Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / The Deliveryman Murders: A Cross-Country Rampage of Revenge, Rage, and
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: I want you to imagine a sound that you hear
- 0:04almost every single day.
- 0:05Speaker 2: Write something super mundane.
- 0:07Speaker 1: Exactly, Like you might be sitting on your couch right now,
- 0:10or maybe you're in the kitchen making dinner or something,
- 0:13and suddenly you hear.
- 0:14Speaker 2: It the chime of your front doorbell.
- 0:16Speaker 1: Yes, the doorbell. And I want you to think about
- 0:19what your immediate reaction is when you hear that sound.
- 0:23Speaker 2: I mean, for most of us, there's absolutely zero sense
- 0:25of dread.
- 0:25Speaker 1: Add totally. In fact, it's usually the exact opposite. It's
- 0:28this like mild sense of anticipation. You hear it and
- 0:32you think, oh, my package is here, or did I
- 0:35order food?
- 0:36Speaker 2: Yeah, you'd assume it's something good or at least harmless.
- 0:39Speaker 1: Exactly. So you walk up to the door, you look
- 0:42through the peephole or maybe the side glass, and you
- 0:44see someone standing there. They're holding a clipboard or a
- 0:47brown box, and they're wearing a uniform.
- 0:50Speaker 2: In that uniform is everything.
- 0:52Speaker 1: It really is, because in that split second, because of
- 0:54that reflective vest or because of that clipboard, you just
- 0:57you open the door. You completely surrender the security of
- 0:59your home.
- 1:00Speaker 2: Because we've all entered into this like unspoken social contract.
- 1:04We implicitly trust the delivery driver.
- 1:06Speaker 1: Right, and today we're doing a deep dive into what
- 1:08happens when a monster weaponizes that exact trust. We're looking
- 1:12at some incredible investigative sources detailing the delivery man murders, the.
- 1:17Speaker 2: Cross country revenge spree of a man named roy Den Hollander.
- 1:21Speaker 1: Yeah, our mission today is to track how a highly
- 1:24educated Ivy League lawyer transformed into a lone wolf domestic terrorist.
- 1:30Speaker 2: We're going to look at how he exploited the everyday,
- 1:32totally normal vulnerabilities of suburban life, and.
- 1:35Speaker 1: Maybe most importantly, how a terminal medical diagnosis became this
- 1:40like ultimate catalyst for ideological violence. So, okay, let's untack this.
- 1:45Speaker 2: It's the perfect place to start, honestly, because that doorbell chimes,
- 1:48it represents a profound psychological threshold. How so, well, the
- 1:51delivery uniform essentially acts as a cognitive bypass valve.
- 1:55Speaker 1: Cognitive bypass valve that sounds, I mean, what does that
- 1:57actually mean? In practice?
- 1:59Speaker 2: So the human brain is constantly processing thousands of potential
- 2:03threats a minute, right, and to save energy, it uses
- 2:06heuristics shortcuts.
- 2:08Speaker 1: Okay, So it's kagarizing things quickly so we don't get overwhelmed.
- 2:11Speaker 2: Exactly, a clipboard and a brown shirt or a high
- 2:14v's vest. To our brains, that is a heuristic for safe.
- 2:19Speaker 1: Wow, Yeah, that makes total sense.
- 2:21Speaker 2: I mean, we spend thousands dollars on home security systems,
- 2:25We buy dead bolts, we install ring cameras, motion lights,
- 2:28all of it, right, But the absolute second someone puts
- 2:31on a reflective vest with corporate logo, all of those
- 2:34expensive defenses just drop.
- 2:35Speaker 1: We just open the door.
- 2:36Speaker 2: We don't interrogate the person bringing us our mail, We
- 2:39just sign on the dotted line. He didn't just wear
- 2:42physical disguise. He hacked our human cognitive load.
- 2:46Speaker 1: And the devastating effectiveness of that hack is like what
- 2:49makes this whole thing so terrifying.
- 2:51Speaker 2: It really is the stuff of nightmares.
- 2:52Speaker 1: And to really grasp the scope of this deep dive,
- 2:55we have to start by looking at two wildly different
- 2:58crime scenes, and they're on depletely opposite sides of the country.
- 3:01Speaker 2: Right, we have to start on the West coast.
- 3:03Speaker 1: Yeah. The date is July eleventh, twenty twenty, and we
- 3:08are in a place called Cedar Peens Park, California.
- 3:11Speaker 2: Which is a very specific type of environment.
- 3:13Speaker 1: It really is. If you listening aren't familiar with the
- 3:16geography of southern California, this is a very quiet, very
- 3:19secluded mountain community. It's nestled high up in the San
- 3:22Bernardino Mountains.
- 3:24Speaker 2: It's the kind of place you move to when you
- 3:26actively deliberately want.
- 3:27Speaker 1: Privacy, right, you want the forest, you want the quiet,
- 3:30you want a huge buffer between yourself and the rest
- 3:33of the world.
- 3:33Speaker 2: Exactly. The geography here is critical to understand in the crime.
- 3:38Cedar Peens Park is characterized by these winding, super narrow mountain.
- 3:42Speaker 1: Roads and dense pine canopies right, yes.
- 3:45Speaker 2: Yeah, and the houses are often tucked away, completely out
- 3:48of sight from the main thoroughfares. I mean, it is
- 3:50not a bustling city street where you expect trouble to
- 3:53just walk up to you on the sidewalk.
- 3:55Speaker 1: No, not at all. And living in this like secluded,
- 3:58deliberate isolation is a fifty two year old attorney named
- 4:02Mark Angeloucci.
- 4:03Speaker 2: And Angelucci was a highly prominent figure.
- 4:06Speaker 1: Yeah. He was a vice president and a board member
- 4:09of an organization called the National Coalition for Men, or
- 4:12the NCFM.
- 4:13Speaker 2: He was very well known for taking on high profile
- 4:16civil rights cases, specifically focusing on men's issues.
- 4:20Speaker 1: Right. So it's a quiet weekend afternoon up in the mountains,
- 4:23and Angelucci's routine is interrupted by that exact sound we
- 4:26just talked about, the doorbell, the doorbell, and here is
- 4:29where that theory you mentioned, the cognitive bypass valve is
- 4:32put into horrific practice.
- 4:34Speaker 2: Because there's a man standing outside claiming to have a
- 4:37package delivery that requires a signature.
- 4:39Speaker 1: Which is the absolute perfect lure.
- 4:41Speaker 2: It really is. It brings Angeloucci right to the threshold
- 4:44of his home. It pulls him out of his safe
- 4:46space and completely into the open.
- 4:49Speaker 1: And the moment the door is open, the illusion of
- 4:51the delivery just drops Angeloucci shot at point blank range.
- 4:56Speaker 2: It's just brutal.
- 4:57Speaker 1: He dies right there on his doorstep, and you know,
- 5:00paramedics have to navigate those winding mountain rills, so he
- 5:03passes away before they can even arrive.
- 5:05Speaker 2: And the shooter, he simply vanishes into.
- 5:08Speaker 1: The landscape, just disappears.
- 5:10Speaker 2: Yeah. Witnesses later described seeing a man in quote delivery
- 5:14style attire fleeing in a vehicle.
- 5:17Speaker 1: But in a mountain community like that, a vehicle disappearing
- 5:20down a dirt road or wooded highway. I mean that
- 5:23leaves incredibly sparse details for the police exactly.
- 5:27Speaker 2: This left the local law enforcement, the San Bernardino County
- 5:30Sheriff's homicide detectives, in a severely disadvantaged position right from
- 5:35the start, because.
- 5:35Speaker 1: When they arrive on the scene, they're looking at an
- 5:38environment that feels incredibly cold and calculated.
- 5:41Speaker 2: They actually called it a professional hit.
- 5:43Speaker 1: Like scene, right, And when you break it down, you
- 5:45can totally see why they thought they were dealing with
- 5:48like a cartel or an organized crime hitman.
- 5:52Speaker 2: Think about the mechanics of the crime from a detective's perspective.
- 5:55There is no forced entry. Nobody kicked down the door
- 5:58or broke a window, right.
- 5:59Speaker 1: There are no signs of a struggle inside the home whatsoever.
- 6:02Speaker 2: Exactly, and nothing has been stolen, so you can entirely
- 6:05rule out a robbery gone wrong.
- 6:06Speaker 1: It is a highly targeted execution precisely at the front door.
- 6:10Speaker 2: And because the delivery ruse is so ubiquitous in suburban
- 6:14and rural America, it's incredibly difficult to track. I mean,
- 6:18anyone can walk into a local hardware store or go
- 6:21online and buy a high v's.
- 6:23Speaker 1: Vest or just a plain brown uniform shirt. It leaves
- 6:26absolutely no distinct forensic signature none.
- 6:30Speaker 2: So California detectives are looking at this isolated, baffling assassination
- 6:35of a prominent attorney in the woods and they are
- 6:37basically scratching their heads.
- 6:38Speaker 1: They're looking at local enemies, right, like maybe someone he sued,
- 6:43or maybe a local property dispute exactly.
- 6:45Speaker 2: They're looking locally.
- 6:46Speaker 1: Now, I want you to hold that thought, keep that
- 6:48California scene in your mind, because we are fast forwarding
- 6:51eight days and.
- 6:52Speaker 2: We are jumping twenty eight hundred miles away.
- 6:54Speaker 1: Yeah, all the way to the East coast. It's July nineteenth,
- 6:56twenty twenty, and we are in the affluent, leafy suburbs
- 6:59of North Brunswick, New Jersey.
- 7:01Speaker 2: And this isn't just a random Sunday for the family
- 7:03living there. It's a massive family celebration.
- 7:06Speaker 1: It's a birthday. It's the twentieth birthday of a young
- 7:08man named Daniel Anderl.
- 7:10Speaker 2: He's celebrating with his parents at their family home. And
- 7:13his family is deeply, deeply embedded in the American justice system.
- 7:18Speaker 1: Right. His mother is US District Judge Esther Sallas. She
- 7:22is this highly respected totally trailblazing figure in the judiciary.
- 7:27Speaker 2: Yeah. Back in twenty eleven, she actually became the first
- 7:30Latina appointed to New Jersey's federal.
- 7:33Speaker 1: Bench, which is a huge deal. And his father is
- 7:37Mark Anderl who is a very successful criminal defense attorney.
- 7:41He previously worked as an assistant prosecutor too, So.
- 7:44Speaker 2: This is a family of dedicated legal professionals and they're
- 7:47just enjoying a milestone birthday for their only child.
- 7:50Speaker 1: And Daniel himself was actually studying at Catholic University. He
- 7:53was planning to follow in his parents' footsteps and go
- 7:56into the law.
- 7:56Speaker 2: It's just a totally normal, happy weekend.
- 7:58Speaker 1: But then Judge Salas is actually downstairs in the basement.
- 8:01She's finishing up some work, kind of cleaning up after
- 8:04the birthday weekends.
- 8:05Speaker 2: And Daniel and his father Mark are upstairs on the
- 8:07main floor.
- 8:08Speaker 1: And then history repeats itself. The doorbell rings, a.
- 8:11Speaker 2: Man is standing outside. Yeah, and this time it's not
- 8:14just like generic delivery attire.
- 8:17Speaker 1: Right, he is wearing what appears to be a highly
- 8:20authentic looking FedEx uniform.
- 8:22Speaker 2: It is the exact same ruse, perfectly executed twenty eight
- 8:26hundred miles away.
- 8:27Speaker 1: So Daniel goes to answer the door, and I want
- 8:30to mention Daniel was described by literally everyone who knew
- 8:33him as this fiercely protective, heroic young man.
- 8:36Speaker 2: He was known for looking out for people.
- 8:38Speaker 1: Yeah, so he opens the door to the delivery man
- 8:41and instantly, without a single word being spoken, gunfire.
- 8:45Speaker 2: Erupts, just immediate violence.
- 8:47Speaker 1: Daniel is shot in the chest and he is killed instantly.
- 8:50His father, Marc anderl here's the commotion, rushes toward the
- 8:54door and he is shot multiple times.
- 8:56Speaker 2: He suffers horrific injuries, but incredibly he survives in critical condition.
- 9:01Speaker 1: Meanwhile, down in the basement, Judge Sallas hears the agonizing
- 9:04sounds of this absolute horror unfolding directly above her, but.
- 9:08Speaker 2: She is unharmed. The gunman makes absolutely no attempt.
- 9:11Speaker 1: To clear the house, right, he doesn't go searching for her.
- 9:14Speaker 2: No, he fires his weapon at the people who answer
- 9:16the door, and then he just turns and disappears back
- 9:19into the suburban New Jersey.
- 9:20Speaker 1: Landscape, exactly as he did in the California mountains.
- 9:23Speaker 2: It's the same exact exit strategy.
- 9:26Speaker 1: Now, if you're listening to this and thinking, well, you know,
- 9:28I'd never fall for a fake FedEx driver. I really
- 9:31want you to think about how many times you've opened
- 9:33your door this week without really looking.
- 9:34Speaker 2: Oh, probably half a dozen.
- 9:36Speaker 1: Times, right exactly. Dan Hollander was banking on that exact complacency.
- 9:41But honestly, the most terrifying part of this isn't just
- 9:44the disguise itself.
- 9:45Speaker 2: It's the absolute lack of connection.
- 9:48Speaker 1: Yes, you have two coasts, two totally different sets of victims,
- 9:52a men's rights attorney out in a mountain cabin and
- 9:55a federal judges family in a suburban New Jersey cul
- 9:59de sac.
- 9:59Speaker 2: And this really highlights the inherent silos in American law enforcement.
- 10:04Speaker 1: What do you mean by silos in this context.
- 10:06Speaker 2: Well, you have San Bernardino County sheriffs dealing with what
- 10:09looks to them like a localized hit. They are focused
- 10:12entirely on their jurisdiction, right. But on the other side
- 10:15of the country, you had the FBI, you had the
- 10:17US Marshals and the New Jersey State Police. They are
- 10:20swarming a suburban home because an attack on a federal
- 10:24judges family is immediately treated as a potential act of
- 10:27domestic terrorism.
- 10:29Speaker 1: Right, because it strikes at the very heart of the
- 10:31American justice system exactly.
- 10:33Speaker 2: So in the immediate hours and days following the New
- 10:36Jersey attack, there is absolutely no logical reason for these
- 10:40two distinct regional investigative bodies to communicate with each other.
- 10:46Speaker 1: Yeah, if you are an FBI agent in New Jersey,
- 10:49you are looking at Judge Salace's docket. You're pulling the
- 10:53files of disgruntled defendants she is sentenced over the years.
- 10:57Speaker 2: You're looking at violent gang members or organ and crime
- 11:00figures that her husband might have defended in his private practice.
- 11:03Speaker 1: Right, you're pulling local traffic cameras. You are absolutely not
- 11:07looking at the murder of a civil rights activist in
- 11:09the California Mountains that happened eight days prior.
- 11:12Speaker 2: The connection between the two is just completely invisible to them.
- 11:14Speaker 1: So how did they connect them? Because the thread tying
- 11:17these two coasts together didn't exist in any FBI database. Right.
- 11:20Speaker 2: No, it wasn't in a digital file, It wasn't in
- 11:23the computer system.
- 11:23Speaker 1: It was physical, physical evidence, Yes, and.
- 11:26Speaker 2: It was waiting in a parked car on a rural
- 11:29road in upstate New York.
- 11:31Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, which brings us to the discovery that blew
- 11:35this entire case wide open.
- 11:36Speaker 2: The date is July twentieth, twenty twenty.
- 11:39Speaker 1: This is literally less than twenty four hours after the
- 11:42attack on Judge Sallas's home in New Jersey.
- 11:44Speaker 2: Right the very next day, New York State Police are
- 11:47conducting a totally routine patrol on a road near Liberty,
- 11:51New York.
- 11:51Speaker 1: This is in Sullivan County, And for context, if you
- 11:54aren't from the area, this is up in the Catskills.
- 11:56Speaker 2: It's a deeply rural, heavily for arsted area. It's historically
- 12:02known for those old summer resorts, but now it's largely
- 12:05characterized by just quiet, wooded, empty roads.
- 12:08Speaker 1: Right, and the state troopers spot a rental car parked
- 12:12kind of awkwardly on the shoulder of the road.
- 12:14Speaker 2: At first glance, it just looks like a standard motorist assist,
- 12:16like maybe someone got a flat tire or it's an
- 12:18abandoned vehicle.
- 12:19Speaker 1: But when the troopers actually approach the car, they find
- 12:21a body lying outside the vehicle.
- 12:24Speaker 2: It's a seventy two year old man and he is
- 12:27dead from a single self inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
- 12:30Speaker 1: And the weapon is right there, a Walther zero point
- 12:33three point eight zero semi automatic pistol. It's lying right
- 12:37next to him on the ground.
- 12:38Speaker 2: The troopers run his identification and the man is identified
- 12:42as Roy N. Hollander.
- 12:44Speaker 1: Now, obviously it's a grim scene, but it's exactly the
- 12:47kind of tragic, isolated incident that state troopers deal with
- 12:50all the time. A suicide on a rural road.
- 12:53Speaker 2: Right, there's no immediate reason to think this is a
- 12:55national news story.
- 12:56Speaker 1: But then they open the doors of the rental car
- 12:58and what they find inside completely alters the trajectory of
- 13:02two massive, unconnected homicide investigations.
- 13:06Speaker 2: Inside that vehicle was essentially a road map of perceived
- 13:09slights and meticulous planning.
- 13:11Speaker 1: It was the physical evidence required to solve the entire puzzle.
- 13:14Speaker 2: Investigators found a FedEx envelope inside the car and it
- 13:17was addressed specifically to Judge Ester salis unbelievable.
- 13:21Speaker 1: And what else did they find?
- 13:23Speaker 2: They found the California address of Marc Angelucci, the specific
- 13:26address in Cedar Pines Park.
- 13:28Speaker 1: I really want to just pause on that moment for
- 13:30those state troopers. You are investigating what looks like a
- 13:33tragic suicide in the woods, and suddenly you are holding
- 13:36documents that directly linked this dead man to an assassination
- 13:39in California and a major terrorist attack on a federal
- 13:43judge in New Jersey.
- 13:44Speaker 2: It accelerates the investigation from zero to one hundred instantly.
- 13:48I mean, the local troopers are suddenly on the phone
- 13:50with the FBI.
- 13:51Speaker 1: It must have been absolute chaos trying to coordinate all.
- 13:54Speaker 2: That, and the physical evidence solidifies the connection beyond a
- 13:58shadow of a doubt. Forensics units take the Walther point
- 14:02three to eight zero pistol he used to end his
- 14:05life and they run ballistics on it.
- 14:07Speaker 1: Okay, can we do a quick deep dive into ballistics
- 14:10because I think people hear that word on TV all
- 14:12the time, but they don't really know how it works.
- 14:14Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. Ballistics isn't just about matching the caliber of
- 14:17the bullet, like, oh, it's a point three to eight
- 14:19zero bullet, so it matches.
- 14:21Speaker 1: It's much deeper than that sid microscopic.
- 14:23Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. When a gun fires, the firing pin forcefully
- 14:26strikes the primer of the bullet. Then the bullet is
- 14:29forced down the barrel of the gun and the extractor
- 14:32mechanism throws out the empty casing.
- 14:34Speaker 1: Right the brass shell that pops out.
- 14:36Speaker 2: Yes, and every single one of those mechanical actions leaves tiny, microscopic,
- 14:41totally unique scratches and impressions on the metal of the
- 14:44casing in the bullet.
- 14:45Speaker 1: It's basically like a fingerprint for a gun.
- 14:47Speaker 2: That is exactly what it is. No, two guns, even
- 14:50of the same make and model, leave the exact same scratches.
- 14:54So investigators compared the empty casings found at the scene
- 14:57in California, the casings found at the scene in New
- 14:59jer and the test fired casings from the wal thir
- 15:02point three to a zero. They founded the cat skills.
- 15:05It was an exact, indisputable match. The gun ties it
- 15:09all together physically.
- 15:10Speaker 1: Wow. But the truly horrifying reality is that the spree
- 15:13wasn't necessarily over, was it.
- 15:14Speaker 2: No, it wasn't because alongside the addresses and the murder weapon,
- 15:18they found.
- 15:18Speaker 1: A hit list, a physical, printed list of targets.
- 15:22Speaker 2: Yes, he had a list of over a dozen potential targets.
- 15:25This included medical professionals, other judges, and specifically it prominently
- 15:30mentioned New York Chief Judge Janet M. Defiork.
- 15:32Speaker 1: He even had her photograph in.
- 15:33Speaker 2: The car with them, which tells investigators two incredibly disturbing things. First,
- 15:39his grievances were vast and meticulously categorized. And second, if
- 15:43he hadn't pulled over in the cat Skills to end
- 15:45his own life, there very well could have been a third, fourth,
- 15:48or fifth door bell ringing in the days to come.
- 15:51He was on a continuous mobile campaign of violence.
- 15:53Speaker 1: Gro Law enforcement has the gun, they have the hit lists,
- 15:56they have the motive seemingly laid out in these documents,
- 15:59But then they look at the time hineline, and the
- 16:01logistics just do not make sense.
- 16:03Speaker 2: It seems impossible at first.
- 16:04Speaker 1: Yeah, I have to play Devil's advocate here for a second.
- 16:06If you look at the physical reality of the suspect,
- 16:09we're talking about a seventy two year old man who
- 16:11is terminally ill. How on earth does he pull off
- 16:14a complex cross country assassination mission that spans nearly three
- 16:18thousand miles in just eight days.
- 16:20Speaker 2: What's fascinating here is how he exploited the very specific,
- 16:24totally unprecedented conditions of the world in July twenty twenty.
- 16:28Oh wow, Yeah, we really have to rewind our minds
- 16:31to that exact cultural moment. This is the early, highly
- 16:35chaotic era of the COVID nineteen pandemic.
- 16:37Speaker 1: Right, society is completely fractured. Protocols are changing on a
- 16:41weekly basis, there is immen's social distancing happening.
- 16:45Speaker 2: And crucially, everyone is wearing masks. Masks are mandatory, especially
- 16:49in public transit hubs. Prior to twenty twenty, if a
- 16:52man walked into a major train station wearing a surgical
- 16:55mask and a hat pulled low over his eyes, security
- 16:58would immediately flag him. He'd be seen as a suspicious
- 17:01individual attempting to conceal his identity.
- 17:04Speaker 1: But in July twenty twenty, wearing a mast was a
- 17:07mandated public health measure exactly.
- 17:09Speaker 2: It provided the absolute perfect, socially acceptable invisible disguise. Surveillance
- 17:15footage actually captured Den Hollander at the San Bernardino train
- 17:19station in California on July seventh.
- 17:21Speaker 1: This is four days before he killed Angeloucci.
- 17:23Speaker 2: Yes, he was wearing a mask, blending in perfectly with
- 17:26thousands of other anxious travelers. Nobody looked at him.
- 17:29Speaker 1: Twice, So the timeline basically goes like this. He takes
- 17:32a train out to California, he arrives, rents a car,
- 17:35and drives up into the mountains to Crestline which is
- 17:38near Angelucci's secluded home.
- 17:40Speaker 2: He waits, he executes the hit on July eleventh, Right,
- 17:43he leaves.
- 17:43Speaker 1: The dead man on a porch, and then what how
- 17:45does he get out of there so fast?
- 17:47Speaker 2: He drives back down the mountain into Los Angeles. He
- 17:51ditches the rental car, goes straight to Eli's union station,
- 17:54and calmly boards an Amtrak train heading east.
- 17:57Speaker 1: Just gets on a train, Yeah.
- 18:00Speaker 2: Catches him wheeling a standard rolling suitcase. On the exact
- 18:03same day he commits a brutal point plank murder. He
- 18:07is sitting in a train car, completely anonymous, behind a
- 18:10medical mask, moving steadily across the continent.
- 18:14Speaker 1: Wait, but this is the part that completely boggles my mind.
- 18:17Why a train?
- 18:18Speaker 2: What do you mean?
- 18:18Speaker 1: Well, if you just committed a murder and you want
- 18:20to get to your next target in New Jersey as
- 18:22fast as possible, why not fly a flight from lax
- 18:26to Newark?
- 18:26Speaker 2: Is what?
- 18:27Speaker 1: Five hours across country? Amtrak train takes days. It's slow,
- 18:31it's cumbersome, it seems like a terrible getaway vehicle.
- 18:35Speaker 2: It all comes down to the physical security infrastructure of
- 18:38the United States. Think about the TSA. Okay, if you
- 18:41are carrying a wal Ther point three eight zero semi
- 18:43automatic pistol. You cannot get that through airport security without
- 18:47triggering a massive logistical and digital paper.
- 18:49Speaker 1: Trail right because of the metal detector is an X
- 18:52rays exactly.
- 18:53Speaker 2: You have to declare it, You have to lock it
- 18:54in a hard sided case, surrender it to agents, and
- 18:57your name is immediately flagged in the system.
- 19:00Speaker 1: And if you try to just carry it on in
- 19:01your bag, you are arrested at the X ray machine immediately.
- 19:04Airport security is a heavily fortified checkpoint.
- 19:07Speaker 2: It's an impenetrable wall for a guy carrying a murder weapon.
- 19:10But train travel, specifically cross country Amtrak travel does not
- 19:15operate under TSA level security protocols.
- 19:18Speaker 1: Really, there are no metal detectors.
- 19:20Speaker 2: No, it is a highly porous artery. You can walk
- 19:23into Union Station with heavy suitcase, buy a ticket, and
- 19:26step right onto the train. No one is X raying
- 19:30your bags, No one is putting you through a millimeter
- 19:32wave scanner. Wow. The train gives him the ability to
- 19:36transport a recently fired murder weapon across multiple state lines
- 19:40without triggering a single alarm.
- 19:42Speaker 1: And the days he spends on the train actually work
- 19:45to his advantage, don't they?
- 19:46Speaker 2: They absolutely do. They create a massive geographical and temporal buffer.
- 19:50Speaker 1: Right because while the San Bernardino police are locking down
- 19:53the local mountain roads and setting up perimeters and looking
- 19:56for a getaway car in California, the.
- 19:58Speaker 2: Killer is already a thousand one miles away, probably reading
- 20:01a book in a sleeper car moving through the Midwest.
- 20:04Speaker 1: It's chilling.
- 20:04Speaker 2: He arrives on the East Coast, steps off the train,
- 20:07rents another car, drives into New Jersey, executes the second
- 20:11attack on July nineteenth, and then drives north to the
- 20:14Cat Skills to finally end it.
- 20:16Speaker 1: The meticulous, cold blooded nature of that planning is staggering.
- 20:20It requires a level of operational security, patience, and just
- 20:24analytical thinking that is truly terrifying.
- 20:27Speaker 2: It really does.
- 20:27Speaker 1: But it brings up the biggest question of all for me.
- 20:29The physical evidence, the gun, the rental cars, the Amtrak tickets.
- 20:33That answers the mechanical question of how Roydden Hollander did
- 20:36it right? The logistics, Yeah, but to understand why, we
- 20:39have to look back at his life. And this is
- 20:41where the deep dive takes a really unexpected turn, because
- 20:45his resume completely shatters our preconceived notions of what a
- 20:48domestic extremist looks like.
- 20:50Speaker 2: It truly does when society hears a phrase like lone
- 20:55wolf domestic terrorist, we have been conditioned by media and
- 20:58history to visualize a very specific archetype.
- 21:02Speaker 1: Right. The stereotype is basically the marginalized basement dweller. We
- 21:07picture someone uneducated, highly isolated from society, maybe struggling to
- 21:11hold down a minimum wage job.
- 21:13Speaker 2: Someone who gets radicalized on the dark, unmoderated corners of
- 21:16the Internet because they have no real world prospects or community.
- 21:20Speaker 1: We tend to think of extremism as a symptom of
- 21:23societal failure in poverty.
- 21:25Speaker 2: But Royden Hollander was the absolute antithesis of that stereotype.
- 21:30Let's look at his pedigree because it is crucial to
- 21:32understanding how he weaponized the system.
- 21:34Speaker 1: Okay, let's hear it.
- 21:36Speaker 2: He was born in nineteen forty seven in Midland Park,
- 21:38New Jersey, and he had a top tier, gold standard education.
- 21:42He actually earned a jurist doctor from George Washington University
- 21:46Law School in nineteen eighty five.
- 21:48Speaker 1: Wow. For those who aren't deeply entrenched in the legal world,
- 21:51GW Law is a highly respected, fiercely competitive law school.
- 21:55It's located right in the heart of the nation's capital.
- 21:57You don't just coast through a place like that, No,
- 21:59you really don't.
- 22:00Speaker 2: And he didn't stop his education there either. In nineteen
- 22:02ninety seven, he earned an MBA from Columbia Business.
- 22:05Speaker 1: School and ivy le MBA. Okay, so he's not just
- 22:09highly educated. He holds degrees that open doors to the
- 22:12absolute highest echelons of American power and commerce. So what
- 22:17did he actually do with that education?
- 22:19Speaker 2: His career trajectory was initially incredibly elite. He worked at
- 22:22the Irs Office of Chief Counsel, and then he was
- 22:26an associate at Krevath, Swain and Moore.
- 22:29Speaker 1: Wait, I have to stop you, Kravath. Yes, for those
- 22:31listening who aren't corporate lawyers, Kravath, Swain and Moore is
- 22:35not just a law firm. It is arguably the most prestigious,
- 22:39elite white shoe law firm on the planet.
- 22:41Speaker 2: It is legendary.
- 22:42Speaker 1: Getting hired there is incredibly difficult. It requires being at
- 22:45the absolute top of your class at a top tier
- 22:48law school, and the culture there is intense.
- 22:51Speaker 2: They literally invented the Kravat system.
- 22:53Speaker 1: Right yes, which is all about hiring the smartest young lawyers,
- 22:56paying them top dollar and training them to be exhaustive, relentless,
- 23:00and essentially perfect in their legal analysis. You work brutal
- 23:03hours and you are trained to view every single legal
- 23:06issue as a battlefield where you must leave absolutely no
- 23:08stone unturned.
- 23:09Speaker 2: Exactly. Yeah. And the training he received at Kraviv is
- 23:12absolutely essential to understanding his later.
- 23:16Speaker 1: Actions because it taught him how to fight right.
- 23:19Speaker 2: He was operating at the highest levels of the legal profession,
- 23:22learning how to dissect arguments, overwhelm opponents with paperwork, and
- 23:26relentlessly pursue an objective.
- 23:28Speaker 1: And his career wasn't just domestic, right, It took some
- 23:31wild international turns as well.
- 23:33Speaker 2: It did. He worked as a private investigator for Kroll
- 23:36Associates in Russia.
- 23:38Speaker 1: Kroll like the massive corporate investigations and risk consulting from.
- 23:42Speaker 2: That's the one they essentially do private intelligence, spionage and
- 23:46complex fraud investigations for massive corporations.
- 23:50Speaker 1: So he's not just a corporate lawyer. He's trained in
- 23:52corporate intelligence. He knows how to track people down, how
- 23:55to uncover secrets, how to operate in the shadows.
- 23:58Speaker 2: And he was doing this in Russia in the nineteen nineties, which,
- 24:01if you know your history, was essentially the wild West
- 24:04of capitalism after the fall of the Soviet Union.
- 24:06Speaker 1: Oh yeah, a highly dangerous, unregulated time.
- 24:09Speaker 2: It was a high stakes, dangerous environment. The records even
- 24:13show that during his time in Russia he managed his
- 24:15corporate intelligence work so successfully that he actually spoke at
- 24:19the Kremlin in nineteen ninety three.
- 24:20Speaker 1: I really need to pause and just chew on this
- 24:23because it is so wild to comprehend. You're calling him
- 24:25a lone wolf terrorist. But if he is appearing on
- 24:29Fox News later in life and he's walking the halls
- 24:31of Columbia University and giving speeches at the Kremlin, is
- 24:35he really a lone wolf?
- 24:37Speaker 2: That's a great question.
- 24:38Speaker 1: Wasn't he a highly integrated member of the elite who
- 24:42actively sought a pack and audience. I think it is
- 24:45so important for you, the listener, to recognize that radicalization
- 24:49isn't restricted to the fringes of society, right.
- 24:52Speaker 2: It doesn't just happen in dark basements exactly.
- 24:54Speaker 1: An Ivy League degree, a corner office, a six figure salary,
- 24:58these do not make you immune to extremism.
- 25:00Speaker 2: That is a phenomenal point. He was not a lone
- 25:03wolf in the sense of being socially isolated from society's institutions.
- 25:07He was deeply, deeply embedded in them.
- 25:09Speaker 1: Why do we use that term?
- 25:10Speaker 2: The term lone wolf here applies specifically to his operational execution.
- 25:15He carried out the murders entirely alone, without a terror
- 25:18cell backing him up. But his radicalization happened in plain sight.
- 25:22Speaker 1: And his education kind of fueled it.
- 25:24Speaker 2: Yes, in fact, his elite education didn't prevent his radicalization,
- 25:28it provided the precise tools for it. He took the
- 25:31exhaustive adversarial training of a Kravath lawyer and the surveillance
- 25:36skills of a Kroll investigator, and he just weaponized them
- 25:39for his own personal vendettas.
- 25:41Speaker 1: So, how does a guy go from speaking at the
- 25:43Kremlin to dying in a rental car in the Catskills?
- 25:46What causes that incredible pivot?
- 25:48Speaker 2: The pivot seems to be deeply personal and intensely psychological.
- 25:52In two thousand, he married a Russian model named Angelina Shippolina. Okay,
- 25:57but the marriage lasted only nine months. It ended in
- 25:59a highly volatile, deeply bitter.
- 26:02Speaker 1: Divorce and dun Hollander didn't just walk away quietly, did he. No.
- 26:05Speaker 2: He accused her of having ties to Russian organized crime
- 26:08and publicly claims she only married him for a green card.
- 26:11This personal failure, this perceived profound a betrayal, seemed to
- 26:16act as the spark that ignited a deep, all consuming
- 26:19paranoia within him. By twenty sixteen, his paranoia was so
- 26:23all encompassing that he posted documents on his own website
- 26:26listing Russian lawyers to contact, quote if something happens to me.
- 26:30Speaker 1: He honestly believed he was being hunted.
- 26:32Speaker 2: He was completely convinced of it.
- 26:33Speaker 1: So the paranoia is really setting in. But he's still
- 26:36a functioning lawyer at this point. How does he apply
- 26:39his elite legal training to this new paranoid worldview?
- 26:43Speaker 2: He transitions into a career of filing high profile, deeply antagonistic,
- 26:49and often entirely frivolous lawsuits.
- 26:51Speaker 1: He essentially stops practicing normal.
- 26:53Speaker 2: Law, right, he stops using the justice system to seek
- 26:56actual justice or practice corporate law, and he starts using
- 26:59it as an arena a place to litigate his deep
- 27:01seated personal grievances against women and society at large.
- 27:04Speaker 1: He weaponizes legal procedures exactly. And the lawsuits he filed,
- 27:07I mean, when you read them, they sound almost like
- 27:09punchlines to a bad joke. But he was deadly serious
- 27:12about them. He was like he sued bars and nightclubs
- 27:15over ladies night drink specials.
- 27:17Speaker 2: Yes, he argued that charging women less for a drink
- 27:21on a Tuesday was unconstitutional gender discrimination against men, it's absurd.
- 27:26Speaker 1: And he sued Columbia University, his own alma mater, over
- 27:29their women's studies courses, claiming they were discriminatory and violated
- 27:33civil rights laws.
- 27:34Speaker 2: To understand the malicious mechanism of this, you have to
- 27:37realize that filing a lawsuit costs time and money for
- 27:41the defendant, regardless of how absurd or frivolous the claim is.
- 27:45Speaker 1: Right, because you still have to hire a lawyer to
- 27:47respond to it.
- 27:47Speaker 2: Did Hollander knew this intimately? He knew that by filing
- 27:51these massive, exhaustive legal briefs using that intense cravat training,
- 27:56he could force universities and small local businesses to spend
- 28:00thousands and thousands of dollars on defense attorneys just to
- 28:02get the cases dismissed.
- 28:04Speaker 1: He was using the courts purely as an instrument of financial.
- 28:06Speaker 2: Harassment, precisely. And he didn't just file these quietly in
- 28:10the background either. He aggressively sought the spotlight.
- 28:12Speaker 1: Oh, he loved the attention. He became a minor celebrity
- 28:15in what is known as the manisphere, or these online
- 28:18anti feminist circles.
- 28:19Speaker 2: He even appeared on television.
- 28:21Speaker 1: Yeah, he went on the Colbert Report, completely leaning into
- 28:24this angry, litigious, combative persona. He went on Fox News.
- 28:29He liked being the face of this fringe movement. He
- 28:32wasn't hiding in a basement. He was actively demanding airtime exactly.
- 28:37Speaker 2: He wanted an audience for his grievance. And as part
- 28:40of this crusade, he got involved in a much larger,
- 28:43more legitimate legal battle, which one was that he was
- 28:46challenging the constitutionality of the male only military draft registration. Okay, yes,
- 28:51this specific legal battle is going to become the absolute
- 28:54epicenter of the tragedy. But I want to linger on
- 28:57his transformation for a moment, because what we are seeing
- 29:00is the external manifestation of a deeply held radical ideology.
- 29:05He viewed society as fundamentally broken inherently rigged against men,
- 29:09and he viewed himself as the ultimate tragic victim of
- 29:12a feminized system. Every single time a judge throughout one
- 29:15of his frivolous lawsuits, he didn't see it as a
- 29:18failure of his legal merit.
- 29:19Speaker 1: He saw it as proof.
- 29:20Speaker 2: Yes, he saw it, his absolute proof of a massive
- 29:23systemic conspiracy against him.
- 29:24Speaker 1: Okay, but frivolous lawsuits and angry television appearances are one thing. Right.
- 29:29You can be an angry litigious crank your entire life,
- 29:32waste millions of dollars of court time, and never hurt
- 29:34anyone physically.
- 29:35Speaker 2: Plenty of people do exactly.
- 29:37Speaker 1: So what turns a bitter lawyer into a murderer? How
- 29:40do we cross that threshold from a courtroom to a
- 29:43front door with a gun.
- 29:44Speaker 2: It's a massive escalation, it is.
- 29:46Speaker 1: And the answer lies in a collision of two massive factors,
- 29:50a two thousand page manifesto and a ticking biological clock.
- 29:55Speaker 2: Let's examine the writings first, because they really provide the explicit,
- 29:58terrifying blueprint for his mindset. By twenty nineteen, den Hollander
- 30:03had self published and posted a twenty twenty eight page
- 30:07document online.
- 30:08Speaker 1: Twenty twenty eight pages. I mean, the sheer volume of
- 30:10that is staggering. I want you to picture what that
- 30:12looks like printed out.
- 30:13Speaker 2: It's literally reams and reams of paper.
- 30:15Speaker 1: It is not just a diary. It is the life's
- 30:17work of a man utterly consumed by anger. It takes
- 30:20a monumental amount of focus and obsession to write two
- 30:23thousand pages about how much you hate the world.
- 30:26Speaker 2: And the contents were violently extremist. The document was a sprawling,
- 30:32hate full screed espousing sexist, racist, and deeply misogynistic views.
- 30:38Speaker 1: And we have to pause here and make a mandatory
- 30:39impartiality note. In this document, he goes on these highly
- 30:43charged political.
- 30:44Speaker 2: Attacks, right, he mentions volunteering for Donald Trump, and then
- 30:47he viciously attacks Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Justice Sonya
- 30:52Sodmayor exactly.
- 30:53Speaker 1: And I want to be perfectly clear to you listening.
- 30:55We are entirely neutrally reporting the contents of these sources
- 30:59just to understand and his mindset.
- 31:00Speaker 2: Yeah, we're absolutely not endorsing or taking any political sides here.
- 31:04We're just looking at the evidence left behind to understand
- 31:06the radicalization process.
- 31:08Speaker 1: Thank you. Yes, So, in this manifesto. He raged against
- 31:12women in general, female judges, specifically feminists, and a vast
- 31:16array of political figures he deemed his enemies.
- 31:18Speaker 2: He blended an in cell like ideology, this profound toxic
- 31:22rage against perceived emasculation and sexual rejection with a highly
- 31:26virulent strain of misogyny.
- 31:28Speaker 1: And when we talk about in cell like ideology, I
- 31:30want to make sure we're explaining what that actually means
- 31:32in a sociological context.
- 31:33Speaker 2: It's important to define it.
- 31:34Speaker 1: Yes, it's not just about being lonely or sad. It
- 31:37is a highly structured, radical worldview that believes men are
- 31:41biologically and socially entitled to female attention, and that society
- 31:45has unfairly elevated women, resulting in the systemic, deliberate oppression
- 31:49of men. Is a worldview that inherently dehumanizes women, reducing
- 31:54them to objects of conquest or targets of blame. Den
- 31:58Hollander completely absorbed this ideology and fused it with his
- 32:01own narcissistic belief in his intellectual superiority.
- 32:05Speaker 2: And that fusion is what made him so incredibly dangerous.
- 32:08He didn't just feel rejected romantically. He felt that his
- 32:11absolute genius was being actively suppressed by an inferior system.
- 32:15Speaker 1: Wow.
- 32:15Speaker 2: In this two thousand page document, he zeros in on
- 32:18his specific motives for the violent attacks we discussed earlier.
- 32:21He outlines exactly who he hates and why.
- 32:24Speaker 1: Let's talk about those specific motives because on the surface,
- 32:27targeting Mark Angelouci makes zero sense.
- 32:29Speaker 3: It seems counterintuitive, right if they were both prominent men's
- 32:32rights activists, both fighting against the military draft, why would
- 32:36dun Hollander travel across the country to kill someone ostensibly
- 32:39on his own side.
- 32:40Speaker 2: Because in extremist circles, the bitterest, most violent rivalries are
- 32:45often internal. It's all about purity testing.
- 32:48Speaker 1: And ego ah ego.
- 32:50Speaker 2: Yes, both den Hollander and Angeluci were deeply involved in
- 32:55challenging the male only military draft. Angeluci's organization, the NCFA,
- 33:00had successfully filed a major lawsuit against the selective service system.
- 33:04Den Holander had briefly been involved in that legal effort.
- 33:06Speaker 1: But he didn't stay involved, did he He was push out?
- 33:09Speaker 2: Yes. Leadership at the NCFM confirmed the den Hollander was
- 33:12expelled from the group because he flew into an uncontrollable
- 33:15screaming rage over not being named lead co counsel on
- 33:19the draft case.
- 33:19Speaker 1: Remember his massive ego. He is a Columbia MBA, a
- 33:23former Kravat lawyer. He genuinely believed he was the only
- 33:26one intelligent enough to argue the case exactly.
- 33:29Speaker 2: He wanted the prestige, he wanted his name on the
- 33:31Supreme Court filings. He wanted total control.
- 33:33Speaker 1: And when he was pushed out, he turned.
- 33:35Speaker 2: His bottomless hatred toward them. He publicly denounced the group
- 33:39as whimps and whiners. He viewed Mark Angeloucci not as
- 33:43an ally fighting the same fight, but as a bitter
- 33:46rival who had stolen his spotlight, usurped his glory and
- 33:50publicly humiliated him.
- 33:51Speaker 1: So Angelici was targeted out of pure professional jealousy and
- 33:55a perceived betrayal of ego.
- 33:58Speaker 2: Okay, but what about Judge esther Seller. Why did he
- 34:00travel across the country to New Jersey to target her
- 34:03family's home.
- 34:04Speaker 1: Judge Sallus was the federal judge assigned to preside over
- 34:07his own separate, competing lawsuit regarding the military draft oh
- 34:10I SI. In his manifesto, he spent pages and pages
- 34:13viciously attacking her. He directly accused her of intentionally stalling
- 34:17his lawsuit for political reason.
- 34:19Speaker 2: It just couldn't handle losing.
- 34:20Speaker 1: He believed that because she was a female judge, a Latina,
- 34:23and appointed by a Democratic president, she was inherently biologically
- 34:26biased against him and was intentionally sabotaging his life's work
- 34:30to protect a feminist agenda. He completely weaponized his own failures.
- 34:34He couldn't accept the reality that the federal legal system
- 34:37just operates slowly, or that his legal arguments might have
- 34:40lacked actual merit.
- 34:41Speaker 2: No, he had to blame someone else.
- 34:43Speaker 1: He internalized the basic bureaucratic pace of the court as
- 34:46a malicious personal attack orchestrated by the judge herself, and
- 34:51this ideology of grievance eventually tipped over into an explicit
- 34:54ideology of violence.
- 34:56Speaker 2: There is a quote from his writings that we have
- 34:58to talk about. It is chilling.
- 35:00Speaker 1: I have it right here, let me read it. Den
- 35:02Hollander wrote, things begin to change when individual men start
- 35:06taking out those specific persons responsible for destroying their lives
- 35:09before committing suicide.
- 35:11Speaker 2: That sentence, that is the absolute thesis statement of his rampage.
- 35:15Speaker 1: He is no longer just complaining online.
- 35:17Speaker 2: Right, he is prescribing violence as a necessary, logical and
- 35:21inevitable next step. He's framing Murder's suicide not as a
- 35:25tragedy but as a legitimate political tactic.
- 35:28Speaker 1: But again, he wrote that in twenty nineteen he had
- 35:30held these hateful views and filed these frivolous lawsuits for years.
- 35:35So what was the spark? What was the final catalyst
- 35:38that made him finally log off the Internet by a
- 35:40gun and put on that delivery uniform.
- 35:43Speaker 2: That's the terrifying part.
- 35:44Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting. It wasn't a new
- 35:47political development, it wasn't a lost court case. It was
- 35:50his own mortality.
- 35:52Speaker 2: In early twenty twenty, Den Hollander publicly announced to his
- 35:55online followers that he was, in his exact words, painfully
- 35:59dyeing from metastasized cancer.
- 36:01Speaker 1: Medical records later confirmed he was suffering from terminal melanoma.
- 36:04Speaker 2: Yes. In June of twenty nineteen, citing his declining health
- 36:08and severe illness, he had officially handed off his remaining
- 36:11legal work to other attorneys. He was staring death directly
- 36:15in the face.
- 36:16Speaker 1: The cancer diagnosis completely altered the stakes of his life.
- 36:19Speaker 2: This raises an incredibly important question. What keeps most people
- 36:23with extremist views from acting on them.
- 36:25Speaker 1: Consequences right exactly.
- 36:27Speaker 2: It is the societal deterrent of consequences. It's the fear
- 36:30of going to prison for the rest of your life,
- 36:32the fear of ruining your reputation, the fear of losing
- 36:35your assets.
- 36:36Speaker 1: The entire criminal justice system relies on the assumption that
- 36:39people want to live and preserve their freedom.
- 36:41Speaker 2: But when a doctor tells a narcissist filled with a
- 36:44lifetime of rage that he only has a few months
- 36:47left to live, that deterrent completely evaporates. The societal gravity
- 36:52that holds us in check simply turns off.
- 36:55Speaker 1: He realized he had nothing left to lose. He even
- 36:57mentions in his writings the decision to pursue quote cowboy justice.
- 37:02Speaker 2: Yes, the terminal illness essentially removed the societal guardrails. His
- 37:06mix of radical ideology and Boomer era misogyny was allowed
- 37:10to metastasize, much like his cancer, into lethal kinetic action.
- 37:14Speaker 1: He realized that because he was going to die anyway,
- 37:16he could inflict maximum devastating pain on his perceived enemies
- 37:20without ever having to face a judge, a jury, or
- 37:22a jail cell.
- 37:23Speaker 2: The cancer gave him permission. In his own quisted mind
- 37:26to become a monster.
- 37:27Speaker 1: He truly thought he was writing the final glorious bloodsoak
- 37:31chapter of his manifesto. He silences himself on that rural
- 37:35road in the Catskills, believing he has struck this mighty
- 37:39blow against the system he hated. But did he exactly.
- 37:43Let's look at the aftermath and the legacy of this
- 37:45horrific spree because his actions forced a massive nationwide reckoning,
- 37:50but it was the exact opposite of what he intended.
- 37:53Speaker 2: Let's start by honoring the legacy of the victims, because
- 37:56they really are the center of this story. Daniel Andrel
- 37:59was only two twenty years old.
- 38:01Speaker 1: He was a college student, looking forward to his junior
- 38:03year at Catholic University, just celebrating his birthday.
- 38:06Speaker 2: And Daniel Andral is remembered as a hero family and friends,
- 38:10and an official family statement emphasized that when the door
- 38:13opened and the gun was raised, Daniel didn't freeze.
- 38:15Speaker 1: No, he stepped right in front of his father.
- 38:17Speaker 2: He lost his life heroically stepping up to protect his
- 38:20parents when the gunfire started. His legacies on a profound,
- 38:24instinctual courage.
- 38:25Speaker 1: And Marc Angelucci, despite den Hollander's twisted, jealous views of
- 38:28him was deeply mourned by his colleagues in his community.
- 38:32Speaker 2: The NCFM, the organization den Hollander thought he was avenging
- 38:36or destroying, officially condemned den Hollander's extremism and distanced themselves
- 38:41entirely from his violence.
- 38:42Speaker 1: He didn't become a martyr for their movement. He became
- 38:44a pariah. They completely rejected him, and.
- 38:47Speaker 2: Then there's this systemic fallout. Den Hollander's attack on Judge
- 38:51Salas's family exposed a gaping, terrifying loophole in how we
- 38:55protect the people running our justice system.
- 38:58Speaker 1: Judge Sallas survived the unamous d horror of losing her
- 39:01only child in her own home, but instead of retreating,
- 39:05she channeled that horrific grief into fierce, immediate legislative advocacy.
- 39:10Speaker 2: She became a force of nature. She pushed for something
- 39:12called Daniel's Law.
- 39:14Speaker 1: Let's unpack Daniel's Law because it addresses the exact vulnerability
- 39:17den Alnder exploited. What does this law actually do?
- 39:21Speaker 2: Daniel's Law was designed to enhance security and privacy for
- 39:24the families of federal and state judges, as well as
- 39:27law enforcement officers.
- 39:28Speaker 1: How does it work practically?
- 39:29Speaker 2: At its core, it strictly restricts the public availability of
- 39:33these officials' personal information. It makes it illegal for data brokers,
- 39:38government agencies, and businesses to publish a judge's home address,
- 39:42personal phone numbers, or vehicle information online.
- 39:45Speaker 1: Meaning if you are a disgruntled litigant or an extremist,
- 39:49it should be incredibly difficult, if not impossible, to simply
- 39:54google where a federal judge sleeps at night exactly.
- 39:57Speaker 2: It removes the easy roadmap, because that's.
- 39:59Speaker 1: The terrified paradox of a free society, isn't it. I
- 40:02want you, the listener, to really think about this. We
- 40:05demand that our judges, our lawyers, our public officials exist
- 40:09within our communities.
- 40:10Speaker 2: We want them to understand the real world right.
- 40:13Speaker 1: We want them to go to the local grocery store,
- 40:15to live in standard neighborhoods, to be an active part
- 40:18of the society they are serving and judging. We don't
- 40:21want a judiciary that lives behind fortified castle walls, completely
- 40:24detached from everyday life.
- 40:26Speaker 2: But the delivery man Ruse proved that everyday community life
- 40:29is highly porous.
- 40:30Speaker 1: It really is. You can't live in a fortress if
- 40:33you want to be part of a community. But if
- 40:35you're in a community, someone determined to do harm can
- 40:38just walk up to your front door holding a FedEx
- 40:40envelope and bypass every security measure you have.
- 40:43Speaker 2: It is a profound vulnerability. How do you secure a
- 40:46soft target when the target is someone's front porch?
- 40:49Speaker 1: Right? So what did the government do besides Daniel's Law?
- 40:53Speaker 2: As a result of these murders, the FBI dramatically heightened
- 40:56its scrutiny of domestic extremism, specifically focused on the threat
- 41:00of lone wolf actors targeting public figures nationwide. Judicial security
- 41:05protocols were completely overhauled.
- 41:08Speaker 1: The US Marshals got involved with Yes.
- 41:10Speaker 2: US marshals were given expanded budgets to monitor online threats
- 41:13and perform intensive home security assessments for judges.
- 41:16Speaker 1: Which brings us to the ultimate glaring irony of roy
- 41:20Den Hollander's life and death. So what does this all mean?
- 41:24Speaker 2: Well, if we connect this to the bigger picture, we
- 41:26see the absolute pathetic failure of Den Hollander's mission house.
- 41:30He wanted to strike fear into the hearts of the judiciary.
- 41:33He wanted to punish his enemies He wanted his two
- 41:36thousand Paces manifesto to inspire a massive revolution of violence
- 41:41that would tear down the system he believed oppressed him.
- 41:43Speaker 1: But what did his violence actually achieve in the real world.
- 41:46Speaker 2: He achieved the exact diametric opposite of his goals. He
- 41:50didn't destroy the justice system. He catalyzed massive bipartisan efforts
- 41:55to protect it right.
- 41:56Speaker 1: He brought unprecedented resources and legislative power to secure the
- 41:59gu Dictionary.
- 42:00Speaker 2: He united people across the political spectrum in condemning his
- 42:04specific brand of violent misogyny. His spree achieved absolutely nothing
- 42:08for his twisted cause.
- 42:10Speaker 1: It only amplified calls to protect the vulnerable and reinforce
- 42:13the strength of the exact institutions he hated.
- 42:16Speaker 2: He wanted to be a conquering hero, a vanguard of
- 42:18a new movement, and instead he is just a dark,
- 42:21pathetic cautionary tale about how unchecked personal grievances fueled by
- 42:25an echo chamber can boil over into real world violence
- 42:28that destroys innocent lives.
- 42:30Speaker 1: Let's briefly recap the incredible journey of this deep dive.
- 42:34We started with two ringing doorbells on opposite ends of
- 42:37the country, a secluded mountain home hidden in the California Pines,
- 42:41and a quiet suburban house in New Jersey.
- 42:44Speaker 2: We explored the terrifying cognitive hack of the delivery uniform.
- 42:48Speaker 1: We followed the physical evidence, the ballistics the hit list
- 42:52to a rental car abandoned on a rural road in
- 42:54the Catskills.
- 42:55Speaker 2: We broke down the logistical nightmare of cross country train
- 42:58travel during a pandemic.
- 43:00Speaker 1: And from there we journeyed into the dark, paranoid mind
- 43:03of an ivy league educated, white shoe corporate lawyer who
- 43:06transformed into a lone wolf extremist.
- 43:09Speaker 2: We saw how the evaporation of consequences brought on by
- 43:12a terminal cancer diagnosis unleashed a highly planned, devastating vendetta.
- 43:17Speaker 1: This matters to you, the listener, because it is a
- 43:19stark reminder of the invisible vulnerabilities hidden in our everyday routines.
- 43:24Speaker 2: The trust we place in the uniform, the sanctity of
- 43:26our front steps, the digital footprints we leave behind.
- 43:29Speaker 1: And it's a critical reminder of how hatred, when left
- 43:33to fester and an echo chamber of grievance, can turn anyone,
- 43:37regardless of their elite education, their prestigious resume or their
- 43:41background into a lethal threat.
- 43:43Speaker 2: And that leaves us with a final vital question to ponder.
- 43:46We know exactly what happened to the physical evidence Roydon
- 43:49Hollander left in that rental car in upstate New York.
- 43:52Speaker 1: Right The state p Lice secured the walter at point
- 43:54three to eight zero, They catalog the hit list, they
- 43:57process the vehicle, and they close the physical case.
- 44:00Speaker 2: What happens to the two thousand pages of hate he
- 44:02left online? As a society, we are working incredibly hard
- 44:06to reinforce our physical front doors with critical legislation like
- 44:10Daniel's Law. We are scrubbing addresses and hiding public records.
- 44:14Speaker 1: How do we begin to secure the digital doors exactly?
- 44:17Speaker 2: How do we address the online echo chambers where these
- 44:19massive written manifestos remain permanently archived on servers, just waiting
- 44:23to be found and consumed by the next person who
- 44:25feels the world owes them vengeance.
- 44:27Speaker 1: It's a heavy thought, a monumental challenge for our digital age,
- 44:31but an absolutely necessary one to consider as we move forward.
- 44:34Thank you so much for joining us and spending your
- 44:36time on the steep dive. We'll catch you next time