Investigators are trying to determine whether the anti-feminist lawyer who allegedly shot up a New Jersey federal judge’s family had a hand in the similar death of a rival attorney a week earlier.
In one of his online screeds, “men’s rights” lawyer Roy Den Hollander made it clear he blamed U.S. District Judge Esther Salas for robbing him of a legal victory that instead was claimed by activist California attorney Marc Angelucci.
Den Hollander did not name Angelucci in his bile-filled memoir, but law-enforcement sources told The Daily Beast that papers mentioning Angelucci were found in or around the car where Den Hollander killed himself on Monday.
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In addition, the head of the organization that Angelucci belonged to revealed that Den Hollander was ousted from the group several years ago because “he was a nut job.”
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s office, which was investigating Angelucci’s slaying is now referring all inquiries to the FBI in New Jersey, which is probing the shooting of Salas’ husband and son.
As The Daily Beast was first to report, Den Hollander is suspected of ringing the doorbell at Salas’ home on Sunday evening, dressed as a FedEx delivery person, and shooting her husband and her 20-year-old son. The son died.
Den Hollander, 72, had helped bring a lawsuit—challenging the U.S. military’s male-only draft registration—that ended up in Salas’ courtroom in 2015.
In his 1,700-page online “book,” Den Hollander complained that Salas took too long to rule on his lawsuit, brought on behalf of a 17-year-old girl who said she should be allowed to register.
“Compare three years of motions to dismiss in Salas’s Court to the case in the U.S. Southern District Court of Texas on exactly the same issue of the draft registration statute violating the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution,” he wrote.
“That case had been transferred to Texas by the California court. The only difference in the Texas case was that two guys were the plaintiffs and a white 70 year-old man was the judge. After about a year and a half, the Texas case moved into the second inning—summary judgment. We, however, were still in the first inning fighting over DOJ’s fourth motion to dismiss. Just unbelievable, by now we should have been knocking on the U.S. Supreme Court’s door, but lady unluck stuck us with an Obama appointee.”
The lawyer in the Texas case was Angelucci. And in February, he made headlines when the Texas judge handed him a huge win, declaring the all-male draft discriminated against men.
Five months later, Angelucci was dead—gunned down at his home in Crestline, California. The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Office had made no arrests in the case by the time Den Hollander darkened the doorstep of the Salas home.
Investigators in New York noted the similarities between the attacks and are actively seeking any other possible links.
“It is too much of a coincidence,” one investigator told The Daily Beast on Tuesday.
Angelucci, 52, was the founder of the National Coalition for Men’s Los Angeles chapter and had appeared in the controversial documentary Red Pill about men’s rights activists. Both he and Den Hollander had been involved in similar types of legal challenges over the years, though Angelucci had more success and was behind a law firm launched by the coalition.
Harry Crouch, the head of the men’s coalition, told CBS affiliate KCAL that when he heard of Den Hollander’s alleged involvement in the Salas crime he “immediately saw a link” to Angelucci’s murder.
“But I want to be real clear, he’s not a NCFM member. Why isn’t he? Because I threw him out five or six years ago, because he was a nut job,” Crouch said, adding that Den Hollander had been removed from the coalition board for threatening him.
After Den Hollander ambushed Salas’ family, investigators say, he drove to the Catskill Mountains in upstate New York and shot himself in the head with a .380 Walther pistol. He had with him a FedEx package addressed to the judge, apparently a prop he intended to use to get face-to-face with her, but she was in the basement when he showed up and opened fire.
His online writings reveal that at the time he killed himself, Den Hollander was already facing a death sentence: He had been diagnosed with late-stage melanoma.
If you or a loved one are struggling with suicidal thoughts, please reach out to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.
