Joseph Paul Franklin
| Joseph Paul Franklin | |
|---|---|
Mugshot of Franklin taken by the Missouri Department of Corrections, 2013
|
|
| Born |
James Clayton Vaughn, Jr. April 13, 1950 Mobile, Alabama |
| Died | November 20, 2013 (aged 63) Bonne Terre, Missouri |
| Other names | The Racist Killer |
| Criminal penalty | Execution by lethal injection |
| Motive | Desire to incite a race war |
| Killings | |
| Victims | 7–22 |
|
Span of killings
|
August 7, 1977–August 20, 1980 |
| Country | United States |
| State(s) | Wisconsin, Missouri, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Utah |
|
Date apprehended
|
October 28, 1980 |
Joseph Paul Franklin (born James Clayton Vaughn, Jr.; April 13, 1950 – November 20, 2013) was an American serial killer who gained notoriety for numerous murders in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His killing spree was the subject of a fictional novel entitled Hunter by white supremacist William Luther Pierce. Pierce said of Franklin that "he saw his duty as a white man and did what a responsible son of his race must do."
He was convicted of several murders, and received six life sentences, as well as the death sentence. He confessed to the attempted murders of two prominent men: the magazine publisher Larry Flynt in 1978 and Vernon Jordan, Jr., the civil rights activist, in 1980. Both survived their injuries, but Flynt was left permanently paralyzed from the waist down. Franklin was not convicted in either of those cases. Because Franklin repeatedly changed his accounts of some crimes, and was not charged in some cases in which he was suspected, officials cannot determine the full extent of his crimes. His claims of racial motivation were offset by a defense expert witness who testified in 1997 that Franklin was a paranoid schizophrenic who was not fit to stand trial.
Franklin was on death row for 15 years awaiting execution in the state of Missouri for the 1977 murder of Gerald Gordon. He was executed by lethal injection on November 20, 2013.
James Clayton Vaughn, Jr. was born in Mobile, Alabama on April 13, 1950, as the eldest son of James Clayton Vaughn, Sr. and Helen Rau Vaughn, and brother to Carolyn, Marilyn and Gordon. James Clayton Vaughn, Sr. was an epileptic World War II veteran and butcher who left the family when Vaughn, Jr. was eight. Vaughn's sister Carolyn recalled "Whenever [Vaughn, Sr.] came to visit he'd beat us," and their mother had Vaughn, Sr. jailed twice for public drunkenness. Helen Rau Vaughn 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." Vaughn later stated that he was rarely given enough to eat and suffered severe physical abuse as a child, and that his mother "didn't care about [him and his siblings]". He claimed that these factors stunted his emotional development, and said he had "always been least 10 years or more behind other people in their maturity."
...
Wikipedia