Shootout at the Holocaust Museum in DC

[CountDeMoney]

Ah yes, another famous Marylander.

Suspect has deep Maryland ties, history of anti-Semitic activities

By Scott Calvert, Brent Jones and Paul West

Baltimore Sun reporters

June 11, 2009

James von Brunn, the 88-year-old Annapolis resident suspected of killing a security guard Wednesday at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, was no stranger to groups that track the world of racially motivated hatred.

The Anti-Defamation League labeled him "a longtime white supremacist and anti-Semite" who self-published a book espousing racist beliefs and posted to Web sites that deny the Holocaust occurred.

"Time to FLUSH all 'Holocaust' Memorials," read one of his posts in 2004, according to the league.

Yet those watchdogs said Wednesday they had no reason to expect what happened yesterday, when, police say, von Brunn - a once-successful artist with deep Maryland ties - walked into the museum at 12:50 p.m. and fatally shot guard Stephen T. Johns.

"We are aware of his past, but he's not a name that immediately came to mind," said Arthur C. Abramson, executive director of the Baltimore Jewish Council.

A World War II veteran and former advertising man, von Brunn's 1950 wedding to the daughter of a novelist garnered a mention in The New York Times. He once illustrated a book on 19th-century quail and grouse hunting, and expressed deep pride in his German-Austrian roots.

And as Wednesday showed, von Brunn could be "the worst nightmare that law enforcement has," said David Friedman, director of the ADL's Washington office. "He's an individual who is highly motivated by hate, who is functioning essentially, to our knowledge, on his own, who without any warning, goes off."

Despite von Brunn's "vociferous" expression of his views, Friedman said, "no one knew that he was going to, for whatever reason, engage in not simply hating but acting out on his hate."

An acquaintance of von Brunn's told The Washington Post that he was struggling financially after his Social Security payments were cut, and von Brunn suspected it was due to the views he shared online. In an e-mail obtained by the newspaper, von Brunn wrote, "It's time to kill all the Jews."

Records show that he had long resided in Easton, a historic town on the Eastern Shore. For the past two years, records show, he has lived in Annapolis.

Two years ago, von Brunn confided he needed income when he asked Mike Weller for work at his Easton manufacturing business. "He looked down-and-out," Weller said, "very scraggly looking."

Harold O'Llynnger, 82, who lives across from von Brunn at an Annapolis apartment complex, said he and his girlfriend had him over for a drink three months ago. Asked if he made racist comments, O'Llynnger said, "The only thing he said was that the media covered the Holocaust too much."

But O'Llynnger's girlfriend was so appalled by the comment that she left the apartment, he said.

Nearly three decades ago, von Brunn committed an act that bore similarities to Wednesday's shooting, albeit with no injuries. In December 1981, he walked into the Federal Reserve Board's Washington headquarters with weapons and a plan to confront the bank's governors, according to news accounts.

Carrying a revolver, a hunting knife and a sawed-off shotgun in a satchel, von Brunn raced past a guard to the second floor, where the board was meeting. He pulled the shotgun on another guard in the corridor leading to the boardroom.

The guard called for help, and von Brunn was overpowered before anyone got hurt. News accounts said he told police he wanted to focus attention on the board's responsibility for high interest rates and the overall poor state of the economy.

He was convicted in 1983 of attempted kidnapping of board members, among other charges. He served more than six years in prison.

Von Brunn later asserted on an anti-Semitic Web site he created that he had "attempted to place the treasonous Federal Reserve Board of Governors under legal, non-violent, citizens arrest."

To some who knew him, von Brunn's racial hatred was all-consuming. A woman identified as von Brunn's ex-wife told the New York Daily News on Wednesday that "it's all he would talk about." The woman, who asked the newspaper not to identify her, said he would become "very angry and abusive" when she questioned him.

"He would talk about what the world would become in 20 or 30 years - that most of the country would be governed by black governors and that the Jewish people owned the media," she said. "That's why I divorced him - because he was eaten alive with a cancer with this matter."

Von Brunn once arrived at a downtown Easton art gallery after observing the wedding of a mixed-race couple nearby, and he was livid, said Troika Gallery co-owner Laura Era.

"He was furious about that," Era said. This happened not long after the gallery opened 12 years ago. "It was not good behavior to have in a fine art gallery. We told him he can't talk that way in here."

Von Brunn asked the gallery to display the patriotic art he had painted - his motifs included bald eagles, American flags and cowboys - but the owners rejected his request. The art was "not demonic or vile," Era said, just not "up to the quality that we would carry" in the gallery.

"He got very angry and went stalking out," she said.

His Maryland ties go back to 1950, when he married Patricia Beverley-Giddings, whose family owned an Eastern Shore farm. (She was not the ex-wife quoted by the Daily News.) His wife's father, Arthur Beverley-Giddings, was a novelist with homes in New York and Schoolridge Farm in Somerset County.

In 1963, a Baltimore Sun article reported on his elevation to president of the Academy of the Arts in Easton. That year's show featured two of his paintings. Both were of tidewater scenes in Talbot County - "his favorite subject matter," according to the article. One showed watermen preparing for a day on the water. In an accompanying photo, a smiling von Brunn is wearing a bow tie, his hair swept back.

Five years later, in 1968, von Brunn was sentenced to six months in the Dorchester county jail for assaulting a sheriff, according to a Sun article.

Von Brunn, living in Trappe at the time, was arrested after police said he drove across a restaurant lawn and failed a sobriety test. Von Brunn hit the sheriff because he did not want his picture taken while being booked, the article said.

The article said von Brunn was an alumnus of Washington University in his native St. Louis, and served in World War II as a Navy lieutenant. He was working for the New York advertising firm Benton & Bowles Inc. at the time.

On Web sites, von Brunn has proudly detailed his German-Austrian roots. His father, Elmer, was superintendent of a Missouri steel mill, he said, and his mother, Hope Wenneker von Brunn, was a homemaker and an "accomplished pianist."

According to the Anti-Defamation League, von Brunn's "magnum opus" was a self-published anti-Semitic book called Kill the Best Gentiles. He has written many anti-Semitic essays and in recent years maintained an anti-Semitic Web site, holywesternempire.org.

Friedman, of the Anti-Defamation League, visits the Holocaust museum twice a week and helps conduct training sessions for many area police departments, including those in Baltimore and Baltimore County. "For people who are fueled by the hatred of Jews and the Holocaust," he said, "the terrible reality is that this museum is a symbol of what they hate most."

Baltimore Sun reporter Nicole Fuller and researcher Paul McCardell contributed to this article.

[KRonn]

The guard has died.

That's so sad. Just a guy doing his job, as is anyone doing a similar job, like a cop or such.   

[Alcibiades]

God, why do you have to make everything gay Mart?   

[jimmy olsen]

Speaking of anti-semites, look who just popped up.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31246353/

Wright says 'Jews' keeping him from Obama
President's former pastor hasn't spoken to Obama since he inauguration

updated 25 minutes ago

HAMPTON, Virginia - President Barack Obama's controversial former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, is blaming "them Jews" for keeping him from speaking to the president.

Wright, the former pastor of Chicago's Trinity United Church of Christ, said he hasn't spoken to Obama since he became president.

"Them Jews ain't going to let him talk to me. I told my baby daughter that he'll talk to me in five years when he's a lame duck, or in eight years when he's out of office," Wright told the Daily Press of Newport News following a Tuesday night sermon at the 95th annual Hampton University Ministers' Conference.

"They will not let him to talk to somebody who calls a spade what it is. ... I said from the beginning: He's a politician; I'm a pastor. He's got to do what politicians do."

Obama was a longtime member of the church but resigned from it and cut ties with Wright after videos surfaced during the presidential campaign showing Wright's sometimes provocative sermons. Wright's incendiary comment included shouting "God damn America" and accusing the government of creating AIDS.

In the interview Tuesday, Wright also criticized Obama for not sending a U.S. delegation to the World Conference on Racism held recently in Geneva, Switzerland, saying Obama chose not to for fear of offending Jews and Israel.

"Ethnic cleansing is going on in Gaza. Ethnic cleansing (by) the Zionist is a sin and a crime against humanity, and they don't want Barack talking like that because that's anti-Israel," Wright said.

The White House declined to comment to the Associated Press on Thursday on Wright's remarks. A phone message left by the AP at Wright's home wasn't immediately returned.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.

[Valmy]

"Ethnic cleansing is going on in Gaza. Ethnic cleansing (by) the Zionist is a sin and a crime against humanity, and they don't want Barack talking like that because that's anti-Israel," Wright said.

Poor Israel.  Even when they forcibly expel their own settlers from someplace they are still ethnically cleansing Palestinians.

The blind hatred of Jews is just creepy.

[KRonn]

"Ethnic cleansing is going on in Gaza. Ethnic cleansing (by) the Zionist is a sin and a crime against humanity, and they don't want Barack talking like that because that's anti-Israel," Wright said.

Poor Israel.  Even when they forcibly expel their own settlers from someplace they are still ethnically cleansing Palestinians.

The blind hatred of Jews is just creepy.

Yeah, and the trend seems for the hatred to be getting worse.   

[Valmy]

Yeah, and the trend seems for the hatred to be getting worse.   

It just drives me nuts.  Nobody was talking about Gaza until Israel actually did something good and pulled their people out.  Now Gaza is used as a symbol of Jewish evil worldwide and we actually expect to get more concessions out of Israel?  It is almost like some sort of demonic force has people doing everything they can to stop any progress in the Palestinian-Israel conflict.

I can get critisizing Israel when they do something bad, but Israel has taken far more shit for actually doing something positive than they ever did settling Gaza in the first place.  Unbelievable.

And then these same fucks actually claim they care about Palestinians.

[KRonn]

Yes, kind of concerning that Israel gets so much demonizing, while we see the radicals of the region getting more of a pass. And the radical type ideologies have been the ones most threatening the region, and/or spreading elsewhere. However, I think lately we see nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia a lot more discerning about supporting Palestinians/Hamas, since Iran is a major backer of Hamas and Iran really concerns nations of the region, and that concern has been increasing. 

[Hansmeister]

Left wing terrorists strike again.

Fixed that for you.

[Jaron]

Yeah, holocaust denial and Jew hate are left wing hallmarks.

[DGuller]

Left wing terrorists strike again.

Fixed that for you.

How was he a left wing terrorist?

[Hansmeister]

Yeah, holocaust denial and Jew hate are left wing hallmarks.

Yes, actually they are.  Berkeley is famous for its anti-semitic rallies, and it ain't conservatives that march on that campus.  Indeed, the whole divesture movement, "zionism is racism", "neocon" conspiracy mongering, and justifying terrorist attacks against jews is a hallmark of the left.

Von Brunn believed Bush was behind 9-11, hated Foxnews (particularly Bill O'Reilly), and opposed capitalism.  He was an all-around loon but certainly more of a leftist on the ideological spectrum.

[Berkut]

Left wing terrorists strike again.

Fixed that for you.

How was he a left wing terrorist?

Well played Hansy, he fell right into it.

[Hansmeister]

Oh yeah, guess which political party he was a registered member of.  (Hint, the msm isn't reporting it.)

[Jaron]

Von Brunn ... hated Foxnews (particularly Bill O'Reilly)

Guess he wasn't ALL bad then.