NJ judge’s would-be killer was once a local kid

Suspect took his own life in familiar Beaverkill

By Les Mattis | Manor Ink Mentor

Beaverkill, NY – The quiet of life on a dead end dirt road in the hamlet of Beaverkill was interrupted on Monday morning, July 20, by the appearance of multiple NY State Police vehicles zipping up and down Ragin Road, just off the western end of the Beaverkill Covered Bridge.

When asked about the commotion, a trooper said that while there was no imminent danger, it might be a good idea to stay inside as the road was closed for a crime scene investigation. What had been found by members of the Town of Rockland highway crew earlier that morning was a car parked just off the road with a dead man in it – a suspected suicide. That theory was confirmed by ensuing discoveries made by the State Police.

The dead man was Roy Den Hollander, an attorney whose parents owned a cabin on Ragin Road where, decades ago, they spent summers. Several residents, including Eric Hamerstom, remembered Den Hollander and his older brother Frank, now deceased. Hamerstom said Roy’s nickname was “Babyface,” and contemporaries recalled him being an overly quiet, different sort who was not much liked.

Den Hollander went on to practice law in Sullivan County for a period and although other lawyers who encountered him did not wish to be quoted for this story, it was clear he was looked at askance.

Attack on federal judge and family

It is now known that it was Den Hollander, wearing a FedEx uniform, who knocked on the door of US District Judge Esther Salas in New Brunswick, NJ, on Sunday night, July 19. When her college student son answered,  Den Hollander shot him, and then turned the gun on the young man’s father, the judge’s husband, wounding him several times. Salas’s son was killed, but her husband luckily is recovering and is expected to live.

The motive for the shooting is still being fleshed out, but apparently Den Hollander, who billed himself as an “anti-feminist activist,” had brought a lawsuit before Judge Salas that challenged the constitutionality of US draft laws which conscript men but not women. In his published writings and in an interview he gave on TV, Den Hollander crusaded against women’s efforts to gain equality and openly denigrated Judge Salas, who had been nominated for the federal bench by President Obama, with ethnic and gender slurs.

An anti-feminist litigator

An anti-feminist who sought to block and overturn laws granting women equality, Den Hollander even sued to stop bars from having “ladies’ nights” where drinks were sold at cut rates to women, a courtesy he deemed to be anti-men. He had lately told friends he was dying of cancer, and the authorities are investigating the possibility that he wanted to settle perceived scores before his demise.

After the shootings in New Brunswick, Den Hollander drove himself up to Beaverkill, the locale of his younger years, and there died by his own hand.

It was quite a sight on Ragin Road by the time Monday had drawn to a close – a helicopter overhead, multiple NY State Police cars sealing off the road, unmarked FBI, New York, New Jersey and local police vehicles, including a black crime scene truck, convoying up and down the road, and reporters asking questions. It wasn’t exactly what local residents expect of a bucolic and peaceful afternoon in our rural community.