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 in a FedEx uniform on Sunday.
The FBI identified lawyer Roy Den Hollander as "the primary suspect" in the deadly shooting. Hollander was found dead on Monday from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound in the New York town of Rockland.
While dressed as a FedEx driver and armed with a gun, the suspect arrived at Salas' home and knocked on the door. When Salas' son, 20-year-old Daniel Anderl, came to the door, he was killed. Her husband, Mark Anderl, was standing behind his son and was seriously injured in the shooting and is now in a critical but stable condition.
Salas was unharmed as she was in the basement of their North Brunswick, New Jersey residence at the time of the shooting.
Anti-Feminist Views
On his website, Hollander described himself as an "anti-feminist" lawyer who defended "men's rights." His personal writings and life's work is riddled with sexism, including cases opposing Ladies' Nights at bars, the female exclusion from the military draft, the Violence Against Women Act, and women's' studies college courses.
The website also had a section dedicated to "jokes," which is simply a document listing dozens of anti-women and racist comments. None of them are humorous and several of them are incoherent.
It also links to another site Hollander appears to have run, "been-scammed.com," which describes at great length his marriage and divorce from a Russian woman, who he said turned out to be a sex worker that took advantage of him. "Wise Up Guys!" the page reads, "The Feminists are waging a war against you and you're losing."
He was an active member of anti-feminist and misogynist groups on Facebook, including groups titled Humanity Vs. Feminism and Men Going Their Own Way.
He was also a Trump supporter and filed a suit against several media outlets in 2016 claiming they were preventing the president from being elected with their "negative coverage." In an online essay last year, he wrote that he was dying of cancer.
Faced Salas in a 2015 Lawsuit
Law enforcement had not yet announced any motive that Hollander may have had for the attack on Salas' family, but court documents reveal he had a case before the federal judge.
Salas was the judge in a 2015 lawsuit he filed in federal court claiming the Selective Service System, which requires men to register for military draft, "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.
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 a 1,700-page online screed published by him earlier this year, he wrote that he researched Salas' background and made racist comments about Hispanic judges. The document was posted on a website, which had its domain name registered to Hollander.
In addition, 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."
The document also disparaged Hispanic women on the bench as "usually a problem—driven by an inferiority complex."
