Museum Killer's Breaking Point

Following the chilling news that a gunman opened fire in Washington D.C.'s Holocaust Museum yesterday, resulting in the death of one security guard, news reports are focusing on the alleged killer, James Von Brunn, a white supremacist from Maryland. According to the Washington Post, the 88-year-old Von Brunn--who is now in critical condition at a D.C. hospital--wrote books and maintained a website espousing white supremacy and neo-Nazi slogans. On his website, Von Brunn blamed his subsequent time in a federal prison on being "convicted by a Negro jury, Jew/Negro attorneys, and sentenced to prison for eleven years by a Jew judge." According to friends in the neo-Nazi community, Von Brunn had become increasingly unstable and upset in recent weeks as he fell under hard times. "He said his Social Security had been cut and that he was barely making it," one acquaintance told the Washington Post. "He felt it was the direct result of someone in Washington looking at his Web site." In previous years, Von Brunn had supported himself largely by selling racist copies of a racist newspaper, the Post reports, and had made cryptic references to going out "with his boots on," his ex-wife said.