Joseph Paul Franklin

Joseph Paul Franklin (actually James Clayton Vaughn, Junior ; born April 13, 1950 in Mobile , Alabama , † November 20, 2013 in Bonne Terre , Missouri ) was an American serial killer . Franklin's best- known victim was Larry Flynt , the editor of Hustler magazine, whom he seriously injured in 1978.

biography

Early life

James Clayton Vaughn - as Franklin was originally called - grew up in a home marked by violence. His father, who was an unemployed alcoholic , often left the family alone for months or even years and always celebrated his return by beating his children, especially James Junior. Little is known about Franklin's childhood and adolescence except that he was interested in the occult and modern nutrition.

After an accident in which his eyesight was severely impaired, he left school; his handicap also prevented his use as a soldier in the Vietnam War . In 1968, 18-year-old Vaughn married. He suffered from depression and mood swings and kept beating his wife until she eventually divorced him.

Political belief

At the beginning of the 1970s, racial segregation was abolished in the southern United States , a reform that right - wing extremist Vaughn disapproved of. He primarily focused his hatred on African Americans and Jews . In 1972, after his mother's death, Vaughn joined the American Nazi Party , for which he had long had sympathy. He left Alabama and settled in Atlanta ( Georgia down), where he a member of the National States Rights Party and the Ku Klux Klan was.

Around this time his legally recognized name change from James Clayton Vaughn, Junior to Joseph Paul Franklin, also took place . The name was not chosen by chance: the first names Joseph and Paul are borrowed from Paul Joseph Goebbels , Hitler's Reich Propaganda Minister . The name Franklin comes from Benjamin Franklin , one of the founding fathers of the United States .

Criminal career

Although he had already come into conflict with the law several times over minor offenses, Franklin's real "career" as a criminal began on September 6, 1976, when he drove a mixed-ethnic couple into a cul-de-sac in Atlanta and attacked them with tear gas. Franklin escaped. In the following three years he put in ten US states a bloody trail that began on July 29, 1977 in Chattanooga ( Tennessee ) he put a bomb in a local synagogue , when they detonated but no one was injured.

His first double murder committed Franklin week later, on August 7, 1977 in Madison ( Wisconsin ) when he killed the 23-year-old Alphonse Manning and his brunette girlfriend Toni Schwenningen. Franklin had recently robbed a bank and was now on the run with his car at excessive speed. He disapproved of the slow pace of the vehicle in front of him and killed the occupants, Manning and Schwenn. Two months later, on October 8, 1977 Franklin lurking in the bushes in front of a synagogue in Richmond Heights ( Missouri ) members of a Bar Mitzvah on, shot with a Remington 700 Gerald Gordon and injured two other men, Steven Goldman and William Ash, hard . On March 6, 1978 he committed in Lawrenceville ( Georgia ) to assassinate the publisher of Hustler , Larry Flynt , who survived a paraplegic. Flynt had discussed sex with blacks and other ethnic groups in an issue of his magazine, which specializes in sexuality; something Franklin did not tolerate. Whenever he was on the run, he used up to 18 pseudonyms and false identities. He kept buying getaway cars and dyeing his hair so often that it threatened to fall out. He waged a one-man war against Jews, blacks and dissenters.

On July 29, 1978 again in Chattanooga ( Tennessee arrived), where he previously had a bomb placed in a synagogue on the day a year he murdered blacks William Bryant Tatum, the employees of a Pizza Hut branch . Now Franklin interrupted his series of murders for almost a year. Investigators in the US were puzzled. Since Franklin always had new identities and looks, neither phantom images nor psychological profiles of the perpetrator or the perpetrators could be created. The fact that the acts were carried out in different states made the investigation difficult, as the investigators could not see any pattern and assumed that there were several perpetrators.

On July 12, 1979, he shot at a branch of Taco Bell in Doraville ( Georgia ) from a distance of 137 meters the 27-year-old black branch manager Harold McIver, was known to that he had a white girlfriend. His next victim was also in on 18 August, 1979 Fast Food - Restaurants found. In Falls Church ( Virginia ) shot Franklin through the window of a Burger King restaurants throughout the 28-year-old Raymond Taylor. The same restaurant became the scene of another crime 23 years later, in October 2002, when a victim of the so-called Beltway Sniper Attacks was killed here. On October 21, 1979, he shot the mixed-ethnic couple Jesse Taylor and Marian Bresette in Oklahoma City ( Oklahoma ) from 91 meters away. At that time, 29-year-old Franklin had a relationship with the 15-year-old prostitute Mercedes Masters, with whom he lived briefly in DeKalb County, Georgia. Masters confessed to Franklin that he also had black suitors, whereupon he also killed her on December 5, 1979. In Indianapolis ( Indiana ) he shot on 12 January 1980, 19-year-old Lawrence Rees front of a restaurant. To the astonishment of the investigators, Rees' father, who witnessed the assassination, was neither a victim nor a target of the sniper. Two days later, on January 14, 1980, Leo Watkins, 19, was the next victim when he was murdered outside an Indianapolis mall. On May 2, 1980, Franklin first deviated from his pattern of ambushing people. In Monroe County ( Wisconsin ) he took a young white hitchhiker who was later identified as Rebecca Bergstrom. Why Franklin murdered Bergstrom near Tomah, Wisconsin, could not be determined; Franklin confessed to the murder in 1984.

As Larry Flynt in 1978, it was on May 29, 1980 in Fort Wayne ( Indiana ) to the African American Vernon Jordan , another public figure Franklin's victims. Jordan, a 1980 confidante and staff member of the then governor of Arkansas and later US President Bill Clinton , was also a civil rights leader and had a relationship with a white woman. Jordan survived the assassination seriously injured. On June 8, 1980, Franklin murdered two children. In Cincinnati ( Ohio ), he waited a few hours in his car on a mixed ethnic couple that he could kill. When none turned up, he shot his two cousins ​​Darrel Lane, aged 14, and Donte Evans Brown, who was Franklin's youngest murder victim at the age of 13. Nine days later, on June 15, 1980 he shot in Johnstown ( Pennsylvania ) the 22-year-old Arthur Smothers and his 16-year-old girlfriend Kathleen Mikula, as the two African Americans crossed a bridge just in the city center. Other sources also give Johnstown in Ohio as the crime scene. On 25 June 1980 he took (19) and Vicki Durian (26) into the two hitchhikers inside Nancy Santomero Pocahontas County ( West Virginia ) with. At first he didn't want to harm the two white women, but when one of the women mentioned her black boyfriend in conversation with Franklin, he killed her.

Two months later, on August 20, 1980, Franklin committed his last recorded murders. In Salt Lake City ( Utah ) shot it from 36 yards away the two black joggers Ted Fields and David Martin, who traveled accompanied by her two white friends. They survived seriously injured.

Arrest and Trials

Franklin ran into police on September 25, 1980 in Kentucky after a failed bank robbery and was caught. He was transferred to Florida , briefly escaped from police custody, but was arrested again a few days later. The now 30-year-old man, who over time confessed to the murders, was accused in numerous trials that spanned a period of 17 years. In 1983, he was acquitted in Indiana in the case of the unsuccessful assassination attempt on Vernon Jordan. Because no clear evidence could be found at the crime scene, he was acquitted for lack of evidence. It was not until 1996 that he admitted to having committed the assassination attempt on Jordan. That same year (1983) he was sentenced to life imprisonment in Utah for the double homicides of Ted Fields and David Martin. Other life sentences were handed down in Tennessee, Wisconsin, Missouri and Ohio.

The charges included 20 murders, six grievous bodily harm, 16 bank robberies and two bomb attacks. Franklin also confessed to planning to assassinate US President Jimmy Carter for his liberal views. Black Baptist preacher Jesse Jackson is also said to have been on his death list. It was not until 1997 that the sniper attack in front of the Richmond Heights synagogue could be tried in Missouri. In this final process, the jury called for the death penalty . In 1997 he was sentenced to death. From that time onwards, Joseph Paul Franklin was on death row at the Potosi Correctional Center in Potosi, Missouri.

In October 2013, Larry Flynt spoke out against the execution of Franklin.

execution

The Missouri State Supreme Court set November 20, 2013 as the date of execution. However, it was postponed a few hours before the execution by US District Judge Nanette Laughery. She ordered that a lawsuit by Franklin and 21 other death row inmates against the execution procedure first had to be resolved. After a ruling by the United States Supreme Court on the matter, Franklin was finally executed by lethal injection on the scheduled date . It was the first execution in Missouri in three years.

literature

• Peter Murakami, Julia Murakami: Lexicon of serial killers. 450 case studies of a pathological type of killing. Ullstein Tb, Munich March 2000, 639 pages, ISBN 3-548-35935-3 .
• Michael Newton: The Great Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. Verlag für Collectors , Graz 2002, 447 pages, ISBN 3-85365-189-5

Individual evidence

1. ^ Profile of Serial Killer Joseph Paul Franklin
2. ↑ Assassination attempt on Jordan
3. ↑ Larry Flynt: Don't execute man who shot me . BBC News. October 18, 2013. Retrieved October 18, 2013.
4. ↑ Execution Date Set for Infamous Racist Serial Killer
5. ^ Federal judge stays Joseph Paul Franklin's execution
6. ↑ Missouri executes serial killer after Supreme Court clears way . Reuters. November 20, 2013. Retrieved November 20, 2013.