A fellow attorney warned the New York state court system more than a decade ago about murderous “anti-feminist” lawyer Roy Den Hollander, urging that the unhinged attorney be forced to go through a metal detector before entering court because he was such a danger, he told The Post.
“Hollander always had a very thinly-under-the-surface kind of a smoldering,” attorney Paul Steinberg told The Post. “Kind of this violence, just below the surface.”
Thirteen years before Den Hollander, 72 and dying of melanoma, launched a Sunday attack on a federal judge’s New Jersey home — killing her son and critically wounding her husband — his violent tendencies were readily apparent to anyone who cared to see them, said Steinberg, who sent a letter to the state in 2007 warning that Den Hollander was a ticking time bomb.
That year, Steinberg was representing William Fasano in a Manhattan Civil Court noise suit lodged by Den Hollander, who lived in the Stuytown apartment below Fasano’s.
When Steinberg entered the courtroom for what should have been a routine scheduling conference, he took one look at the judge and knew that Den Hollander was about to lose it.
“She was very young. She had very nice crinkly blond hair,” Steinberg said of the jurist.
“The fact that she was very good-looking and I think she reminded him of the Russian woman,” Steinberg continued, referring to Den Hollander’s ex-wife, Alina Shipilina. “I knew he was ready to blow.”
After a contentious hearing, Steinberg “hightailed it” out of the courtroom and into the hallway, only to be chased down by a raging Den Hollander.
“He came running down the hallway behind me,” recalled Steinberg. “He came right up on my right and grabbed [me].”
The pair ended up on the courthouse floor, and Steinberg turned for help to a court officer, who detained Den Hollander for about five minutes to give Steinberg time to leave safely.
That run-in was the final straw for Steinberg, who that night penned a letter to a lieutenant at the state’s court system, both detailing that attack and drawing to their attention the disturbing, misogynistic ramblings on Den Hollander’s personal blog.
“Of particular concern is that Mr. Den Hollander is able to enter into your building without passing through security screening,” wrote Steinberg. “Leaving aside indicia of mental instability already in the court record, the violent and misogynistic words of Mr. Den Hollander’s own blog are troubling. Now, Mr. Den Hollander feels comfortable initiating a physical confrontation in a courthouse hallway.”
Steinberg dismissed portrayals of Den Hollander as an “eccentric but harmless crank,” garnered by his far-fetched discrimination lawsuits against everything from ladies’ nights to college women’s studies programs.
“I would respectfully urge you to consider appropriate staffing during appearances on this matter, particularly when there are factors (such as a female judge) which may trigger unpredictable behavior by Mr. Den Hollander,” he wrote.
As Steinberg put it more bluntly to The Post, “My concern was he was going to bring in a gun and shoot a female judge.”
But the only thing that changed in an attempt to avoid further confrontations, Steinberg said, was Den Hollander being brought closer to the jurists.
“When he was done, the court officers would surround him like he was a protected person,” he said. “They would take him out through the judge’s room, down the judge’s elevator and out the judge’s exit.”
Meanwhile, the excessive noise case wound on, with Steinberg noting that Den Hollander had filed similar complaints against his previous upstairs neighbor, a woman.
During the case, Den Hollander also vocally objected to the openly gay Fasano wearing tight shirts to court, showing off his muscular physique, according to Steinberg.
“I said to the judge, ‘Judge, you don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to know what’s going on here,'” recalled Steinberg. “You have the issue of the hyper-masculine thing [with Den Hollander], right down to the buzz cut.
“The story that he pitched was that he was a totally normal, sane individual who had a bad divorce.”
The suit was settled in 2013, court records show.
Fasano has since died, according to Stuytown neighbors.
Steinberg’s belief is that Den Hollander went off the rails long before his brief and ill-fated marriage, while Shipilina’s divorce lawyer previously told The Post that he thinks the split pushed him “over the edge.”
Den Hollander’s hatred, whatever its crucible, exploded Sunday afternoon when, disguised as a Federal Express deliveryman and packing a gun, he came to the North Brunswick, NJ, home of federal Judge Esther Salas.
As soon as the door swung open, he fatally shot Salas’ 20-year-old son, Daniel Anderl, and critically wounded her attorney husband, Mark Anderl, 63.
Den Hollander then fled, and on Monday was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot in New York’s Catskills.
Salas — who was in her home’s basement at the time of the attack and was unharmed — was presiding over a case launched by Den Hollander, in which he argued that the military’s men-only draft is discriminatory. He later withdrew from the case, citing his cancer diagnosis.
A massive online manifesto left behind by Den Hollander details a general hatred of women and a bizarre lust-hate preoccupation with Salas, alternately describing her as “hot” and “lazy and incompetent.”
Steinberg said he rests easy knowing that he did what we could to warn people about Den Hollander.
“I sleep comfortably in terms of my responsibilities,” he said. “I told them years ago and I was not the only one. Nobody did anything. This is on OCA [the state Office of Court Administration]. Flat out.”
An OCA spokesman noted that no charges were ever filed in the 2007 run-in, and questioned whether anyone could have known at the time what Den Hollander was capable of.
“An unusual occurrence report from the incident in 2007 indicated cross complaints with no third party witness. Both parties declined to press charges. Mr. Hollander never had an attorney SECURE pass allowing him to bypass courthouse security,” said Lucian Chalfen.
“If an alleged incident 13 years ago is such an obvious bellwether to the horrible and tragic actions perpetrated recently by Mr. Hollander, then Mr. Steinberg missed a career in psychoanalysis,” added Chalfen.
Steinberg said that, psychology career or not, he always had an unnerving feeling about Den Hollander.
“Out of everybody I have ever dealt with, this is the one person,” said Steinberg. “I said, ‘If I get killed, this is going to be the guy.'”
Additional reporting by Lorena Mongelli