XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.nationalism.white, soc.culture.usa   
   XPost: talk.politics.guns   
   From: lincoln@men.com   
      
   ST. LOUIS — We’re taking a look back at some of the biggest cases in the   
   St. Louis area. The execution of this nationally-known killer is one of   
   the most infamous.   
      
   Joseph Paul Franklin, an American neo-Nazi, terrorist, and serial killer,   
   carried out a spree of murders from the late 1970s to the early 1980s.   
   Born in 1950 in Alabama, he met his end at the correctional center in   
   Bonne Terre, Missouri.   
      
   Originally named James Clayton Vaughn Jr., Franklin later changed his name   
   to honor his personal heroes: Paul Joseph Goebbels, a Nazi, and Benjamin   
   Franklin.   
      
   Franklin, the eldest of three siblings, faced a troubled upbringing. His   
   father, a World War II veteran and butcher, abandoned the family when   
   Franklin was eight. One of Franklin’s siblings claimed that when his   
   father did come to visit, he frequently experienced physical abuse at his   
   hands. Additionally, Franklin’s mother, known for her strict parenting,   
   was also alleged to have administered physical discipline.   
      
   Blaming his upbringing, Franklin later attributed his descent into mass   
   murder and serial killing to a lack of maturity and an inability to   
   distinguish right from wrong.   
      
   During his school years, Franklin developed an interest in Nazism. He held   
   memberships in the National Socialist White People’s Party and the Ku Klux   
   Klan.   
      
   Franklin claimed in an interview with FOX2’s Tom O’Neal that the Nazi   
   literature he read as a teenager, specifically Adolf Hitler’s influential   
   words in Mein Kampf, was the source of his hatred for Jews and African   
   Americans.   
      
   Crime Timeline:   
      
   1977:   
      
   July 29: Firebombed Beth Shalom Synagogue in Chattanooga, Tennessee.   
      
   August 7: Shot and killed an interracial couple in a parking lot in   
   Madison, Wisconsin.   
      
   October 8: Attacked Brith Sholom Kneseth Israel synagogue in St. Louis,   
   Missouri, killing one and injuring others.   
      
   1978:   
      
   March 6: Attempted to assassinate Larry Flynt in Lawrenceville, Georgia.   
      
   July 29: Hid near a Pizza Hut in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and shot and   
   killed a black man.   
      
   1979:   
      
   July 12: Fatally shot Taco Bell manager Harold McIver in Doraville,   
   Georgia.   
      
   October 21: Killed a black man and his white wife in Oklahoma City,   
   Oklahoma.   
      
   1980:   
      
   May 29: Confessed to shooting civil rights activist Vernon Jordan in Fort   
   Wayne, Indiana.   
      
   June 8: Killed two cousins in Cincinnati, Ohio, while waiting for an   
   interracial couple.   
      
   June 15: Shot and killed a black man and a white woman in Johnstown,   
   Pennsylvania.   
      
   June 25: Used a pistol to kill two hitchhikers in Pocahontas County, West   
   Virginia.   
      
   August 20: Killed two black men near Liberty Park in Salt Lake City, Utah.   
      
   After the Utah killings, Franklin was arrested in Kentucky for outstanding   
   warrants. The FBI, noting his racist tattoos and reliance on blood bank   
   donations for cash, traced him to Lakeland, Florida, and apprehended him   
   on October 28, 1980.   
      
   Over the next two decades, Franklin faced the legal consequences of the   
   United States, being convicted of numerous murders, assaults, and other   
   crimes at both the state and federal levels.   
      
   Confessions:   
   His sentences included life imprisonment and death penalties in multiple   
   states. In 1994, while serving consecutive life sentences in the federal   
   penitentiary in Marion, Illinois, Franklin made a startling confession to   
   the Richmond Heights synagogue murder.   
      
   Claiming a dream had compelled him, Franklin confessed to the killing of   
   Gerald Gordon. Fear of retribution for assaulting a guard at Marion also   
   motivated his confession. While resulting in a death penalty for Franklin,   
   the confession led to his transfer to the prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri.   
      
   On November 11, 2013, Franklin was executed in Missouri for the 1977   
   murder of a man in front of a synagogue in St. Louis.   
      
   The crime that put Franklin on Missouri’s death row was the murder of   
   Gerald Gordon. On October 8, 1977, Franklin strategically placed 10-inch   
   nails into a telephone pole as a makeshift gun rest for his hunting rifle.   
   As around 200 guests departed from a bar mitzvah, Franklin pulled the   
   trigger, murdering Gordon in front of his wife and three children.   
      
   Franklin also admitted to shooting Larry Flynt, the publisher of Hustler   
   Magazine, expressing his displeasure with the magazine’s depiction of   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)