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."
