James DiMaggio killed 18 years to the day after father killed himself after taking teenage girl hostage

KIDNAPPER James DiMaggio was killed by the FBI 18 years to the day after his father, also James, killed himself in eerily similar circumstances.

KIDNAPPER James DiMaggio was killed 18 years to the day after his father, also James, killed himself while holding a teenage girl hostage, it has emerged.

DiMaggio was gunned down by FBI agents in the Idaho wilderness a week after taking Hannah Anderson, 16, hostage. Hannah was rescued and is being reunited with her father..

The similarities between the elder DiMaggio's suicide and his son's death are uncanny.

James DiMaggio Sr. was also infatuated with a 16-year-old girl - James Jr's classmate - and resorted to violence when she refused to run away with him, it was claimed.

That girl - now in her 30s - told KFMB-TV in San Diego  of the incredible resemblance between James Jr.'s demise and the life and death of his father.

"I don't believe that you're born this way, but really to follow such a path as your father,' she said. "...It was almost a déjà vu. It was weird," she said.

Just like Hannah, this woman says she was 16 back in 1988 when DiMaggio's dad professed his love to her, after breaking up with her mother.

"He had told me, that he only stuck around because he was in love with me, he wanted to take me away to a better life," she said.

After she refused, she says, DiMaggio's dad broke into her house.

She says there was no raging fire, like the one DiMaggio is accused of setting, but his dad did bring handcuffs and a shotgun, she says, and was about to kill her, her boyfriend, and her brother.

"I asked him not to kill us, and he said, don't worry you won't feel a thing."

She says, unlike Hannah, she was able to escape by asking to use the bathroom and that's when DiMaggio's dad ran off.

He ended up killing himself on August 10, 1995.

The latest case began a week ago when the charred bodies of Hannah Anderson's mother, Christina Anderson, 44, and the teen's 8-year-old brother, Ethan Anderson, were found in DiMaggio's burning house outside San Diego.

DiMaggio was close to the family. Christina Anderson's husband, Brett Anderson, has described him as a best friend and said the children thought of him as an uncle.