Joseph Paul Franklin

Joseph Paul Franklin (born James Clayton Vaughn Jr.; April 13, 1950 – November 20, 2013) was an American serial killer and white supremacist who engaged in a murder spree spanning the late 1970s and early '80s.

Franklin was convicted of several murders and received seven life sentences, as well as one death sentence. He also confessed to the attempted murders of magazine publisher and pornographer Larry Flynt in 1978 and civil rights activist Vernon Jordan in 1980. Both survived their injuries, but Flynt was left permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Franklin was not convicted in either of those highly publicized cases, and he made his confessions years after the crimes had occurred.

Franklin was on Missouri's death row for 15 years awaiting execution for the 1977 murder of Gerald Gordon.<ref name="edition">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="usatoday">Template:Cite news</ref> He was executed by lethal injection on November 20, 2013.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Early life

James Clayton Vaughn Jr. was born in Mobile, Alabama, on April 13, 1950, the elder son of James Clayton Vaughn Sr. and Helen Rau Vaughn. He had two sisters and a brother.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Vaughn's father was a World War II veteran and butcher who left the family when Vaughn was aged eight.<ref name="people">Template:Cite magazine</ref> His sister Carolyn recalled, "Whenever [Vaughn Sr.] came to visit he'd beat us". Their mother had Vaughn Sr. jailed twice for public drunkenness. Vaughn's mother was described by a family friend as "a full-blooded German, a real strict, perfectionist lady. I never saw her beat any of [her children], but they told me stories."<ref name="people"/>

Vaughn later stated that he was rarely given enough to eat and suffered severe physical abuse as a child,<ref name=Gladwell>Template:Cite magazine</ref> and that his mother "didn't care about [him and his siblings]".<ref name="CNN">Template:Cite news</ref> He claimed that these factors stunted his emotional development, and said he had "always been [at] least ten years or more behind other people in their maturity."<ref name="CNN"/>

As early as high school, Vaughn developed an interest in evangelical Christianity, then in Nazism, and later held memberships in both the National Socialist White People's Party and the Ku Klux Klan. He eventually changed his name to "Joseph Paul Franklin" in honor of Paul Joseph Goebbels and Benjamin Franklin.<ref name="Time">Template:Cite news</ref> In the 1960s, Franklin was inspired to start a race war after reading Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf. "I've never felt that way about any other book that I read," he later reflected. "It was something weird about that book."<ref name="Wwwbbccouknewsworlduscanada">Template:Cite web</ref>

In the early 1970s, he took a road trip to an NSWPP conference in Virginia with David Duke and Don Black.<ref name="slowburn_s04e02">Template:Cite podcast</ref>

Crimes

For much of his life, Franklin was a drifter, roaming the East Coast seeking chances to "cleanse the world" of people he considered inferior, especially black and Jewish people.<ref name="Gladwell"/> His primary source of financial support appears to have been bank robberies. Franklin supplemented his income from criminal acts with paid blood bank donations, which eventually led to his capture by the FBI.<ref name="FBI">Template:Cite web</ref>

1977

• July 29, 1977: Franklin firebombed Beth Shalom Synagogue in Chattanooga, Tennessee, destroying it. Loss of life was prevented because some of the worshippers left early that Friday evening and as a result, there were not enough worshippers for a minyan.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• August 7, 1977: Franklin shot and killed a young interracial couple, Alphorance “Alphonce” Manning and Toni Lynn Schwenn, both 23, in a parking lot at East Towne Mall in Madison, Wisconsin. He was later convicted of both murders and was sentenced to life in prison.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• October 8, 1977: In suburban St. Louis, Missouri, Franklin hid in the bushes near Brith Sholom Kneseth Israel synagogue and fired on a group attending services. In this incident, Franklin killed 42-year-old Gerald "Gerry" Gordon.<ref name="Gladwell"/> He also wounded Steven Goldman and William Ash.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

1978

• March 6, 1978: Franklin, according to his later account, used a Ruger .44 caliber semi-automatic rifle<ref name="Ayton2011">Template:Cite book</ref> to ambush Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and his lawyer Gene Reeves in Lawrenceville, Georgia. In his confession, Franklin said this was in retaliation for an edition of Hustler displaying interracial sex.<ref name="Gladwell"/> Neither Franklin nor anyone else was ever charged in that shooting.
• July 29, 1978: Franklin hid near a Pizza Hut in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and shot and killed 20-year-old William Bryant Tatum, a black man, with a 12-gauge shotgun; he also shot Tatum's white girlfriend, Nancy Hilton, who survived. Franklin later confessed and pleaded guilty. He was given a life sentence, as well as a sentence for an unrelated armed robbery in 1977.<ref name="Gladwell"/>

1979

• July 12, 1979: 29-year-old Taco Bell manager Harold Bruce McIver, a black man, was fatally shot through a window from Template:Convert in Doraville, Georgia. Franklin confessed but was not tried or sentenced for this crime. Franklin said that McIver was in close contact with white women, so he murdered him.<ref name="Gladwell"/>
• August 18, 1979: Franklin shot and killed Raymond Taylor in Falls Church, Virginia.<ref name="Auto9W-8">Template:Cite news</ref>
• October 21, 1979: Franklin killed 42-year-old Jesse E. Taylor, a black man, and his white girlfriend, Marion Vera Bresette, 31, in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.<REF name="Auto9W-8"/>

1980

• May 29, 1980: Franklin confessed to shooting and seriously wounding civil rights activist and Urban League president Vernon Jordan after seeing him with a white woman in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Franklin initially denied any part in the crime and was acquitted, but later confessed.<ref name="Gladwell"/>
• June 8, 1980: Franklin killed cousins Darrell Anthony Lane (14) and Dante Evans Brown (13) in Cincinnati, Ohio. Waiting on an overpass to shoot a racially mixed couple, he shot the boys instead, a crime to which he later confessed. He was convicted in 1998 and received two life sentences for these murders.<ref name="Horn"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• June 15, 1980: Franklin shot and killed Arthur Dale Smothers (22) and Kathleen Mikula (16) with a high-powered rifle as the couple walked across the Washington Street Bridge in Johnstown, Pennsylvania. Smothers was black; Mikula was white. On the day of the murder, Franklin took a concealed position on a wooded hillside overlooking downtown Johnstown and waited for potential targets to enter his line of sight. He was never arrested for these murders, but he confessed to them during a jailhouse interview after he was apprehended.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>
• June 25, 1980: Franklin used a .44 Ruger pistol to kill two hitchhikers, Nancy Santomero (19) and Victoria Ann "Vicki" Durian (26), in Pocahontas County, West Virginia. He confessed to the crime in 1997 to an Ohio assistant prosecutor in the course of investigation in another case. He said he picked up the white women and decided to kill them after one said she had a black boyfriend. Jacob Beard of Florida was convicted and imprisoned in 1993 on these charges. He was freed in 1999 and a new trial was ordered based on Franklin's confession.<ref name="Horn">Dan Horn, "Franklin's confession frees man: Judge grants new trial in W.Va. slayingsTemplate:Dead link, Cincinnati Enquirer, January 30, 1999. Retrieved May 7, 2012</ref> On May 31, 2000, a jury found Jacob Beard not guilty, and he later filed a lawsuit, wanting compensation for wrongful conviction, which led to a $2 million settlement.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• August 20, 1980: Franklin killed two black men, Theodore Tracy "Ted" Fields, 20, and David Lemar Martin III, 18, near Liberty Park located in Salt Lake City, Utah.<ref name="Gladwell"/> He was tried on federal civil rights charges as well as state first-degree murder charges.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He was convicted of both murders and was sentenced to life in prison.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Apprehension, conviction, and imprisonment

Following the two murders in Utah, Franklin returned to the midwestern U.S. Traveling through Kentucky, he was detained and questioned regarding a firearm that he was transporting in his car. Franklin fled from this interrogation, but authorities recovered sufficient evidence from his vehicle to potentially link him to the sniper killings.<ref name="FBI"/> His conspicuous racist tattoos, coupled with his habit of visiting blood banks, led investigators to issue a nationwide alert to blood banks. In October 1980, the tattoos drew the attention of a Florida blood bank worker, who contacted the FBI. Franklin was arrested in Lakeland on October 28, 1980.<ref name="FBI"/>

Franklin faced legal action across the U.S. for the next two decades, eventually being convicted of multiple murders, attacks, and other crimes at both the state and federal levels. He was sentenced to life in prison and received the death penalty in Missouri for the murder of Gerald Gordon.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Franklin tried unsuccessfully to escape during the judgment phase of his 1997 Missouri trial on charges of murdering Gerald Gordon but was ultimately convicted. Psychiatrist Dorothy Otnow Lewis, who had interviewed him at length, testified for the defense that she believed that he was a paranoid schizophrenic and unfit to stand trial. Lewis noted his delusional thinking and a childhood history of severe abuse.<ref name="Gladwell"/>

In October 2013, victim Larry Flynt called for clemency for Franklin, asserting "that a government that forbids killing among its citizens should not be in the business of killing people itself."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Franklin was held on death row at the Potosi Correctional Center near Mineral Point, Missouri. In August 2013, the Missouri Supreme Court announced that Franklin would be executed on November 20.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster said in a statement that by setting execution dates, the state high court "has taken an important step to see that justice is finally done for the victims and their families."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Execution

Franklin's execution was affected by the European Union export ban when the German drug manufacturer Fresenius Kabi was obliged to refuse having their drugs used for lethal injections.<ref name="Economist">Template:Cite news</ref> In response, Missouri announced that it would use for Franklin's execution a new method of lethal injection, which used a single drug provided by an unnamed compounding pharmacy.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

A day before his execution, U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey (Jefferson City) granted a stay of execution over concerns raised about the new method of execution.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> A second stay was granted that evening by US District Judge Carol E. Jackson (St. Louis), based on Franklin's claim that he was too mentally incompetent to be executed. An appeals court quickly overturned both stays,<ref name="Jackson-stay">Template:Cite news</ref> and the Supreme Court subsequently rejected his final appeals.<ref name=latimes1>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=cnn1>Template:Cite news</ref>

In an interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch newspaper published on November 17, 2013, Franklin said he had renounced his racist views. He said his motivation had been "illogical" and was partly a consequence of an abusive upbringing. He said he had interacted with black people in prison, adding: "I saw they were people just like us."<ref name="Wwwbbccouknewsworlduscanada" /><ref name="St. Louis Post-Dispatch 2">Template:Cite news</ref>

Franklin was executed at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, Missouri, on November 20, 2013. The execution began at 6:07 a.m. CST and he was pronounced dead at 6:17 a.m.<ref name="Jackson-stay"/> His execution was the first lethal injection in Missouri to use pentobarbital alone instead of the conventional use of three drugs.<ref name=latimes1/> An Associated Press agency report said that Template:Convert of the barbiturate pentobarbital was administered.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Three media witnesses said Franklin did not seem to show pain. He did not make any final written statement and did not speak a word in the death chamber. After the injection, he blinked a few times, breathed heavily a few times, and swallowed hard, the witnesses said. The heaving of his chest slowed, and finally stopped, they said.<ref name="St. Louis Post-Dispatch">Template:Cite news</ref>

Representation in other media

Hunter (1989), a novel by the white supremacist William L. Pierce, revolves around protagonist Oscar Yeager, a racist serial killer who murders interracial couples.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Pierce, founder of the National Alliance and author of a similarly themed novel, The Turner Diaries, dedicated the book to Joseph Paul Franklin,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> and said of Franklin that "he saw his duty as a white man and did what a responsible son of his race must do."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> In the 1996 film The People vs. Larry Flynt, Franklin was portrayed by Czech actor Jan Tříska.

See also

• Neal Long, another serial killer motivated by racism
• List of people executed in Missouri
• List of people executed in the United States in 2013
• List of serial killers by number of victims
• List of serial killers in the United States

Further reading

• Mel Ayton, Dark Soul of the South: The Life and Crimes of Racist Killer Joseph Paul Franklin, Potomac Press, Inc., 2011
• Ralph Kennedy Echols, Life Without Mercy: Jake Beard, Joseph Paul Franklin and the Rainbow Murders, Kennedy Books, Scottsdale, AZ, 2014

External links

• Template:Cite web, Court TV: police photography
• Template:Cite web
• Malcolm Gladwell, "Damaged", New Yorker, February 24, 1997
• Template:IMDb name
• Serial Killers - Part 4: White Supremacist Joseph Franklin, FBI
• Serial Killer's Survivor: Prosecutor Raped Me During the Trial

Template:S-start ! colspan="3" | Executions carried out in Missouri Template:S-bef Template:S-ttl Template:S-aft |- ! colspan="3" | Executions carried out in the United States Template:S-bef Template:S-ttl Template:S-aft Template:S-end