Someone Loves the Neo-Nazi Killer

Ever since Hedda Nussbaum’s [1] battered face appeared on the cover of tabloids in 1987, the wives of insane, violent men have faced a particularly cruel kind of scrutiny. Nussbaum called herself the victim of “intimate terrorism,” but the world judged her culpable for failing to protect her adopted 6-year-old daughter from her murderous husband. The BTK Killer [2] had a wife and children. James von Brunn, the white supremacist who allegedly shot two people at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum yesterday, does too—or at least he did (one son committed suicide, his wife divorced him). They surfaced last night in the Daily News. His 32-year-old son Erik is a student at the University of Maryland, and defends his father: “I love my father,” he said. “Everything you need to know about him is on his Web site.” That such a website (it crashed yesterday, here [3] are its remnants) could coincide with love, even in a son, is hard to stomach. The ex-wife, at least, kept her distance: "[It] ate him alive like a cancer," she said of Von Brunn’s hatred. "It's all he would talk about. When I questioned him, he would get angry and abusive.” She did not, however, alert the authorities.