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Gunman's son says he wishes father had died
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Published: June 14, 2009
WASHINGTON
The son of James W. von Brunn says he wishes that it had been his father, not U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum guard Stephen P. Johns, who died in Wednesday's shooting and that von Brunn's hatred of Jews was a plague that ruined his family's life.
"I cannot express enough how deeply sorry I am it was Mr. Johns, and not my father who lost their life" Erik von Brunn, 32, says in a written statement to ABC News. "It was unjustified and unfair that he died, and while my condolences could never begin to offer appeasement, they, along with my remorse is all I have to give."
James von Brunn, a white supremacist, has been charged with killing Johns and remains hospitalized with gunshot wounds to his face from two other museum guards who returned fire after Johns fell.
In his statement to ABC and a phone interview with The Washington Post yesterday, von Brunn said that his father's bigotry was a shadow over his life. He said in the interview that he was too young to know his father when James von Brunn went to prison for 61/2 years for trying to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board at its District headquarters in December 1981. Erik von Brunn was nearly 11 when his father was released.
"Even from that moment, he still had those beliefs," said von Brunn, reached by phone at his mother's home in Homosassa, Fla., about an hour north of Tampa. "It was always a part of our life."
He said he had a decent relationship with his father, "in comparison with other families that I know." Although the elder von Brunn never insisted that his son share his views, Erik von Brunn said, his father was disappointed when he did not.
In the statement, von Brunn directly speaks to white supremacists. "For the extremists who believe my father is a hero: It is imperative you understand what he did was an act of cowardice," he writes. "His actions have undermined your ‘movement,' and strengthened the resistance against your cause. He should not be remembered as a brave man or a hero, but a coward unable to come to grips with the fact he threw his and his families lives away for an ideology that fostered sadness and anguish."
Three memorial funds have been set up for the Johns family, by the museum, his security company, Wackenhut, and the American Jewish Committee.
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