Eric Frein obsessively collected military memorabilia, dismissed his fellow war re-enactors as dilettantes, and took his hobby so seriously that he spoke French during a simulated Vietnam War-era interrogation, according to a filmmaker who interviewed the man now suspected of ambushing a Pennsylvania State Police barracks.
Frein appears in an upcoming documentary about Vietnam re-enactors called "Vietnam Appreciation Day," identifying himself by name and saying that re-enactments are "about teaching the public and showing the equipment that was used, talking about the history of it all."
Frein, 31, is charged with killing Cpl. Bryon Dickson and injuring another trooper in the Sept. 12 ambush outside a rural barracks. He has managed to elude hundreds of law enforcement officials looking for him in the heavily wooded Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania.
The documentary's director, Patrick Bresnan, recalled Frein as odd and aloof, segregating himself from the other re-enactors.
Frein and two of his friends "kind of viewed the other re-enactors as, in their words, playing cowboys and Indians," Bresnan told The Associated Press on Tuesday. ""They are playing war,' is what he says, "and we're here because we want to preserve the history of war and we want to meet veterans and we want to catalogue their stories.'"
Frein made sure every detail of his look was just right, Bresnan said, and lost himself in the simulated battles that featured authentic period military rifles firing blanks.
"If you saw Eric go through the woods, it was very scary," he said. "He was absolutely serious when he was going through the brush, hunting Viet Cong at these re-enactments."
The director added he did not feel Frein posed an actual threat.
"With Eric and his friends, they are so much more educated than the average re-enactor that we figured they were too smart to harm anyone," he said.
Police have called Frein a survivalist with a vendetta against law enforcement. They believe he's hiding in the woods where he grew up and his parents still live. But there was no indication Tuesday that authorities are imminently close to catching him.