• 2009 – Eighty-eight year-old James Wenneker von Brunn opens fire inside the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and fatally shoots Museum Special Police Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns. Other security guards returned fire, wounding von Brunn, who was apprehended.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting
(Redirected from James Wenneker von Brunn)


The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
on the day after the shooting.

Location: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
Date: June 10, 2009; 12:50 p.m. (EDT)
Attack type: Shooting, hate crime
Weapons: Winchester Model 1906 .22-caliber rifle
Deaths: 1
Injured: 2 (including the perpetrator)
Perpetrator: James Wenneker von Brunn
Motive: Antisemitism, Holocaust denial

At approximately 12:50 p.m. on June 10, 2009, 88-year-old James Wenneker von Brunn entered the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., with a slide-action rifle and fatally shot Museum Special Police Officer Stephen Tyrone Johns. Other special police officers returned fire, wounding von Brunn, who was apprehended.

Von Brunn was charged in federal court on June 11, 2009, with first-degree murder and firearms violations. On July 29, 2009, von Brunn was indicted by a federal grand jury on seven counts. Included in the indictment were three hate crime charges, as well as four charges 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. On January 6, 2010, von Brunn died of natural causes while awaiting trial.

Von Brunn was a white supremacist, Holocaust denier, and neo-Nazi. He had previously been convicted of entering the Federal Reserve Building with various weapons in 1981 and attempting to place the members of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, who he considered to be treasonous, under citizen's arrest.

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{Shooting

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Possible motives

Several news agencies have noted the timing of the June 10 shooting; it came shortly after Obama's June 5 visit to and speech at the Buchenwald concentration camp,[30] 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.

Victim

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 .22 caliber long 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. The American Jewish Committee established a memorial fund for the family.

Perpetrator


Mug shot of von Brunn taken in 2009

Born: James Wenneker von Brunn; July 11, 1920; St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.
Died: January 6, 2010 (aged 89); Butner, North Carolina, U.S.
Occupation(s): Advertising executive and producer, author
Criminal status: Deceased
Conviction(s): Burglary, assault, weapons charges, and attempted kidnapping
Criminal penalty: Imprisonment of six and a half years

Von Brunn was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the first of two children. His father was a native of Houston, Texas, and a superintendent at the Scullin Steel Mill in Houston during World War II. His mother was a piano teacher and homemaker.

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.

In the early 1970s, Von Brunn briefly worked for Noontide Press, the publishing arm of the Holocaust-denying Institute for Historical Review.

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 of Governors 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; however, he was eventually dropped from membership for failing to pay his annual dues.

Von Brunn was a member of the 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 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 Butler—was based until 2001. Von Brunn was living in Annapolis, Maryland at the time of the incident.

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.

Von Brunn was charged in federal court on June 11, 2009, with first-degree murder and firearms violations; he pleaded 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. According to a statement by his attorney, von Brunn had "a long history of poor health," including sepsis and chronic congestive heart failure.

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