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Holocaust museum killer boasted of his anti-Semitic history
Paul Thompson in Miami11 Jun 2009
A white supremacist who shot a security guard dead at a Holocaust Museum in Washington DC has a long history of criminal and anti-Semitic behaviour, it emerged today.
James von Brunn, 88, opened fire on former soldier Stephen Tyrone Johns in an attack condemned by President Barack Obama.
Today he is said to be critically wounded after being shot by police officers following the attack. FBI agents are leading the investigation into the shooting.
Von Brunn was challenged by Mr Johns before he passed through an airport-style metal detector in the entrance hall of the museum.
One part of the investigation will be to determine how von Brunn, who has a list of convictions, was able to obtain a high-powered rifle.
Detectives were examining a series of online boasts he made about his criminal past.
He once tried to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve board, but was thwarted when a guard captured him outside a meeting carrying a bag stuffed with weapons.
Von Brunn was sentenced in 1983 to more than four years in prison for attempted armed kidnapping. He was released in 1989.
"The subject resides in my memory like old road-kill," he wrote of the experience. "What could have been a slam-bang victory turned into ignoble failure."
Despite the revolver, sawed-off shotgun and knife found in his bag that day, von Brunn insisted he was trying to place the board under "legal, non-violent citizen's-arrest".
Describing himself as an artist and advertising man, von Brunn, from Annapolis, Maryland, has written a treatise claiming to expose a Jewish conspiracy "to destroy the White gene pool".
Records show that in 2004 and 2005 he lived briefly in Hayden, Idaho, which for years was home to the racist group Aryan Nations.
President Obama said he was "shocked and saddened" by the death of Mr Johns.
