- Daniel Anderl was killed when a gunman posing as a delivery driver came to his family’s home
- The attacker was targeting his mother, Judge Esther Salas, but Daniel answered the door first
- His heartbreaking death sparked a change in laws to better protect judge’s families from criminals
Daniel Anderl had been counting down to his 20th birthday.
His plan was simple – some friends from university over for the weekend, but nothing fancy.
He was an only child, after his parents suffered four heartbreaking miscarriages.
Daniel was polite, warm and quick to help. He was also headed for a career in law, just like his parents.
His mum, Esther Salas, then 51, was a federal judge, while his father, Mark Anderl, 63, was a criminal defence lawyer.
Their beloved son, Daniel, was young, vibrant, and full of promise.
In July 2020, the last of his friends had left the family’s home when, at around 5pm, the doorbell rang. Daniel ran to answer it, and found a man wearing a delivery uniform and carrying a package.
Without warning, the man fired a gun.
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One bullet hit Daniel in the chest and tore through his heart.
Hearing the noise, his dad, Mark, came running.
He was shot three times and collapsed, critically wounded. Then the shooter turned and left.
Tragically, Daniel was dead.
Police swarmed the street within minutes.
Neighbours stood frozen on their front lawns as officers swept the house.
The family was well known in the area, and nobody could say why anyone would want to hurt them.
But investigators suspected the man hadn’t come for Daniel. He’d been after his mother.
Esther was in the basement cleaning when the bell rang, which was why her son was the one to answer the door.
The FBI worked quickly and, soon they had a name – Roy Den Hollander.
He was 72, a lawyer and men’s rights activist, who called himself an ‘anti-feminist’.
Years earlier, he’d crossed paths with Judge Salas when he’d filed a class-action lawsuit. Though Judge Salas, who presided over the case, allowed it to proceed, Hollander wasn’t satisfied. He’d gone online to criticise her, calling her lazy and incompetent.
Blinded by rage over what he felt was a disparity in rights between men and women, Hollander had previously sued nightclubs over ladies’ night discounts, a university over women’s studies courses, and the federal government over a law protecting women from violence. Alarmingly, he’d self-published a 1700-word book about his hatred of his mother and female judges, and how he’d fantasised about the rape of a judge who presided over his divorce case.
Esther believed there was more to it. She was a successful woman with a Latina background, and in her view, that was what Hollander couldn’t forgive.
What shook investigators most was how organised the attack had been.
The New Jersey shooting wasn’t Hollander’s first. Eight days before, in California, a lawyer named Marc Angelucci, 52, answered his front door. The person outside was dressed as a deliveryman. Marc too was shot dead.
The two men weren’t strangers. Both had been involved in the men’s rights movement. But Hollander was concerned that Marc was going to take cases away from him.
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While investigative teams combed the Anderl home, a call came in from the Catskill mountains, about 300km away. Police had found a man dead from a gunshot wound. It was Hollander. A .380-calibre handgun lay beside him. Ballistics tied the weapon to the killing of both Marc Angelucci and Daniel Anderl.
Inside his car, police found an envelope with Judge Salas’ home address on it. They also found a second address in California. It belonged to Marc Angelucci.
The gunman had taken his own life, but he’d left a trail pointing to everything he’d done.
Esther spoke to her husband Mark after he left hospital. And she sat through two FBI debriefings. She examined where each of the men had been standing when the first shot was fired.
Daniel, she said, had stepped between the gunman and his father and took the first bullet.
By her account, the killer never made it a single step inside, because Daniel blocked him.
‘There is no doubt in my mind,’ she said, ‘that my son consciously gave his life as an act of love.’
And the answer to how the killer found her was simple, and it was the part Esther couldn’t stand.
Anyone could find a judge’s home address online.
Seven months after the shooting, Mark was still recovering from his bullet wounds.
Instead of retreating, the couple took their fight to lawmakers. They presented a bill in New Jersey, and in November 2020, Governor Phil Murphy signed it as Daniel’s Law – which prohibits publicising the addresses of judges, police and prosecutors.
Then in December 2022, the Daniel Anderl Judicial Security and Privacy Act passed, designed to shield federal judges and their families from the kind of exposure that brought a killer to their door.
Daniel never got to become the lawyer he dreamed of being. He answered a doorbell on a Sunday afternoon, and his parents have spent every day since making sure it counts for something.
‘My son’s death cannot be in vain,’ Esther told CBS News.
