The New Jersey federal judge whose son was killed by a deranged lawyer last year revealed that the assailant was also keeping tabs on Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
FBI agents found a dossier on Sotomayor in a locker belonging to the lawyer, Roy Den Hollander, US District Judge Esther Salas told “60 Minutes,” in an interview that aired Sunday.
“They found another gun, a Glock and more ammunition. But the most troubling thing they found was a manila folder with a workup on Justice Sonia Sotomayor,” Salas said on the CBS News program.
Authorities have said that Den Hollander, an anti-feminist, race-hate-spouting Manhattan lawyer, posed as a FedEx delivery person in the July 19 ambush on Salas’ New Brunswick home.
The crazed attorney gunned down Salas’ 20-year-old son, Daniel Anderl, and badly wounded her husband, Mark Anderl.
At the time of the shooting, the judge was overseeing a case Den Hollander had brought arguing that the men-only military draft was discriminatory. Investigators said he ranted against Salas in writings and used racist and sexist terms in disparaging her.
Den Hollander, 72, was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound the day after the attack.
Authorities also discovered a document with Den Hollander that included information about a dozen female judges from across the country, half of whom are Latina, including Salas, the Associated Press previously reported.
The information on Sotomayor included her “favorite restaurants, where she worked out, her friends,” Salas told “60 Minutes.”
Learning that Den Hollander had the justice in his sights was “chilling,” she added.
“Who knows what could have happened?,” Salas said.
Since her son’s murder, Salas has been pushing for more privacy protections for judges, including scrubbing personal information from the internet, to deal with mounting cyberthreats.
“We need to understand that judges are at risk,” she said. “That we put ourselves in great danger every day for doing our jobs.”
Both the Supreme Court and the FBI declined to comment on her statements.
“We do not discuss security as a matter of Court policy,” said court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg.
With Post wires
