"The feds asked me how he paid, whether he had weapons. I had no idea he had weapons," he said.

Robillard said he knows Page's name will now be inextricably linked with hate and bloodshed, "but that's not how I remember him."

"It's the racial holy war talk I always took as something he would vent about, and not act on it," he said. "I never pictured him as someone who would do anything. I thought maybe he was just saying it for attention."