It seems no one wants to talk about Jeremy Christian at Portland Saturday Market.
Some vendors simply don’t recall seeing the man—a vocal white supremacist and now infamous accused double murderer—posted up near Skidmore Fountain weekend after weekend hawking comic books.
Others recognized Christian the moment his mug shot went public May 27, after two brutal slayings on a MAX train the evening before.
“Everyone here remembers him,” one vendor told the Mercury on Sunday morning, indicating there was pressure not to talk about it.
Christian, according to a half-dozen vendors, was a regular fixture of an ongoing point of tension at Portland’s long-running weekend marketplace. Each week, while sanctioned booths set up in neat rows, a contingent of unlicensed vendors collects near the fountain, peddling glass pipes, ornate crafts, and, in Christian’s case, comic books.
“This illegal market is very dangerous and this kind of proves it,” says one sanctioned vendor, who insisted on remaining anonymous for fear of repercussions from market management. “Saturday Market will do absolutely nothing to run [these] people out.”
In fact, the “rogue” vendors the Mercury chatted up on Sunday morning were universally pleasant. Two didn’t recall Christian, but one man said he was there weekly.
“He’d set up at that pole,” the man said, indicating a light pole nearby. Christian never caused any issues, the man said, until roughly a week before the murders for which he’s now accused.
“Last time I saw him, he was just really angry,” the vendor said. “The energy was just really out of whack.”
Before he could say more, another vendor came over and asked the man if he was talking about “the comic book guy.” This vendor, who wouldn’t give his name, was freaked out, and warned the first man not to speak.
“You don’t know who that man is,” he said, suggesting Christian might have friends nearby and labeling him a nihilist. “That is not just one man.”
The notion that Christian was “really angry” at the market a week before the stabbings was echoed in a Facebook post that has circulated among vendors in the last week. In the May 27 post, a market vendor says Christian had been selling comics there for “the last couple of years.”
“I had not noticed him ever causing a disturbance until last Saturday when he posted up at the light pole 10 feet from my booth,” she wrote. “He struck up a conversation with a man (an African American man which is interesting as he apparently is a vocal white supremacist) and proceeded to rant loudly and swear for over an hour. From what I had to listen to, his politics were all over the place. I could swear that at times he claimed he would have voted for Bernie. He did not seem angry at the other man (who replied to rants at normal volume) or necessarily dangerous, just extremely angry in general.”
Angry ranting was apparently a feature of Christian’s personality in the days leading up to the attack he’s accused of. The Mercury witnessed his actions at an April 29 rally in which he shouted racial slurs and performed Nazi salutes (when police searched his backpack at the event, they found only comic books, Willamette Week says). And on May 25, a MAX passenger took video of Christian shouting about Christians, Muslims and Jews on the train, and spoke of stabbing people.
The following day, police say Christian began menacing two African American teens—one wearing a Muslim hijab—on a MAX Green Line train, then repeatedly stabbed three men who intervened. Two victims, Rick Best and Taliesin Namkai Meche died in the attack. The third, Micah Fletcher, survived.
Christian told authorities following his arrest that he was homeless and without any source of income.