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For accused museum shooter, a downward spiral
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-06-12 08:38

WASHINGTON -- James von Brunn carried a lifetime of hatred and an aging rifle to the entrance of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, authorities say, and was met with a simple act of kindness: a security guard opening the door for him. Critically injured in a hospital bed Thursday, the 88-year-old white supremacist was charged with murdering Steven T. Johns, the black guard.

For accused museum shooter, a downward spiral
Washington police investigator George Klein Jr. examines bullet strikes in one of the doors of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, Thursday, June 11, 2009, a day after a shooting left a security officer dead and the gunman wounded. [Agencies]
For accused museum shooter, a downward spiral

According to interviews with family, friends and civil rights groups, von Brunn spent decades spewing hate toward Jews and blacks, a hatred that was nearing a crescendo in the weeks before the shooting.

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At least one acquaintance said he suspected that von Brunn was preparing for a violent end.

Von Brunn had talked about giving up "precious things", even the computer from which he spread his angry diatribes against Jews, interracial dating and the government, said fellow white supremacist John de Nugent.

"He said he had gone offline," said de Nugent, who last spoke to von Brunn on the phone a few weeks ago.

De Nugent said von Brunn complained that his Social Security benefits had been reduced, and he suspected that his white supremacist views were the reason.

"He was unhappy with his living situation," de Nugent said.

Von Brunn lived in a condo in Annapolis with his 32-year-old son, Erik von Brunn, and his son's fiancee, according to charging documents. The couple charged him $400 a month and when he moved in two years ago, he brought two rifles with him, the fiancee, Brandy Teel, told FBI agents. No one answered the door Thursday at their condo.

When next-door neighbor Harold Olynnger, 82, invited von Brunn over for a drink about three months ago, it didn't go well.

Von Brunn sipped on a vodka tonic and talked about how he believed the media paid too much attention to the Holocaust, Olynnger said.

On his Web site, von Brunn said he is a descendant of German immigrants who became convinced Jews controlled the government. He boasted of having spent a year in jail for fighting a sheriff's deputy in Maryland in 1968 and, a quarter-century later, of serving prison time for trying to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve board.

After he got out, he became a regular in white supremacist circles and soon had his own file with watch groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League. He wrote an anti-Semitic text and maintained his conspiracy theories on the Web site.

The St. Louis native worked in advertising in New York City and moved to Maryland's Eastern Shore in the late 1960s, where he stayed in advertising and tried to make a mark as an artist.

Public records show that in 2004 and 2005 he lived briefly in Hayden, Idaho, for years home to the Aryan Nations, a racist group run by neo-Nazi Richard Butler.

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