James Wenneker von Brunn (July 11, 1920 – January 6, 2010) was an American man who perpetrated the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting in Washington, D.C. on June 10, 2009. Security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns was killed in the shooting, and von Brunn was wounded by two security guards who returned fire. Von Brunn was named the prime suspect in the shooting, and was charged with first-degree murder and firearms violations. While awaiting trial, von Brunn died on January 6, 2010.

Von Brunn was a white supremacist and Holocaust denier who had written numerous antisemitic essays, created an antisemitic website called The Holy Western Empire, and is the author of a 1999 self published book, Kill the Best Gentiles, which praises Adolf Hitler and denies the Holocaust. He was also an Obama citizenship conspiracy theorist.

After the shooting, traces of his personal writings and works online were deleted from many websites, including AskArt.com, FreeRepublic and his personal user page on Wikipedia where he was indefinitely blocked, the latter said to constitute "a violation of policy of hate speech". He also made posts expressing his opposition to the Iraq War, and felt that the September 11 attacks were an "inside job".

Life

Von Brunn was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the first of two children to Elmer von Brunn and Hope Wenneker. He had a younger sister named Alice. His father was a native of Houston, Texas, and a superintendent at the Scullin Steel Mill in Houston during World War II. Hope von Brunn was an accomplished pianist, piano teacher, and homemaker. The family spent summer months with Hope's family in Piasa Township, Illinois, as well as road trips to Houston when James was an adolescent. During his childhood, James was noted by school teachers and family for his artistic talents, and asked for an oil paint set for his seventh birthday. His first aspiration was to become a famous painter.

Von Brunn enrolled in Washington University in St. Louis in August 1938, and received his Bachelor of Science degree in journalism in April 1943. During his time at the university, von Brunn was said to have been president of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon chapter, and a varsity football player. He served in the United States Navy from 1943 to 1957, and was the commanding officer of PT boat 159 during the Pacific Theatre of World War II, receiving a commendation and three battle stars.

Von Brunn had worked as an advertising executive and producer in New York City for twenty years. In the late 1960s, he relocated to the Eastern Shore of Maryland where he continued to do advertising work and resumed painting.

Von Brunn's arrest history dates back at least as far as the middle 1960s. In 1968, he received a six-month jail sentence in Maryland for fighting with a sheriff during an incident at the county jail. He had earlier been arrested for driving under the influence following an altercation at a local restaurant in 1966.

Von Brunn was arrested in 1981 for attempted kidnapping and hostage-taking of members of the Federal Reserve Board after approaching the Federal Reserve's Eccles Building armed with a revolver, knife, and sawed-off shotgun. Von Brunn later described his actions as a "citizen's arrest for treason." He reportedly complained of "high interest rates" during the incident and was disarmed without any shots being fired, after threatening a security guard with a .38 caliber pistol. He reportedly claimed he had a bomb, which was found to be only a device designed to look like a bomb.

He was convicted in 1983 for burglary, assault, weapons charges, and attempted kidnapping. Von Brunn's sentence was completed by September 15, 1989, after he had served six and a half years in prison. After he was released he successfully tested for and joined Mensa International, the High-IQ Society; however, he was eventually dropped from membership for failing to pay his annual dues.

Von Brunn was a member of the now-defunct American Friends of the British National Party, a group that raised funds in the United States for the far right and "rights for whites" British National Party (BNP). The group had been addressed on at least two occasions by Nick Griffin, an ex-member of the British National Front and chairman of the BNP. A BNP spokesperson claimed after the shooting that the party had "never heard of" von Brunn.

In 2004 and 2005 he lived in Hayden Lake, Idaho, the town where Aryan Nations, a neo-Nazi organization led by Richard Girnt Butler, was based until 2001. He was living in Annapolis, Maryland at the time of the 2009 incident.

The shooting

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting was a shooting at that nation's memorial to The Holocaust in Washington, D.C. on June 10, 2009, at 12:50 p.m. Museum Special Police Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns, 39, was shot, and later died from his injuries. Suspect James Wenneker von Brunn, 88, was charged in federal court on June 11, 2009, with first-degree murder and firearms violations.

On July 29, 2009, von Brunn was indicted on seven counts, including four which made him eligible for the death penalty. In September 2009, a judge ordered von Brunn to undergo a competency evaluation to determine whether or not he could stand trial. While awaiting his trial, von Brunn died on January 6, 2010.

According to the six-page indictment, von Brunn entered the building and shot Museum Special Police Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns, who died from his injuries. Von Brunn was a white supremacist and Holocaust denier who had previously been arrested and convicted for entering a federal building with various weapons in 1981 while trying to place the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, who he considered to be treasonous, under citizens arrest.

Timeline of events

At about 12:49 p.m., the 88-year-old James von Brunn drove his car to the 14th Street entrance of the museum. Von Brunn entered the museum when Museum Special Police Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns opened the door for him. Authorities said he raised a .22-caliber rifle and shot Special Police Officer Johns, who later died of his injuries at the George Washington University Hospital.

Two other Special Police Officers stationed with Officer Johns, Harry Weeks and Jason "Mac" McCuiston, returned fire, wounding von Brunn. According to police officers at the scene, a third person was injured by broken glass but refused treatment at the hospital.

The Washington Post reported that "if it weren't for the quick response of the private guards on duty, more people could have been killed or wounded." Mayor Adrian Fenty stated that the officers' efforts "to bring this gunman down so quickly ... saved the lives of countless people... This could have been much, much worse." Inside, the museum was crowded with visiting schoolchildren.

The D.C. Metropolitan Police, United States Park Police and the FBI Terrorism Task Force immediately surrounded the museum. After the shooting, the nearby U.S. Department of Agriculture Administration Building, Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and the USDA's Sidney R. Yates Federal Building were closed. Portions of 14th Street and Independence Avenue in the Southwest quadrant were closed until later in the night. The car driven by von Brunn was found double parked in front of the museum and tested for explosives.

Police said they found a notebook on von Brunn that contained a list of District locations, including the Washington National Cathedral; they dispatched bomb squads to at least 10 sites. The notebook also contained this passage, signed by von Brunn: "You want my weapons — this is how you'll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews. Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do. Jews captured America's money. Jews control the mass media. The 1st Amendment is abrogated henceforth...."

The FBI and Washington, D.C. police chief Cathy L. Lanier said it appears von Brunn was acting alone at the time of the shooting, and the FBI said it had no knowledge of any threat against the museum. The museum's director of security said they receive threats, but "nothing this significant recently".

The Holocaust museum has been a focal point of antisemitism and Holocaust denial since it was established in 1993. In 2002, federal prosecutors said two white supremacists plotted to blow up the museum with a fertilizer bomb, as was used to blow up a federal building in Oklahoma in 1995.

Possible motives

Several news agencies have noted the timing of the June 10 shooting came shortly after Obama's June 5 visit to and speech at the Buchenwald concentration camp, and that "President Obama’s recent visit to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp, in Germany, may have set off the shooter."

On his website, von Brunn stated that his conviction in the 1980s was by "a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys" and that he was "sentenced to prison for eleven years by a Jew judge." A Court of Appeals denied his appeal.

Fatality

Special Police Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns (October 4, 1969 – June 10, 2009), a Temple Hills, Maryland native, was an employee of Wackenhut who was, at the time of the shooting, stationed at the door of the museum when von Brunn entered with a rifle and shot him. He later died at the George Washington University Hospital. His funeral was held on June 19, 2009 at Ebenezer AME Church in Fort Washington, Maryland, with 2,000 attendees, and he was subsequently interred. Johns was married to Zakiah Johns (since May 2008) with a son, Stephen Johns, Jr., and two stepsons, Jeffrey Pollard and Tysean Lawson-Bey. The American Jewish Committee established a memorial fund for the family.

James W. von Brunn died in prison while awaiting trial on January 6, 2010. According to a statement by von Brunn's attorney, von Brunn had “a long history of poor health,” including sepsis and chronic congestive heart failure.

Witnesses and events at the museum

Present at the museum during the shooting was former United States Secretary of Defense William Cohen, awaiting his wife Janet Langhart, for the premiere of Langhart's one-act play, Anne and Emmett. The play imagines a conversation between two teenagers, Nazi victim Anne Frank and Jim Crow victim Emmett Till. Her play was to be presented in honor of the eightieth anniversary of Anne Frank's birth.

Imprisonment and death

After the shooting, federal authorities raided his apartment and seized a rifle, ammunition, computers, a handwritten will, and a painting of Jesus Christ standing adjacent to Adolf Hitler. The FBI also stated it discovered child pornography on one of the seized computers.

Shooting suspect von Brunn was charged in federal court on June 11, 2009, with first-degree murder and firearms violations; he pled not guilty to all of the charges. On July 29, 2009, von Brunn was indicted on seven counts, including four which made him eligible for the death penalty. In September 2009, a judge ordered von Brunn to undergo a competency evaluation to determine whether or not he could stand trial.

Von Brunn had the Federal Bureau of Prisons ID# 07128-016 and was incarcerated at the Federal Correctional Complex in Butner, North Carolina. On January 6, 2010, von Brunn died in a hospital located near the prison. The cause of death was natural causes, not the injury he received from the guards’ returning fire.

Reaction

The Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. condemned the attack. U.S. President Barack Obama said, "This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms".

The Southern Poverty Law Center, Anti-Defamation League, and FBI stated they had been monitoring von Brunn's internet postings, but were unable to take action because his comments had not crossed the line from free speech into advocating violence.

On June 11, 2009, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington and the InterFaith Conference of Metropolitan Washington led a prayer vigil which took place in front of the museum. Organizers said the vigil was a time to honor Stephen Johns, the slain officer, as well as a time to reflect upon the motivations which led to the shooting spree. Approximately 100 people attended the event, including officials from the Israeli and German embassies. The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned the attack as well. When the museum reopened on June 12, 2009, Director Sara Bloomfield said attendance was normal or even higher than usual. Many visitors said their attendance was a statement against hate and intolerance. A 17-year-old girl who was in the museum the day of the shooting stated, "It's important to come back, because if you don't, they win. It's a form of terrorism."

In a statement, von Brunn's son, Erik, expressed sorrow and horror about the shooting. In an article he wrote for ABC news, he stated:

"My father's beliefs have been a constant source of verbal and mental abuse my family has had to suffer with for many years. His views consumed him, and in doing so, not only destroyed his life, but destroyed our family and ruined our lives as well. For a long time, I believed this was our family's cross to bear. Now, it is not only my families lives that are in shambles, but those who were directly affected by what he did; especially the family of Mr. Johns, who bravely sacrificed his life to stop my father. I cannot express enough how deeply sorry I am it was Mr. Johns, and not my father who lost their life yesterday. It was unjustified and unfair that he died, and while my condolences could never begin to offer appeasement, they, along with my remorse is all I have to give. While my father had every right to believe what he did, by imposing those beliefs on others he robbed them of their free will. His actions have taken opportunities away from many people and forced decisions unexpected, not warranted, to be made that otherwise would not have been necessary. For the extremists who believe my father is a hero: it is imperative you understand what he did was an act of cowardice. To physically force your beliefs onto others with violence is not brave, but bullying. Doing so only serves to prove how weak those beliefs are. It is simply desperation, reminiscent of a temper tantrum of a child that cannot get his way. Violence is a cop out; an easy answer for an ignorant problem. His actions have undermined your 'movement,' and strengthened the resistance against your cause. He should not be remembered as a brave man or as a hero, but a coward unable to come to grips with the fact he threw his and his families lives away for an ideology that fostered sadness and anguish."

The younger von Brunn, who was 32 at the time of the 2009 shooting, did not meet his father until he was nearly 11 years old, after the elder von Brunn completed his prison term for the Federal Reserve incident.

Wikipedia.org

Holocaust Museum shooter James von Brunn had history of hate

James von Brunn was a Navy officer during World War II who once servied prison time for trying to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve board. After he got out of prison, he became a regular in white-supremacist circles and soon had his own file with watch groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. He wrote an anti-Semitic text and maintained his conspiracy theories on the Web site.

By Theo Emery and Liz Robbins - The New York Times

June 12, 2009

WASHINGTON — Stephen Johns opened a door of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday, witnesses said, probably thinking James von Brunn just needed help to get inside.

Johns apparently did not notice von Brunn, 88, whose anti-Semitic and white-supremacist views were known to federal authorities, was carrying a .22-caliber rifle at his side. Von Brunn stepped into the lobby, raised the weapon and shot Johns in the upper chest at close range, law-enforcement officials said Thursday. Johns died a few hours later.

Two armed security guards fired back, wounding von Brunn in the face and sending tourists diving for cover.

Von Brunn, who is in critical condition at George Washington University Hospital, was charged with murder Thursday in the death of Johns, 39, of Temple Hills, Md.

The victim, who worked for the private security company Wackenhut Services, had been assigned to the museum for six years. He has an 11-year-old son and recently celebrated his first wedding anniversary with his second wife.

Von Brunn was also charged with possessing and shooting a firearm in a federal building. FBI authorities are pursuing civil-rights and hate-crimes charges against von Brunn, who is thought to have acted alone.

A notebook that law-enforcement officers discovered in von Brunn's 2002 red Hyundai, which he had double-parked outside the museum's entrance Wednesday, appeared to offer insight into his mind-set.

"You want my weapons; this is how you'll get them," von Brunn wrote in a note he had signed, according to the arrest affidavit.

"The Holocaust is a lie," the note read. "Obama was created by Jews. Obama does what his Jew owners tell him to do. Jews captured America's money. Jews control the mass media."

The shooting was the third high-profile anti-Semitic incident in the past five weeks. In early May, a Wesleyan University student of Jewish heritage was fatally shot on the Connecticut campus by a suspect who had written in his journal that he thought it was "okay to kill Jews."

In mid-May, four men were arrested in the attempted bombing of two Bronx synagogues.

The assistant FBI director for the District of Columbia, Joseph Persichini Jr., said Thursday that the bureau knew von Brunn had an "established Web site that expressed hatred of African Americans and Jews," but he had not been under investigation.

Von Brunn took his rants May 29 to the Naval Academy in Annapolis to complain about increased minority enrollment, which will be about 35 percent for the Class of 2013. He walked into the administration building and wanted a meeting with academy officials, said spokesman Cmdr. Joe Carpenter.

Von Brunn, who was a Navy officer during World War II, never got the meeting and was not considered a threat, Carpenter said.

Von Brunn boasted of having spent a year in jail for fighting a sheriff's deputy in Maryland in 1968 and, a quarter-century later, of serving prison time for trying to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve board.

After he got out of prison, he became a regular in white-supremacist circles and soon had his own file with watch groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. He wrote an anti-Semitic text and maintained his conspiracy theories on the Web site.

The St. Louis native worked in advertising in New York City and moved in the late 1960s to Maryland's Eastern Shore, where he stayed in advertising and tried to make a mark as an artist.

Twice divorced, von Brunn, was living in an Annapolis apartment with his son from his second marriage, Erik von Brunn, 32, and the younger von Brunn's fiancée. The couple leased the apartment, and Brunn rented a room for $400 a month.

Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.

Von Brunn Charged In Holocaust Museum Slay

CBSnews.com

June 11, 2009

An 88-year-old white supremacist was charged with murder Thursday, a day after officials said he left a signed anti-Semitic screed in his car outside the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, then gunned down a security guard who opened the door to let him in.

Von Brunn could face the death penalty, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Orr in Washington.

Guard Stephen T. Johns was shot to death Wednesday by Holocaust denier James von Brunn, who left his car outside an entrance to the museum and walked in holding a rifle at his side, District Police Chief Cathy Lanier said at a news conference.

Police have a surveillance tape showing that von Brunn double-parked this red car in front of the museum and walked toward the building with a 22 caliber rifle at his side. Johns began to open the door to let von Brunn in and was immediately shot. Two other security guards returned fire. Spent cartridges reveal Von Brunn fired three shots, the officers eight, Orr reports.

In his car, officers found a notebook with a handwritten note that read, "You want my weapons - this is how you'll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews," according to a court affidavit.

Von Brunn's .22-caliber rifle held 10 more bullets and investigators found more in his car and at an apartment in Annapolis, Md., that he shared with son and his son's fiancee.

The museum remained closed Thursday and flags flew at half-staff in honor of Johns, 39, who had worked at the museum for six years. Bouquets of roses, lilies and other flowers were left outside the museum walls. The entrance where the shooting occurred was still cordoned off by police tape.

Museum Director Sara Bloomfield said Johns "died heroically in the line of duty."

"To me he was a pretty great guy. And when I heard about what happened I was just sad. And mad at the guy who shot him," Johns' 11-year-old son, Stephen Johns Jr. told Orr Thursday.

Von Brunn, who tried to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve decades ago, remained in critical condition Thursday at a Washington hospital. A self-described artist, advertising man and author, he wrote an anti-Semitic treatise, "Kill the Best Gentiles," decried "the browning of America" and claimed to expose a Jewish conspiracy "to destroy the White gene-pool." He also wrote of a lifetime of seething anger.

"It's better to be strong than right," he said in one of his dark online postings, "unless you like dying. Crowds hate good guys."

Von Brunn was charged with murder and killing in the course of possessing a firearm at a federal facility. Authorities said Thursday hate crime charges were also possible.

"We know what Mr. von Brunn did yesterday at the Holocaust museum. Now it's our responsibility to determine why he did it," said Joseph Persichini, assistant director of the Washington FBI field office.

The Homeland Security Department said the shooting does not appear to have a connection to terrorism, according to a joint Homeland Security and FBI assessment, though Persichini characterized it as "domestic terrorism."

He said authorities have contacted or visited any people or places named in documents found in von Brunn's car. Authorities searched the red 2002 Hyundai for explosives, but found none.

Von Brunn was sentenced in 1983 for attempted armed kidnapping and other charges in his 1981 bid to seize Fed board members. A guard captured him outside the room where the board was meeting. He had a revolver, sawed-off shotgun and knife in a bag with him. He served more than six years in prison.

"The subject resides in my memory like old road-kill," he wrote of the capture. "What could have been a slam-bang victory turned into ignoble failure."

Von Brunn is a native of St. Louis, a World War II veteran who served in the Navy, worked in advertising in New York City and moved to Maryland's Eastern Shore in the late 1960s, where he stayed in advertising and tried to make a mark as an artist.

Public records show that in 2004 and 2005 he lived briefly in Hayden, Idaho, for years home to the Aryan Nations, a racist group run by neo-Nazi Richard Butler.

Civil rights groups were familiar with his history.

"We've been tracking this guy for decades," said Heidi Beirich, director of research for the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, which tracks hate crimes. "He thinks the Jews control the Federal Reserve, the banking system, that basically all Jews are evil."

At the White House, just blocks away from the museum, President Barack Obama said: "This outrageous act reminds us that we must remain vigilant against anti-Semitism and prejudice in all its forms. No American institution is more important to this effort than the Holocaust Museum, and no act of violence will diminish our determination to honor those who were lost by building a more peaceful and tolerant world."

Von Brunn's Internet writings say the Holocaust was a hoax. "At Auschwitz the 'Holocaust' myth became Reality, and Germany, cultural gem of the West, became a pariah among world nations," he wrote.

Von Brunn had claimed on his Web site that he had a long-standing relationship with Willis Carto, a publisher of books denying the Holocaust.

Carto flatly denied that in a phone interview, saying he had not heard from von Brunn in years and never had any relationship with him.

In fact, Carto said, in recent months von Brunn "has spent a great deal of anger" attacking American Free Press, the weekly newspaper Carto publishes, "saying these papers and the people who published them were too soft on the Jews."

The attack was the third in a recent wave of unsettling shootings that appeared to have political or ethnic underpinnings.

A 23-year-old Army private, William Andrew Long, was shot and killed outside a recruiting office this month in Arkansas and a fellow soldier was wounded. The suspect, a Muslim convert, has said he considers the killing justified because of the U.S. military presence in the Middle East.

Late last month, abortion provider Dr. George Tiller was shot to death in his church.

Johns, the security guard killed Wednesday, was black.

Only last week, Mr. Obama visited the site of a German concentration camp at Buchenwald in Germany where he noted, "There are those who insist the Holocaust never happened." He added, "This place is the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts, a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history."

In a statement from Israel's government, Information and Diaspora Minister Yuli Edelstein said the shooting was "further proof that anti-Semitism and Holocaust denial have not passed from the world."

And the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a prominent American Muslim organization, said in a statement, "We condemn this apparent bias-motivated attack and stand with the Jewish community and with Americans of all faiths in repudiating the kind of hatred and intolerance that can lead to such disturbing incidents."

Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center said von Brunn's Web site has long been listed as a hate site.

"We've been tracking this guy for decades," said Heidi Beirich, director of research for the law center's Intelligence Project, which tracks hate crimes. "He thinks the Jews control the Federal Reserve, the banking system, that basically all Jews are evil."

The Rev. David Ostendorf, executive director of the Center for a New Community in Chicago, a national civil rights group, said von Brunn has described in his own writings a long relationship with Willis Carto, founder of the Liberty Lobby, the Spotlight Newspaper and a well-known white supremacist and anti-Semite.