Roy Den Hollander: Who was the 'anti-feminist' lawyer suspect in murder of judge's son?

Roy Den Hollander
Roy Den Hollander

Men's rights attorney and self-described "anti-feminist" Roy Den Hollander is suspected of killing and critically injuring the son and husband of federal Judge Esther Salas.

While authorities have not officially named the suspect found dead in an apparent suicide, sources began confirming his identity after it was first reported by The Daily Beast on Monday.

The New York attorney's body was reportedly found at a campsite near Liberty in the New York Catskills, about two hours from the New Jersey home where Ms Salas's husband, Mark Anderl, and son, Daniel Anderl, were gunned down on Sunday.

On Mr Hollander's website, the self-described anti-feminist says "now is the time for all good men to fight for their rights before they have no rights left."

He is known for suing nightclubs in Manhattan for supposedly discriminating against men by offering ladies' night discounts.

He is believed to have had a case before Ms Salas in the US District Court challenging the military's male-only draft on behalf of a New Jersey plaintiff, Elizabeth Kyle-Lebell, who was twice denied registration for Selective Service.

In 2019, Ms Salas dismissed Ms Kyle-Labell's argument the male-only draft requirement deprived her of due process, but allowed another one – that a male-only draft deprives women of "equal protection of the law" -- to proceed, according to USA Today.

Oral arguments were scheduled for last month but postponed due to "unforeseen circumstances", according to the case docket viewed by The Beast.

On his resume, Mr Hollander describes his expertise as "anti-Feminist litigation, investigations, and advice on general corporate matters".

He placed the origins of his activism to a bitter divorce from a woman he married in Russia in the late 1990s. That experience aimed his anger toward feminists and laws that favoured women, according to a 2008 report in The New York Times.

That year he filed a class-action lawsuit against Columbia University for offering women's studies courses that accused the college of using government aid to preach a "religionist belief system called feminism" that was a "bastion of bigotry against men".

In 2016, Mr Hollander filed a lawsuit against reporters from NBC News, ABC News, CNN, PBS News Hour, The New York Times and The Washington Post, claiming how they reported on then-candidate Donald Trump was a violation of the civil Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organisations Act.

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Son of US federal judge killed and husband wounded in attack by gunman