Talking Dateline: The Grudge

The Grudge: A Judge's Story of Loss, Forgiveness, and Purpose

In July 2020, during the height of COVID when packages arrived daily, U.S. District Judge Esther Salas answered her doorbell to find a man dressed as a delivery driver. Within seconds, her son Daniel—her only child, a college student who had just spent a wonderful weekend with friends—was dead. Her husband Mark was critically wounded. The shooter was Roy Den Hollander, a men's rights activist who had appeared in her courtroom over a draft-related case. She had ruled in his favor, but the case wasn't moving fast enough for him. He hated her, as someone later told her, "as soon as you were born"—because she was a woman and Hispanic. He then killed himself, leaving a hit list that included other targets.

The Unthinkable Proximity

What makes Judge Salas's story uniquely harrowing is that she was present for the entire event. She heard the doorbell, heard her son bound up the stairs, heard the gunshots, and ran upstairs to find her husband and son bleeding. Most Dateline interviews are with people who learned about a tragedy afterward. Judge Salas experienced every second of confusion and horror in real time.