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COURIER L 14 IFE, JULY 24-30, 2020
Revisiting our 2011
interview with suspect in
killing of NJ judge’s family
Roy Den Hollander, the lead suspect in the murder of a New Jersey judge’s son, holding
court papers after he sued to stop “ladies’ night” in 2011. File photo by Celeste Hunt
BY BEN VERDE
Roy Den Hollander, the now-deceased
“men’s rights activist” suspected
of killing the son of a New Jersey federal
judge, had a long history of bringing
bizarre lawsuits to support his antifeminist
agenda — and some of his more
outlandish antics appeared in this very
paper, when he brought his curious crusade
to Brooklyn.
Brooklyn Paper sat down with Den
Hollander in 2011 after the dissident
feminist fi led a class-action lawsuit
in federal court to end the practice of
so-called “ladies’ nights” — wherein
women are offered discounts on drinks
at bars and clubs.
After paying more for alcohol than
his female counterparts, the accused
future-killer argued that his guarantees
of equal rights under the 14th amendment
were being violated — leading to a
series of retrospectively ominous proclamations.
“Men these days are treated like second
class citizens,” Den Hollander told
Brooklyn Paper in 2011. “Even a dog has
more rights.”
The Paper interviewed a number of
Brooklyn club owners at the time, who
pointed out that the discount serves to
benefi t men by increasing the amount of
women in the bar.
“It’s common sense,” Junior, a bar
manager at Club Temptations in Flatbush
told this newspaper nine years
ago. “If there are women at a club, it’s
good for guys.”
But Den Hollander’s passion for the
men’s rights cause turned out to be more
than a whimsical sideshow, which saw
him featured on The Colbert Show and
Fox News, and provoked this paper to label
him a harmless ‘knucklehead.’
Years after the oft-mocked ladies’
night case, Den Hollander fi led another
frivolous lawsuit which came before
Judge Esther Salas — whom he later
called “a lazy and incompetent Latina
judge appointed by Obama.”
Authorities believe Den Hollander
approached Salas’ New Brunswick
dressed as a FedEx driver, and fi red
multiple shots — killing Salas’ son and
wounding her husband.
The next day, authorities recovered
Den Hollander’s body in the Hudson
Valley, after an apparent suicide.
Upon realizing that the prime suspect
in the grisly murder was a man she
once interviewed, former Brooklyn Paper
scribe Natalie O’Neill recalled her
once-thought-to-be humerous encounter
with Den Hollander nine years earlier.
“This guy took himself really seriously
on our phone call,” O’Neill, now
a freelance reporter based out of Portland,
Oregon remembers. “He came off
really intense.”
But, O’Neill said she never imagined
Den Hollander’s intense antifeminist
bent translating into violence — despite
an undercurrent of hostility to their
conversation.
“There was some hostility in the
things he was saying, but not something
that I thought clearly indicated that he
would be violent,” she said.
One particular comment of Den Hollander’s
stands out to O’Neill following
his alleged rampage.
“He said something to the effect of ‘I
don’t want to trash women, I don’t hate
women, women are people too — except
for feminists,’” O’Neill said. “I was like
‘s—-, I guess I’m not a human.’”
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