Museum shooting suspect was WWII PT boat CO - Navy News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Navy Times

Museum shooting suspect was WWII PT boat CO

The man accused of killing a security guard Wednesday in a shooting at the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington was the captain of a Navy PT boat in World War II, as he claimed, the Navy confirmed Thursday.

The alleged gunman, James von Brunn, served in the Naval Reserve from 1943-46, rising to the rank of lieutenant junior grade and eventually commanding PT 159 when it was stationed in the South Pacific, a Navy spokesman said.

PT boats — named for the Navy designation Patrol boat, Torpedo — were small, swift wooden craft in World War II armed with torpedoes and machine guns, designed to attack larger surface ships.

Von Brunn, who is hospitalized in Washington after he was shot by museum guards, has been tied to extremist neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic writings. Prosecutors in Washington on Thursday charged him with the murder of museum guard Stephen Johns.

Since the shooting, investigators and reporters have scrambled to sort out what is fact and what is fiction about von Brunn, who made this claim, in the third person, on a Web site:

“During WWII he served as PT boat captain, Lt. USNR, receiving a commendation and four battle stars. For twenty years he was an advertising executive and film-producer in New York City. He is a member of Mensa, the high-IQ society.”

Navy records show that while in service von Brunn received the American Defense Medal; the American Area Commendation Ribbon; the Asiatic-Pacific Area medal with one star; the Philippine Liberation Ribbon; the World War II Victory Medal, and a European Theater of Operations medal with three stars.

Von Brunn served six years in federal prison after he tried to make a “citizen’s arrest,” as he called it, of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve in Washington in 1981, reportedly armed with a pistol, a shotgun and a hunting knife.

The Associated Press reported late Thursday that von Brunn took his views May 29 to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis to complain about increased minority enrollment, will be about 35 percent for the Class of 2013. He walked into the administration building and wanted a meeting with academy officials, spokesman Cmdr. Joe Carpenter said.

Von Brunn never got the meeting and was not considered a safety threat, Carpenter said. However, staff quickly notified Navy investigators because of “the extreme views he expressed regarding minorities,” Carpenter said.

“He made no threats,” Carpenter said.

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