Federal Judge Esther Salas' son was killed and her husband was injured after being shot by a man who showed up at their New Jersey residence on Sunday.
The FBI identified anti-feminist lawyer Roy Den Hollander as "the primary suspect" in the deadly shooting. Hollander, who was found dead on Monday from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, was dressed as a FedEx driver when he shot Salas' family while she was in the basement.
Authorities are now investigating a possible link between the shooting and the murder of a men's rights activist in California last week.
FedEx Uniform
On July 11, Mark Angelucci, the 52-year-old vice president of the National Coalition for Men (NCFM) and former lawyer, was found unresponsive and with apparent gunshot wounds just after 4 p.m. in Cedarpines Park, a community in southern California, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department.
The suspect who shot Angelucci outside his home was also described as wearing a FedEx uniform and knocked on the front door and killed him when he answered the door - a tactic that Hollander used in the Salas family shooting. In a screed Den Hollander posted online, he also wrote of posing as a FedEx delivery person to speak with a young girl.
Cancer Diagnosis, Revenge Fantasies
Hollander, 72, wrote on his website that he was diagnosed with cancer last year and said in an email to reporters in January that he was "painfully dying from metastasized cancer." Hollander even wrote about his revenge fantasies and his cancer diagnosis in an online screed.
"Death's hand is on my left shoulder. nothing in this life matters anymore," he wrote in a rambling manifesto. "The only problem with a life lived too long under Feminazi rule is that a man ends up with so many enemies he can't even the score with all of them."
Salas and Angelucci Were Targets?
Although the motive behind Angelucci's slaying is not yet known NCFM president Harry Crouch told KCAL that Hollander once served as a board member of the organization but was "thrown out because he was a nut job."
Moreover, Angelucci also represented NCFM in a legal battle against the U.S. Military's Selective Service System last year that led to the decision that requiring men but not women to register for the draft for military service in the United States was unconstitutional.
Co-incidentally, Salas was the judge in a 2015 lawsuit Hollander filed in federal court claiming the Selective Service System, "discriminates against both sexes in violation of Equal Protection as incorporated into the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution."
Hollander represented a woman and her daughter as they sought to register for the military's selective service. In the case, Den Hollander's clients claimed the draft was unconstitutional because it barred women from registering.
Salas sided against a part of Den Hollander's arguments last spring, but also agreed with some of his claims and allowed the lawsuit to continue on. Hollander exited the case in June 2019, handing it over to a large New York-based law firm because of his terminal illness.
After his death, the FBI contacted New York Chief Judge Janet DiFiore to report that they had found her name and photo in a car registered to Hollander. The FBI agents did not indicate whether Den Hollander had intended to target DiFiore.
Racist Rant Against Salas
In his online essay, Hollander also made racist remarks against Salas, the first Hispanic woman to be appointed to the U.S. District Court in New Jersey. "All of this was a nice stressful addition since it occurred in the middle of preparing for oral argument in a federal case before a lazy and incompetent Latina judge appointed by Obama," he wrote.
In addition, In a 1,700-page online screed published by him earlier this year, he criticized Salas' past work as a lawyer, claiming she worked for "an ambulance chasing firm" and represented "ne'er-do-wells" as a federal public defender. He also slammed her for joining "politically correct organizations trying to convince America that whites, especially white males, were barbarians, and all those of a darker skin complexion were victims."
