Dateline: Who was Roy Den Hollander and what do we know about his crimes? Detail of the 2020 incident, explored

In 2020, a string of orchestrated shootings by Roy Den Hollander shocked the legal world and made national news. The crimes, extensively investigated by Dateline, ranged from the murder of a well-known men's rights activist to the shooting of a federal judge’s family member. The attacks, while disparate in location, were quickly connected by one man whose ideology and grievances had been simmering for decades.

The case not only illuminated the deeds but also the larger risks of extremist ideologies. Roy Den Hollander's life, writings, and motivations came under scrutiny, and a pattern of aggression, resentment, and coordinated violence was found.

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Who was Roy Den Hollander?

As shown in Dateline, Roy Den Hollander was a New York lawyer who held law and business school degrees from George Washington University Law School and Columbia Business School. He became notorious in the years before his death as an "anti-feminist" and brought many lawsuits on behalf of men who claimed gender discrimination. They included actions against women's studies classes, "ladies' night" price breaks at bars, and the male-only military draft.

While initially sympathetic to certain elements of the ideology of the men's rights movement, Den Hollander later fell out with it, even denouncing fellow activists in his work. Even this denunciation, however, was masked much in his thoughts and his legal work with extremist elements of the movement's ideology. His online presence—thousands of pages' worth of essays and manifestos—devolved progressively into more of a darker form of misogyny, racism, and conspiracy theory-driven rhetoric.

Along the way, the writings turned ugly, then nasty, then literally violently stated in tone.

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The murder of Marc Angelucci

Dateline showed Marc Angelucci as a celebrated lawyer and foremost men's rights leader who was assassinated on July 11, 2020, in front of his California residence. His assassin had dressed up as a FedEx deliveryman to gain access to the residence and murdered him. Marc's murder shocked circles of legal activists, and there had been suspicion even before any evidence emerged.

The police subsequently identified Roy Den Hollander as the prime suspect. Den Hollander's investigators became familiar with that he traveled to California and was in contact with Angelucci as a result of a decades-long relationship through activism as a lawyer advocate. Despite Den Hollander not speaking openly about his motivation when defending, there was considerable professional animosity, especially since Angelucci's reputation within the movement kept rising.

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Attack on judge Esther Salas’ family

Dateline depicted that less than a week later, on July 19, 2020, disaster again befell the judiciary community—this time in North Brunswick, New Jersey. A gunman posing as a FedEx deliveryman gunned his way to the residence of U.S. District Judge Esther Salas. Her son, Daniel Anderl, who had opened the door, was murdered. Her husband, defense attorney Mark Anderl, was gravely injured. Judge Salas was not injured, having been at home.

The following morning, Den Hollander was discovered dead by suicide in upstate New York. A list of possible victims, including Salas and other public figures, was in his vehicle. Den Hollander had also appeared before Salas' court in a 2015 case against the draft being restricted to men. He was withdrawn from the case in 2019 on health grounds, but he went on to publish vicious, nasty attacks on Salas in his online columns, attacking her race and gender specifically.

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Den Hollander’s ideology and motivation

Den Hollander died with a very long manifesto describing his worldview and motivation. In his work, he displayed intense misogyny towards women, particularly female judges, and appeared to feel that he had been institutionally oppressed by systems of law. Buried in these works were overt threats, conspiracies, and calls to violence against the people he perceived as the enemy.

Academics who read his writing characterized it as expressions of a toxic male-supremacist ideology. They believed the assaults were not indiscriminate but were aimed at something and were the culmination of years of intensifying extremism and alienation. His writings on the internet also indicated that he viewed these attacks as some sort of ultimate justice or revenge.

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National attention and Dateline's coverage

The incident was widely reported with a comprehensive coverage by NBC's Dateline. The show recapped the sequence of events, explored the criminal and personal background of Den Hollander, and how one becomes a marginalized activist turned ultimate life-threatening threat. The interviews with the authorities, the victim's social circle, and the experts detailed the gravity of the events and the ideology behind the same.

Dateline also concentrated on the impact on judicial security. Following the attacks, pressure mounted to increase security for judges, particularly those who were presiding over high-profile or contentious cases. Judge Salas then issued a call for additional measures of protection, referencing the senseless death of her son as a wake-up call.

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Roy Den Hollander's activities in 2020 were not sudden violent attacks—they were the result of entrenched personal and ideological grievances. His background as a lawyer, his eventual radicalization, and his intended attacks on specific individuals were a warning about how extremist ideology can translate into real-world danger.

Dateline devoted those events to their incisive, fact-oriented commentary and to the broader social issues created by them, and facts. It is an event still haunting the legal community, the media, and all the people tasked with the responsibility of preventing similar catastrophes from now on.

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