WASHINGTON — An 88-year-old white supremacist was charged with murder Thursday, a day after he left a signed anti-Semitic screed in his car outside the U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum, then gunned down a security guard who opened the door to let him in, officials said.
Guard Stephen T. Johns was shot to death Wednesday by Holocaust denier James von Brunn, who left his car outside an entrance to the museum and walked in holding a rifle at his side, District Police Chief Cathy Lanier said at a news conference.
Von Brunn started shooting immediately, exchanging fire with two other guards who shot and critically injured him, Lanier said.
In his car, officers found a notebook with a handwritten note that read, "You want my weapons _ this is how you'll get them. The Holocaust is a lie. Obama was created by Jews," according to a court affidavit.
Von Brunn's .22-caliber rifle held 10 more bullets and investigators found more in his car and at an apartment in Annapolis, Md., that he shared with son and his son's fiancee. Security guards fired at von Brunn at least eight times, hitting him in the face.
The museum remained closed Thursday and flags flew at half-staff in honor of Johns, 39, who had worked at the museum for six years. Bouquets of roses, lilies and other flowers were left outside the museum walls. The entrance where the shooting occurred was still cordoned off by police tape.
Von Brunn, who tried to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve decades ago, remained in critical condition Thursday at a Washington hospital. A self-described artist, advertising man and author, he wrote an anti-Semitic treatise, "Kill the Best Gentiles," decried "the browning of America" and claimed to expose a Jewish conspiracy "to destroy the White gene-pool." He also wrote of a lifetime of seething anger.
"It's better to be strong than right," he said in one of his dark online postings, "unless you like dying. Crowds hate good guys."
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