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James von Brunn allegedly walked into the Holocaust Museum here in Washington, shot and killed Stephen T. Johns, a guard at the museum, and was in turn shot by other security officers.
von Brunn is routinely described as "an 88-year old white supremacist". This certainly looks to be true, judging by the trail he has left on the internet...a trail of anti-semitic, racist hate speech.
He has left another sort of trail as well, the bits and pieces of his life that find their way onto the internet, and into various databases and digital information sources. Here are various items that turn up in a search of James von Brunn or, as he was sometimes called, Jim von Brunn.
Some of them can be quite surprising, like this photo of von Brunn from 1963, holding up a cookbook he illustrated (AP photo).
Another surprise: von Brunn reportedly had a correspondence with the well-known author, Tom Clancy.
Correspondence with Tom Clancy on the Race Question
To: Tom Clancy
From: John 'Birdman' Bryant...
Re: Von Brunn correspondence
Clancy, thank goodness, tolerates none of von Brunn's hate-filled writings.
A retired Navy Admiral from Georgia is more sympathetic to von Brunn, in a cached letter written to von Brunn's son, Erik:
...Your Aunt Alyce has told me that you are a strong, healthy six year old boy and that you miss your father, James von Brunn, who has been held by federal authorities now for some time...
Another correspondence is referenced in the files of the Hoover Institution, of all places:
Register of the Albert C. (Albert Coady) Wedemeyer Papers, 1899-1988
[ Folder 11 ]
Anti-semitism. Report and correspondence with Victor Emanuel, Stan Rittenhouse, and Jim von Brunn, 1952-1982
James von Brunn's work as an artist and illustrator shows up in several places. He illustrated a hunting book called On Upland Shooting, and also has his artwork featured at an art-for-sale site, under the name James W. von Brunn. He had his own page on Wikipedia as well, now taken down, but preserved in a Wikipedia cache for James von Brunn.
Searching several old newspaper files also turns up some relevant information.
From newspaperarchive.com (probably the largest source of newspaper archives on the internet) there's a small item from June 17, 1964 issue of The Salisbury Times in Maryland. An article, Art Show Will Feature Chicken Industry Here, covers the Delmarva Chicken Festival, and reports that:
"...James von Brunn, president of the Academy [of the Arts in Easton] is leading the committee which is preparing an art event."
Another item in the same database, from The San Diego Union of Feb 25, 1991, reports (in an On the Move column), that:
"...PRIMUS Advertising has named James von Brunn as vice president and account manager.
von Brunn did live in Maryland and in California at different times of his life, and has described himself as an artist and as working in advertising. von Brunn definitely spent time in Easton, but there's a possibility the California mention is a reference to another person of the same name.
An intriguing newspaper item pops up in the Washington Post in 1968: 6-Month Term Imposed For Hitting Md. Sheriff, which recounts the story of a drunk-driving arrest:
"...James W. von Brunn...a 48-year old public relations man and commercial artist from nearby Talbot County, was arrested on a drunken driving charge...following a brawl at a local restaurant..."
von Brunn was taken to the County Jail, where he punched the Sheriff. The article also mentions that von Brunn described himself as a Navy PT-boat captain, and had no police record before this.
And of course, numerous newspapers recount von Brunn's arrest in 1981 for his attempted assault at the Federal Reserve Board, in which he entered the building carrying a shotgun, a pistol and a hunting knife, along with a bag which contained a mock-up of a bomb.
James von Brunn, Jim to his friends, actually has a fairly small footprint in cyberspace, other than the hate literature he left as his legacy. I found no information on him in legal databases, criminal records searches, or even in most of ordinary but powerful people-searching tools on the internet like the online phone book, or ancestry.com.
Still, the case serves to highlight what an important tool the internet can be when it comes to digging around in the past.
David Sarokin
Need more information? Feel free to drop me a line (visit my Bio for an email link)
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