worse. Right. It would have been a serious problem. But again, back then, in our sort of more innocent days, it was one of those things. I don't know if we ever even told the administration about it, but it was one of those things that he just did that we laughed at.

[Stephen Chua]

But as the boys got older, it definitely got harder to laugh at Britt.

[Zachary]

He developed an admiration for the Confederacy.

[Mark Seraphim]

Yeah. There were a lot of racial undertones to his rhetoric.

[Stephen Chua]

Zachary told us that Britt had a Confederate flag in his room and often talked about states rights. That he railed against a program that bussed inner city kids from Boston into their school. And Mark remembers a time when Britt made a very racist comment about a student who is black.

[Zachary]

And Britt said, you know, despite him being smart, gotta send them back. I'm sorry to be just a. Blatantly, he goes, I gotta send them back to the plantations.

[Stephen Chua]

Mark says that Britt's racism stemmed from a fascination with the south, where his mother's family was from. While most of the kids in their graduating class ended up going to colleges in the Northeast, like Boston University, where Mark went, Britt applied to a school in the South.

[Zachary]

He blatantly told me, I want someplace that understands what I'm all about and a place where he can kind of implement and grow.

[Stephen Chua]

By the time Britt was applying for colleges, his views had gone even more extreme.

[Zachary]

And then from the Confederacy, I think, slowly developed kind of a interest, I guess, in World War II, and then from World War II came Nazism senior year, everybody knew about him. He was that kid who was the Neo Nazi.

[Tom Power]

You know what I love about tiff? I get to find out if new movies live up to their hype before most people even get to see a trailer. And I can tell you, if Bob Odenkirk nails his role as a small town sheriff in the movie Normal and on cue, I actually get to talk to him about it. Bob is just one of the stars coming through town for the Toronto International Film Festival. Follow Q with Tom Power. That's me, wherever you get your podcasts and I'll make sure you keep up.

[Marilyn Mayo]

I'm Marilyn Mayo and I'm a senior research fellow at ADL's center on Extremism, and I've been with ADL for 27 years.

[Stephen Chua]

Britt's racist views were not confined to his high school. When he was in grade 12 at age 17, the Anti Defamation League, one of the oldest anti hate groups in America, caught him trying to convert people to his way of thinking.

[Marilyn Mayo]

So the first time he entered our radar was really in, I believe it was in 1996. And that was when he and a friend, they distributed racist, anti government and anti immigrant fliers in Norwood, Massachusetts.

[Stephen Chua]

Britt formed a group he called the Knights of Freedom.

[Marilyn Mayo]

And at that time it wasn't a neo Nazi group. They actually called themselves a pro white political movement which they said was going to be dedicated to things like freedom and order and restoration of the traditional ideals of the nation, that kind of thing.

[Stephen Chua]

Zachary and Mark say that Brit never tried to recruit them into the Knights of freedom. But Michael DeLuca remembers a specific incident in the school library.

[Michael DeLuca]

And I was listening to Queen and I must have had the disc there. I had a discman and he asked me to take my headphones off and I did. And he asked what I was listening to and I said, Queen. And he said, Princes of the Universe is a great song. He was super excited about that. More excited than I've heard him be, really. That's a song about, you know, it's the theme song from Highlander. So it's a song about being the, the one, the chosen one, the great hero. I can't reconstruct his pitch for white supremacy, but he argued for the white master race and the white man's burden specifically. He took that angle and my reaction was sort of disbelief, like I had been well educated in the Holocaust. I was horrified.

[Mark Seraphim]

By senior year, obviously this was, this was no secret in the school who he was and what he believed. Right. Everybody from students to freshmen to the administration to teachers, they all knew, right? And teachers were legitimately concerned about him. And all of a sudden, it's senior year and everybody's applying to colleges. Part of the college application process, you needed teacher recommendations. And I remember very specifically conversations by the teachers around, what do we do? We don't want to be on the record recommending this kid for college, not knowing. Well, having an idea where that would lead. And they didn't want that to come back to them saying, how in the world did you recommend this person knowing what you knew about him for, again, for college, and going to a place where, again, theoretically, you know, intellectual discourse and intellectual freedoms and where he could sort of develop his ideologies and rhetoric and whatnot.

[Stephen Chua]

We don't know if those teachers did write him recommendations, but he did get into college, and a southern college at that. He'd be going to Wofford College in South Carolina. And when he turned 18, just before he headed off to start his new life as a college student, he'd change his name for the very first time. He changed it to Davis Wolfgang Hawk.

[Zachary]

And then he goes. He goes, that's my legal name now. You have to call me Davis. I'm like, I don't have to call you anything. You know what I mean? I said, I'm calling you Brit, you know, or I. Oh, actually, that was the only time I told him, if you want, I can call you Andrew.

[Stephen Chua]

We went to Westwood, Massachusetts, to try and go back to the beginning. As we start to build a picture of who Britt or Davis Wolfgang Hawk or Jesse James might really be, what has started to emerge is a boy who didn't fit in, who found ways to provoke and defy what society said was acceptable behavior. Instead of trying to conform, this young man seemed to go in the opposite direction. And the more we learn, the more extreme those behaviors start to seem. Because there's one more thing you need to know about Britt to understand just how shocking his adoration of Nazism is. And maybe you've already caught it. Andrew. Britt Greenbaum was Jewish.

[Mark Seraphim]

I don't think he ever saw it as a conflict. I think he saw it as a rejection of his background. I don't think he ever saw it as a conflict. I think it was just a name that he was given. But he had zero identification with that background. He had zero identification with any kind of Jewish heritage.

[Michael DeLuca]

His dad was Jewish. Greenbaum. People knew that and made fun of him for it. They said that here was A kid who believed explicitly and out loud in white supremacy and was also Jewish.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

I mean, I think it started quite a bit before my wife and I knew about it. We didn't really know about it until we found out that he was running this website down at Wofford College. But I think it's probably started. Well, it must have started before.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

Yeah, his friends in high school knew about it.

[Stephen Chua]

Yeah, yeah, it did start before. We know that from talking to the Anti Defamation League and the people who went to high school with Brit. And while I am curious to know when Hyman might have learned about his son's Nazi beliefs, I am equally curious how he, as a Jewish man, felt about it.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

Yeah, I mean, I'm of Jewish heritage. I'm not particularly religious, but my mother was Methodist. And so I kind of, you know, sometimes attended a Methodist church, sometimes attended a synagogue, sometimes neither, but.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

Yeah, but how did that sit with you?

[Stephen Chua]

Producer Kathleen Goldar asks the question that is on everyone's mind.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

Well, I mean, it didn't bother me in that sense, in that I'm not particularly religious. I mean, I know my son, when he turned 18, he went out and he changed his name to Davis Wolfgang Hawk. And I think he did that because he planned on running this neo Nazi website.

[Stephen Chua]

At the time, this shocked Peggy, I.

[Peggy Greenbaum]

Was in such shock because it's not the child that I knew, but for.

[Stephen Chua]

Hyman, it was merely a means towards an end.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

Well, yeah, I mean, for a while he was into this Nazi type stuff. I mean, I don't think he ever took that very seriously. I think it was more just to con people. But no, I think he just got a kick out of it.

[Stephen Chua]

Leaving this reporting trip, our team realized that we had only just started to crack open the mystery of who might have wanted Jesse James dead. Brit Greenbaum was bullied in elementary school, and according to those who knew him, he could be annoying and weird in high school. But so far, nothing that seemed life threatening. If you'd been in class with him, you might have called him a chess nerd. But as Davis Wolfgang Hawk, federal authorities had other ways of describing him. Conman, scammer, domestic terrorist. As the man formerly known as Britt left Massachusetts for college, his radical beliefs would expand, as would his audience.

[Hyman Greenbaum]

We were up in Chesney, up there, and there's a fella that came all the way from Kansas. He was another neo Nazi, and he was there to kill him.

[Stephen Chua]

That's next time on Dirtbag Climb. Tune in next week for an all new episode of Dirtbag Climber. Or you can listen ahead to the full series now by subscribing to CBC True Crime Premium on Apple Podcasts or by subscribing to the CBC True crime channel on YouTube. Links in the Description Dirtbag Climber is a production of Lark Productions and Kelly and Kelly for CBC Podcasts. The show is hosted by me, Stephen Chua. It's written and produced by Kathleen Goldhar and Chris Kelly. The showrunner is Kathleen Goldhar. Producers are Karen Bracken and Tina Apostolopoulos Moniz associate producer Hadil Abdel Nabi sound design by Paul Tedeschini and Chris Kelly. Tamara Black is our coordinating producer. Original music by Chris Kelly. Our senior producer is Jeff Turner. Our digital producer is Roshni Nair. The series was developed by Ainslie Vogel, Gene Parsons and Kristen Boichuk. Additional reporting by Yvette Brand for Kelly and Kelly Executive Producer Chris Kelly executive producer Pat Kelly business affairs producer Lauren Berkovich for Lark Productions Executive producer Aaron Haskett vp, Business affairs Tex Antonucci for cbc. Executive producers are Cecil Fernandez and Chris Oak. Tanya Springer is the senior manager and Arif Narrani is the Director of CBC Podcasts. For more CBC Podcasts go to CBC capodcasts.