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Posted by Harbor Guy on August 8, 2008, 10:08 am
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This article was in this morning's Key West Citizen paper. Anyone know the guy? 
Local man held for threat Secret Service: Marathon live-aboard threatened to assassinate Obama
STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
A 22-year-old Marathon man who authorities allege was keeping military gear and guns in his hotel room and car appeared in court Thursday on charges he threatened to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.
Raymond Hunter Geisel was arrested by the Secret Service on Saturday and was ordered held at the downtown federal detention center in Miami without bail Thursday by a federal magistrate, according to Ed Donovan, spokesman for the Secret Service in Washington, D.C. Geisel’s listed address was 800 35th St., which is the Marathon City Marina building.
The city-owned marina has a harbor with more than 200 mooring balls, making it one of the largest of its kind on the East Coast. Geisel was apparently living on a boat in the harbor. Chris Boyle, who owns a local water-taxi service, said he believes Geisel has been living in the harbor for about six months. “He is pretty well-known for being unstable,” Boyle said. “He has been a problem pretty much since he has been here.”
Boats tied up to mooring balls in the harbor host a mix of tourists, snowbirds and year-round residents. The harbor is typically filled to capacity in the winter. Marathon City officials were tight-lipped on Thursday regarding the incident. Deputy City Manager C.J. Geotis, who oversees operations at the harbor, said he could not comment on the matter.
A Secret Service affidavit charges that Geisel made the threat during a training class for bail bondsmen in Miami in late July. According to someone else in the 48-member class, Geisel allegedly referred to Obama with a racial epithet and continued, “If he gets elected, I’ll assassinate him myself.”
Obama was most recently in Florida on Aug. 1 and 2 but did not visit the South Florida area. Another person in the class quoted Geisel as saying that he “hated George W. Bush” and that he wanted to “put a bullet in the president’s head,” according to the Secret Service. Geisel denied in a written statement to a Secret Service agent that he ever made those threats, and the documents don’t indicate that he ever took steps to carry out any assassination. He was charged only with threatening Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee, but not for any threat against President Bush.
Geisel’s court-appointed attorney declined comment. The charge of threatening a major candidate for president or vice president carries a maximum prison sentence of five years. The Obama campaign declined comment Thursday on the alleged threat. In the interview with a Secret Service agent, Geisel said “if he wanted to kill Senator Obama he simply would shoot him with a sniper rifle, but then he claimed that he was just joking,” according to court documents.
A search of Geisel’s 1998 Ford Explorer and Holiday Inn hotel room on Northwest 36th Street in Miami uncovered a loaded 9 mm handgun, knives, dozens of rounds of ammunition including armor-piercing types, body armor, military style fatigues and a machete. The SUV, which has Maine license plates, was wired with flashing red and yellow emergency lights.
Geisel told the Secret Service he was originally from Bangor, Maine, and had been living recently in a houseboat with his girlfriend in Marathon, according to court documents. He said he used the handgun for training for the bail bondsman class, had the knives for protection and used the machete to cut brush in Maine.
Authorities in Maine said Geisel pleaded guilty to a charge of criminal threatening after a 2007 incident and spent 48 hours in a Bangor jail. Police in Hampden, a town just outside Bangor, received a complaint from Geisel’s brother on Oct. 18, 2007, that Geisel had threatened him with a knife, Hampden police Sgt. Dan Stewart said. Geisel was charged with criminal threatening and terrorizing; the second charge was later dropped. In the affidavit, the Secret Service said Geisel told agents that he suffered from psychiatric problems including posttraumatic stress disorder, but he couldn’t provide the names of any facilities where he sought treatment. 
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