Thursday, June 11, 2009

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Shooting suspect listed NH as home in 1981

LEBANON, N.H. -- The suspect in Wednesday's Holocaust museum shooting in Washington, D.C., used to live in Lebanon, N.H.

James von Brunn -- now 88 and living in Maryland -- was listed as living there when he was charged in 1981 with trying to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board in Washington, D.C. He went to prison until 1989.

Police said at the time von Brunn wanted to take board members hostage because of the country's economic troubles.

Lebanon city directories published in 1979 and 1981 listed von Brunn (spelled von Brun) as a real estate broker in the small city on the Vermont border.

The New Hampshire Union Leader's Web site on Wednesday described articles the paper ran about von Brunn in 1981. One on Dec. 9 described him as a would-be developer in the Lebanon area from 1978 until 1980, when it said he and his wife Patricia moved out of the city's upscale Blueberry Hill development.

A later story on von Brunn's arraignment reported that he said he had been in the Army and had moved to Lebanon from Redding, Cal. At the arraignment, von Brunn said he was a spokesman for the "Amer-European Alliance," which he said was formed to protect the "Germanic-Celtic races," the paper reported.

Authorities on Wednesday described von Brunn as virulently anti-Semitic and racist.

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)