U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas, whose son was shot and killed earlier this year, said she’s received more disturbing messages since her family was targeted.
“Since Daniel’s murder, I have received another inappropriate communication,” Salas said Wednesday on MSNBC. “Another judge in my district has not only received but had her information, her personal home address put out in the internet. These are horrible things that people are doing to target federal judges, and I do want to say, make no mistake. The federal judiciary is under attack.”
Salas’s son Daniel Anderl, 20, was killed in the family’s New Jersey residence in July after opening the door to a man dressed as a FedEx worker, who then shot him and his father, Mark Anderl. Anderl, a defense attorney who was standing behind his son, suffered injuries from being shot several times. He later underwent surgery at a local hospital and survived.
The man who opened fire was identified as Roy Den Hollander, a self-described “anti-feminist” lawyer, who crossed paths with Salas when she presided over a 2015 legal fight involving a woman who wanted to register for the men-only military draft. Hollander wrote critiques against Salas online, including posts that targeted her Hispanic identity. Hollander was found dead the day of the incident by a self-inflicted wound.
Since the tragedy, Salas has advocated for increased protection of personal information related to federal judges, which she believed were too easily accessible online.
“This free-flowing of information, if we do not do something to stop it, it can and will lead to more violence, to more senseless tragedies because people have access to this very personal information,” Salas said. “We are talking about trying to restrict access to our home addresses. To our phone numbers. To our personal email addresses. Things that, quite frankly, give people the power to really target us and strike us down.”
Earlier this month, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy signed Daniel’s Law into effect, named for Salas and Anderl’s son. The law seeks to protect the home addresses and telephone numbers of judges, prosecutors, and law enforcement officers from being disclosed to the public.
