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It was just a single murder, allegedly by an embittered eightysomething ex-con. Normally that is not enough mayhem to lead a local newscast let alone the national networks. Yet the setting was the nation's capital, along the DC Mall's Museum Row. The site was the Holocaust Memorial Museum, one of the Mall's best-attended venues, one dedicated to repudiating anti-Semitic killers. And the accused murderer of Stephen Johns, a museum security guard, was James von Brunn, whose online writings deny the Nazi Holocaust and accuse Jews of a conspiracy to use the Federal Reserve Board to control the national economy. So all three network newscasts led with the Holocaust Museum and it was the Story of the Day.

"The Holocaust Museum has been prepared for something just like this since it opened 16 years ago," noted NBC's Pete Williams. "Investigators say the guard stopped the gunman from getting beyond the security checkpoint." von Brunn was wounded in crossfire and "taken to the hospital handcuffed to a gurney," ABC's Pierre Thomas recounted. CBS showed us cellphone pictures of a struggle at the museum's entrance and von Brunn's parked red car as part of Sharyl Attkisson's report.

NBC's Williams recounted von Brunn's previous brush with the law. Back in 1981, at the age of 61, he made an armed entry into the headquarters of the Federal Reserve Board and tried to place the Board of Governors under citizen's arrest for raising interest rates. "He served seven years in prison, On his Website he blamed a negro jury and a Jew judge." ABC's Thomas quoted von Brunn's ex-wife as saying that he "wanted to die in a blaze with his boots on." CBS' Bob Orr quoted police as saying that von Brunn "apparently acted alone."


Andrew Tyndall 6/11/09 11:45:54 pm

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