Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Racist Killer” Joseph Paul Franklin Pt. 2

Episode Date: July 30, 2020

Still desperate to ignite a race war in the United States, Joseph Paul Franklin sought more prominent targets, hoping to draw attention to his cause. But he also found satisfaction in impulsive, isolated murders. When it seemed no one would ever catch him, he got careless. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of child abuse, murder, racism, and assault that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. On May 28, 1980, Vernon Jordan, one of America's leading civil rights activists, arrived in Fort Wayne, Indiana. That evening, he was to deliver a speech at the Urban League's annual Equal Opportunity Dinner. Once it came time to address the audience, Jordan spoke about his hopes for the new decade, including his optimism about further advancement of race relations. The crowd was enthusiastic and cheered him on every step of the way.

He gave voice to a room full of people that believed in hope. After his speech, Jordan made his way to the bar with a group of Urban League members. As the crowd dwindled, he was left talking with an attractive blonde named Martha Coleman. When the bartender announced last call, Jordan offered to escort Martha back to her car. In the parking lot, the two continued chatting, happily enjoying each other's company. But when they got to Martha's car, the perfect night was shattered by a thunder clap of gunfire. A bullet ripped through Jordan's back and exited his chest, shattering the driver's side window. He flew forward and hunched over the car before sliding to the pavement.

where he lay motionless. Across the parking lot, 30-year-old Joseph Paul Franklin got into his car, put away his rifle, and drove into the darkness. I'm Greg Paulson. This is serial killers, a podcast original.

Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today we'll finish the story of Joseph Paul Franklin, perhaps the most infamous racially motivated serial killer in United States history. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other podcast originals for free on Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

To stream serial killers for free on Spotify, just open the app and type serial killers in the search bar. In our last episode, we dove into Franklin's childhood and a bigoted attempt to ignite a race war within the United States. Today, we'll explore Franklin's erratic killing spree. and how he evaded capture for so long. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us.

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Your next obsession is waiting. Watch only on Prime. By 1978, 28-year-old Joseph Paul Franklin, born James Clayton Vaughn Jr., had already carried out multiple racist attacks across the United States. Using homemade bombs and his favorite rifle, he'd destroyed property, injured four people, and killed three. Franklin thought of himself as a one-man army, and he was dead set on starting a nationwide race war. Influenced by Hitler's Mind Kampf and the bigoted principles taught by the Ku Klux Klan, Franklin held a deep-seated hate for black and Jewish people. But it wasn't just people of differing backgrounds that got Franklin's blood boiling.

His hate ran so deep that even interracial couples and anyone who supported them were in his eyes an enemy to the country, and he was determined to make his message of hate heard. But to his frustration, none of his attacks made national headlines until he set his sights on Larry Flint. According to later confessions on March 6, 1978, Franklin shot Flint as he walked into a courthouse in Georgia. Flint survived the attack, but Franklin was delighted to see that he finally made the national headlines he craved. Still, his delight was short-lived. Flint had garnered countless enemies over the years. thanks to his work publishing his pornographic magazine, Hustler.

By 1978, he was so notorious, so widely hated by different groups, that the authorities struggled to pinpoint a specific motivation for the assassination attempt. No one knew why Franklin had tried to kill Flint, and if they didn't know that, no one would be joining his cause anytime soon. Once again, Franklin had failed to ignite his race war, and it made him furious. Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or a psychiatrist,

but she has done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. In his 2016 article, The Fear of Failure, understanding the psychology behind it, Dr. Martin Covington writes that failure is directly linked to our self-worth. He also suggests that one person, way we protect our self-worth is by believing we are competent and by convincing others of it, too. But after his latest setback, Franklin must have taken a hit to his already fragile ego.

Franklin's ultimate goal to ignite an all-out race war was no nearer. Still, he remained committed to a self-appointed role of one-man death squad. After failing to kill Larry Flint, Franklin drove from Georgia to Chattanooga, Tennessee, his new home. hunting ground. On July 19, 1978, 28-year-old Franklin prowled the streets of Chattanooga, looking for his next target. After driving for hours, he settled on his prey. Inside a pizza hut, he watched Bryant Tatum, a black man, dining with his white girlfriend, Nancy Hilton. He was enraged by the happy pair's audacity. How dare they live their lives, according to principles not guided by hate. Franklin parked his car, grabbed a 12-gauge shotgun from his trunk, and hit out in a clump of

bushes. When Bryant and Nancy left the restaurant, Franklin fired two shots. The first round killed Bryant instantly. The second left Nancy injured. Franklin fled the scene in the ensuing chaos. Later, in his motel room, he watched as every Chattanooga news station ram the story. Almost a year following his murder of Bryant Tatum, Franklin laid low, perhaps waiting for the right moment to strike again, or perhaps he just felt sated by his latest murder. Whatever his reason, he wouldn't stay dormant forever. In the summer of 1979, Franklin felt moved to kill again. While driving through Doraville, Georgia, he noticed 29-year-old Harold McIvor, a black man,

talking to several white girls inside of a Taco Bell. It was McIver's job as store manager to talk to these women. But that didn't matter to Franklin, who was unhinged by his own bigotry. He pulled over and retrieved his rifle. From 140 yards away, he took aim and squeezed the trigger. The bullet ripped through the store window and found its target, killing Harold instantly. Harold McIver was Franklin's fifth murder victim. But as with his previous attacks, he left little behind for police to use in their investigation.

He had no intention of being caught. By now, the 29-year-old had an appetite for killing, one that required constant feeding. Dr. Mark Griffiths, a professor of behavioral addiction at Nottingham Trent University, believes serial murder has an addictive element. This means that the grip of addiction can drive repeated murders. In her article, hooked on homicide, clinical forensic psychologist Joni E. Johnston describes this as an urge-driven disorder. Killing, Johnston suggests, taps into the pleasure-reward systems of a serial killer's brain and releases extra dopamine. This shot of dopamine is what locks an individual into an addiction cycle.

So when these urges are criminal, an individual can end up having the same difficulty resisting a crime as a substance abuser does resisting their craving. It certainly seems like Franklin had indeed developed a craving, and he showed no inclination to resist his urges. Less than a month after he murdered Harold McIver, Franklin drove to Falls Church, Virginia. On August 8th, he pulled up to a Burger King restaurant, where 27-year-old Raymond Taylor, A black man was eating his dinner. Franklin parked his car across the street, set up his rifle, and aimed. Looking through the crosshairs, he shot Raymond, instantly killing the young man. With the night sky providing more than enough cover, Franklin drove off.

His next destination was a trip back home, Alabama. He needed to replenish his depleted funds, and so he returned to his old ways of robbing small bank. It was around this time that 29-year-old Franklin met 16-year-old Anita Cardin at an ice cream parlor. Franklin introduced himself as James A. Cooper, and the two hit it off, falling quickly into a relationship. But Franklin was frequently out of town, claiming his work as a contract plumber kept him on the road for long stretches of time. Anita was clueless to her predatory boyfriend's real identity, or his criminal past. After dating for a few months, Franklin proposed, and the two were married in Atlanta's DeKalb County Courthouse. But as he demonstrated with his first failed marriage, Franklin wasn't cut out for matrimony,

and he could only keep up his charade for so long. Anita was aware that Franklin had racist views, but it seems she was unaware of just how deep her new husband's hatred ran. She became used to his bigoted rants, which became something of a, a daily ritual. But as they escalated in tone and anger, Anita grew worried. Her anxiety only increased when she became pregnant. And for good reason, when Franklin found out they were expecting, he was furious. He didn't want to bring a child into this world, at least not until his race war had taken off. Time was running out on his horrible dreams. Up next, Joseph Paul Franklin expands his mind.

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Newly married and expecting a baby, 29-year-old racist murderer Joseph Paul Franklin left his wife in Atlanta, Georgia, and drove to Indianapolis, Indiana. It was the beginning of a brand new decade, the 1980s. And he was determined that at last he would succeed in igniting a race war within the United States. According to Franklin's testimony after he was caught, he spent several days exploring the city, searching for his next target, and on the evening of January 12th, he found him.

19-year-old Lawrence Reese was minding his own business, sitting inside a church's chicken restaurant when he caught Franklin's eye. As had become his usual pattern, Franklin parked a good distance away and then fired his rifle through the restaurant's front glass. The bullet struck Lawrence, instantly killing him. His evil work done, Franklin fled, leaving no evidence at the crime scene. When investigators arrived, they were left scratching their heads. No leads to follow.

During his years-long killing spree, Franklin seldom remained in town once he committed a crime, which likely contributed to his prolonged evasion of authorities. But it also meant that his attacks appeared to be random, isolated incidents, making it almost impossible to connect them. and he was about to add another victim profile to his repertoire. In April of 1980, while driving through Wisconsin, according to Franklin, he came across Rebecca Bergstrom, a Caucasian woman in her early 20s who was hitchhiking. As a general rule, Franklin was a solitary man,

so he didn't usually pick up strangers, but he also lacked companionship and missed having someone to talk with, so eager to break up the monotony, of driving from town to town in silence, he offered her a lift. Franklin had something of a one-track mind, and the casual conversation between the two turned political. When Franklin inevitably brought up his racist views, Rebecca told him she once dated a black man. Franklin was speechless, but it wasn't anger or rage that enveloped him. Instead, it was total bliss. He believed with perfect clarity that Fate brought this young woman to him for a purpose.

Franklin pulled over and without raising his voice, calmly asked Rebecca to get out. When she did, he pulled out his revolver and shot her in the back. Then he drove off, leaving her lifeless body by the side of the road. Like so many of his other murders, Rebecca's death would remain unsolved for years. But though he took great pleasure in killing individual victims, Franklin still yearned to draw enough attention to ignite a race war. Initially, he had one name in mind for his next high-profile target,

civil rights activist and politician Jesse Jackson. To that end, Franklin drove to Indiana, or he heard Jackson was giving a speech. To his frustration, Jackson canceled the event and left town ahead of schedule, foiling his assassination plans. Still, he was undeterred. and soon settled on a new target, civil rights activist Vernon Jordan. Jordan was scheduled to speak at the upcoming Equal Opportunity Dinner

held by the Urban League in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Franklin checked into a motel and waited for the big day. On May 28, 1980, he slipped into the event. After Jordan's speech, Franklin was predictably furious to see the black activist talking with a young white woman named Martha Coleman. He watched the pair talk until two in the morning when Jordan escorted Martha back to the parking lot. But before Jordan could open the door for her, a bullet pierced his coat and shattered inside him. He fell to the ground, motionless.

Satisfied that his work was done, Franklin got into his own car and drove away without being noticed. But later that night, he was dealt another frustrating disappointment. The news reported that after intensive surgery, Jordan was expected to make a full recovery. He'd failed once again in both the assassination attempt and his mission to spur Americans to take to the street in spontaneous hate-fueled violence. He also suspected that news stations knew exactly what he was up to and were intentionally suppressing his attacks and the motives behind them. But this only lit a full. fire. After fleeing Indiana, Franklin made for Cincinnati, Ohio. He checked into a motel and drove around searching for his new victims. He made a conscious decision to avoid black neighborhoods,

feeling it would be too easy for witnesses to identify him. Franklin finally settled on the Bond Hill neighborhood, an area afflicted by White Flight. He set up a sniper's nest a couple hundred yards from a convenience store and settled in to wait. Around 11 p.m., he saw what he thought were two men approaching. Noticing they were black, he opened fire and hit one of his targets. The other man bolted, but Franklin was able to take him down as well. Both victims were dead before they hit the ground. But what Franklin didn't realize, until he watched the evening news, was not the two men he gunned down weren't men at all, but young boys. They were 13-year-old Dante Brown and his cousin, 14-year-old Dorel Lane. A 2014 study by the American Psychological Association found that,

quote, Black boys are seen as older and less innocent than their white same-age peers. Franklin's racism undoubtedly clouded his ability to correctly guess the ages of Dante and Dorell. But this report shows that even those who may not believe themselves to be racist have unconscious biases that affect how they see others. Franklin had no remorse over killing children once he knew. He was a hunter, a one-man army, and each victim was nothing more than deserving prey. This predatory behavior lines up with an article written by Xanthi Mallet, a senior lecturer in forensic criminology at the University of New England. Mallet explains that serial killers often share traits with people who have antisocial personality disorders. The more troubling of these traits include predatory behavior, sensation-seeking, lack of remorse, impulsivity, and the need for control over others.

In other words, all key factors driving Franklin's killing spree. And it was a spree he had no intention of halting. With each kill, Franklin grew more confident. cocky even. This time, instead of leaving Cincinnati right away, Franklin stuck around for a couple of extra days. Not to seek out more victims, he just wanted to see how his handiwork affected the town.

While there, he placed a classified ad in the local paper to sell his guitar and amp. A woman responded and met him in his motel room. The woman felt uneasy in the dank, dingy room, strewn about on almost every surface were rifles and revolvers. She was terrified, but did her best to stay calm, hoping she hadn't made a mistake by responding to the ad. To her relief, Franklin produced the advertised guitar and amp,

and she handed over the cash. She was about to leave when he offered to sell her one of his guns. The woman was taken aback. She refused, thanked him for the guitar, and darted out. feeling a sense of unease, she wrote down Franklin's license plate number and make of car, but for unknown reasons, she never relayed her suspicions to authorities.

Meanwhile, Franklin packed up and left Cincinnati and made his way to Johnstown, Pennsylvania. A creature of habit, he checked into a motel under one of his many aliases. When he researched the area, he learned that the small black population coexisted rather peacefully with their white neighbors. That would never do.

He was determined to disrupt that harmony. So on June 15, 1980, Franklin set up his rifle near a small abandoned bridge. He scoped out a black man and white woman holding hands. Taking aim, he unloaded his weapon, killing both. Now Franklin felt like he was on a role. Though his killings didn't make nationwide news, he was convinced that his persistence would help attract an army to carry out his race war. But for that to happen, Franklin needed to expand.

So far, his primary hunting ground was contained to the Midwest, mostly the South. To deliver his message to a new audience, he would have to broaden his perimeter. Pleased with his work in Pennsylvania, he packed up and drove to Salt Lake City, Utah, where he arrived on August 13, 1980. 30-year-old Franklin was confident that his fresh environment would provide him with the ideal podium to spread his message. Although Utah was primarily white and overwhelmingly conservative when it came to politics,

it still offered Franklin plenty of opportunities for prey. But after years of getting away with murder, Franklin's confidence was turning into sloppiness. According to psychologist and criminology professor, Dr. Scott A. Bonn, serial killers become increasingly empowered as they continue to evade capture. They relish their ability to kill and avoid detection, and such empowerment can cause them to take more risks in their work. Comfortable in its new surroundings, he let his guard down. Until now, Franklin was careful to go undetected. He wore disguises, changed cars often, planned out as crimes. and rarely stayed in one area for too long.

But in Utah, Franklin drove around in the same car that he used in the Bond Hill murders. He also neglected to change the license plate, and those wouldn't be his only sloppy mistakes. When not scouting for potential victims, he walked through the city, meeting locals and engaging in conversation. At one point, he met two women who were passing through.

Over a few drinks, Franklin lied, hoping to impress the city. the women. He boasted that he was a hit man for the KKK. In 1980, the KKK was experiencing a resurgence across the United States, especially in the South where neo-Nazi and clan gatherings had returned in force. When Franklin told the girls, he was helping the clan build up their white Christian army. They playfully laughed it off. After a week of acclimating to the city, he settled on the location for his next murder. On August 20th, he set up another makeshift sniper's nest in the racially mixed neighborhood of Liberty Park.

He spotted four young people jogging through the park. Ted Fields, 20, and David Martin, 18, both black, were having fun with two younger girls who were white. Franklin took careful aim at David and fired. David stumbled. and Ted stooped to help his friend. Franklin seized the moment to fire again. Both men were declared dead at the scene. But instead of making his usual clean getaway,

Franklin was sloppy. Before he left, he revved his engine as a sign of victory, and he allowed several witnesses to get a good look at him as he fled. He didn't know it, but his time at large was coming to an end. Coming up, authorities finally zero in on Joseph Paul Franklin. Now back to the story. For almost three years, Joseph Paul Franklin had been on a mission to ignite a race war across the United States. By 1980, with the help of his sniper rifle, he'd assassinated a combined 10 people throughout the Midwest and southern United States.

Like so many of his earlier crimes, his latest double homicides, his latest double homicides, he'd assassinated. side in Utah left police baffled. There was little evidence found at the crime scene, but witnesses spotted a white man fleeing the area right after the murders. But Franklin hadn't just left the neighborhood. He'd fled Utah altogether. Frustrated, authorities reached out for help. They decided to send what little they had to all American police agencies via teletype. Teletype was the forerunner of the internet and was a tool commonly used by media and law enforcement. enforcement in the early 1980s. News of the double murder caught the attention of the Cincinnati Police Department.

The description of the attack matched that of the Bond Hill murders. At last, it seemed there was a break in the case, but there was still so little to go on. So with the linked crimes spread across state lines, authorities called in the FBI. Investigators from Cincinnati and the FBI flew to Utah to meet with detectives there, Together, they canvassed the crime scene and found additional witnesses who reported seeing a suspicious, tall white man walking around prior to the shooting. Through their testimony and information extracted from Bond Hill residents, authorities were able to compile a composite sketch of the killer, but they still didn't have a name. So investigators visited every motel off of the main interstate that linked Bond Hill and Salt Lake. After showing the sketch to motel managers, they realized that their suspect used several aliases at once.

They flagged these false identities in the National Crime Information Center database, or NCIC. A description of Franklin's car and license plate number, along with a set of fingerprints lifted from a motel registration card, were entered alongside the aliases. But at that point, there were no matches in the database. Authorities were able to trace Franklin's car back to its original owner, who positively identified the man in the sketch as the buyer, but they were still frustratingly left without a name for their suspect. They knew they would have to wait for their shooter to make another mistake. By that stage, Franklin was back in the familiar setting of Cincinnati.

On the night of September 25, 1980, he was laying low in his motel room. But the evening would prove to be more eventful than he anticipated. A squad of police vehicles arrived at the motel, but it wasn't Franklin they were after. They were there to arrest a robbery suspect. In their haste, they blocked Franklin's Camaro into its parking spot, the same Camero that was listed in the NCIC database. When he realized that the authorities weren't there for him, Franklin decided to throw his weight around. He called the motel front desk and complained that the noise and bright lights from the squad cars were disturbing his quiet night. When the motel manager didn't make the police abandon their duty, Franklin called the police department to file a complaint.

The officers at the motel, probably annoyed by the complaint, ran Franklin's license plate. They found that the car was linked to a series of murders. With their guns drawn, the police crept towards Franklin's room. Without knocking, they kicked down the door and found Franklin watching TV, surrounded by a small arsenal of guns. Franklin didn't bother to resist arrest and went quietly. At the station, Franklin was placed in an interrogation room and handcuffed to a chair. Detective Jesse Baker asked him some preliminary questions.

But Franklin's answers about why he was in Cincinnati, were vague. Before Detective Baker could get an acceptable answer, he left the room to take a call. While Baker was away, another officer uncoffed Franklin and left him alone in the room. Franklin paced. He looked out the window, trying to gather his thoughts. He fidgeted with the window latch and discovered that it was unlocked. Not only that, it opened wide enough for his slender frame to fit through. He didn't hesitate and slipped out the window. Franklin was on the run. With the cash in his pocket, he paid a man to drive him to a salon, where he had his hair cut and died, the better to avoid being recaptured.

But authorities were hot on his trail. They contacted all of Franklin's known associates and put surveillance on his wife's home, but Franklin never turned up. Although Anita was pregnant, Franklin had all but abandoned her to focus on his mission. Now that he was a wanted man, he had no intention of returning to his young wife. He had to keep an even lower profile than he'd maintained for the past few years. And that meant no longer robbing banks. Desperate for money, Franklin donated blood instead. Meanwhile, FBI profilers speculated that Franklin would be somewhere in the south of the country,

specifically the Gulf Coast area. They were worried that he was already planning his next attack. They also guessed correctly that Franklin would visit blood banks for quick cash and distributed flyers with Franklin's pictures and a description of his tattoos. A month after his escape on October 29th, their hunch paid off. An employee at a Florida blood bank called the police to report that Franklin was there. Authorities asked the employee to stall Franklin for as long as possible. Within 30 minutes, the facility was surrounded, and Franklin was brought back into custody without incident. A short time later, during a recorded phone call with his wife, he admitted to the Salt Lake murders and several bank robberies.

Within 24 hours, Franklin was returned to Utah to face federal charges. Upon arrival, he was placed in solitary confinement while he awaited trial. Although his time in jail was mostly spent alone, he was allowed on occasion to interact with a couple of inmates who were also in solitary. In particular, he developed a bond with a man named Robert Herrera. Franklin admired Herrera for fighting with a black inmate. As the two grew closer, Franklin opened up to Herrera not only about the Salt Lake murders, but about his other killings. But Herrera wasn't the most trustworthy of confidence. He spoke with prosecutors and leveraged his conversations with Franklin for a reduced sentence.

By the time Franklin's case made its way to trial, it was plain to see he would be convicted. Sensing this, Franklin made a last-ditch bid for freedom. One morning at the courthouse, he was unchackled and left alone in a room. After the bailiff left, Franklin removed the hinges from the door and set off in search of an escape route. unnoticed, he snuck into the elevator and crawled through the emergency exit on the ceiling, eventually making his way into the courthouse ventilation system. By then, his disappearance had been noticed, and police blocked off all exits while the courthouse was searched.

After an hour, he was discovered crawling through the vents, like the vermin he was. Authorities placed him back into custody, and the remainder of the trial went off without incident. In March of 1981, after a brief deliberation, 31-year-old Franklin was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. With that, Franklin was shipped off to Marion Federal Penitentiary in Williamson County, Illinois. Marion was a violent institution,

notorious for housing members of the Aryan Brotherhood, alongside a gang known as the D.C. Blacks. Franklin was a mark. man. He easily could have joined the Brotherhood for safeguarding, but he spurned their protection. They'd begun to accept members with Jewish backgrounds, and, well, that didn't work for him. So Franklin chose to remain a loner. Now, the D.C. Blacks took advantage of that. A group of inmates attacked him, stabbing him 15 times. He survived the attack, and for his safety, he was thereafter placed in solitary confinement.

As boredom took over, Franklin contacted lawyers, journalists, and authorities to confess to the crimes he hadn't yet been linked to. These confessions eventually landed him on death row in a Missouri prison. In the weeks leading up to his execution, Franklin gave a series of interviews in which he denounced his actions. In one interview, he said, I can see now that it was wrong, wrong. Violence is wrong at any time.

Which is a nice sentiment to come to, but one he arrived at, far too late. On November 20, 2013, 63-year-old Joseph Paul Franklin was executed by lethal injection. In the years since, bigots have heralded Franklin as a martyr for their racist cause. But like him, they too are destined to failure. Evil never wins in the end. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers. We'll be back next week with the new episode. For more information on Joseph Paul Franklin,

amongst the many sources we used, we found Joseph Paul Franklin, the true story of the racist killer by Jack Rosewood and Dwayne Walker to be extremely helpful to our research. You can find more episodes of serial killers and all other Parcast originals free on Spotify. Not only does Spotify already have all of your

favorite music, but now Spotify is making it easy for you to enjoy all of your favorite podcast originals, like Serial Killers for free from your phone, desktop, or smart speaker. To stream Serial Killers on Spotify, just open the app and type Serial Killers in the search bar. We'll see you next time. Have a Killer Week. Serial Killers was created by Max Cutler and is a Parcast Studios original. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, sound design, by Anthony Valsick, with production assistants by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden, and Joshua Kern.

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