First, an update on the victims from the Jewish community center. Although I haven’t seen names released yet, they are reportedly a 14-year-old Eagle Scout and his grandfather. The female victim from Village Shalom also remains unidentified.
This gunman is about as repellent as they come. It appears the Southern Poverty Law Center has a mile-deep dossier on him. Brief particulars:
Name: Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr., age 73. Originally from North Carolina, now a resident of Aurora, Missouri. Has also gone by Fraiser Glenn Cross (the name he was reportedly arrested under) and Glenn Miller. Has his very own Wikipedia entry.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
A summary from the Tony’s Kansas City blog (link above):
Miller is the former “grand dragon” of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which he founded and ran in the 1980s before being sued by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for operating an illegal paramilitary organization and using intimidation tactics against African Americans.
After subsequently forming another Klan group, the White Patriot Party, he was found in criminal contempt and sentenced to six months in prison for violating the court settlement. He went underground while his conviction was under appeal but was caught by the FBI with a weapons cache in Missouri. He served three years in federal prison after being indicted on weapons charges and for plotting robberies and the assassination of SPLC founder Morris Dees. As part of a plea bargain, Miller testified against other Klan leaders in a 1988 sedition trial.
An NBC report from an hour ago adds a few details:
Cross [Miller] quit high school as a senior to join the Army. In a 20-year Army career he had two tours in Vietnam and 13 years as a member of the elite Green Berets before he was forced to retire because of his Klan affiliation in 1979. …
He even unsuccessfully ran in the Democratic primary for North Carolina governor in 1984 and as a Republican for a state Senate seat in 1987, the SPLC said.
Miller also ran for Congress in Missouri in 2006 as an independent. He ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010.
As noted at Tony’s Kansas City, Miller is a regular at a white-nationalist online forum, Vanguard News Network, whose founder has advocated exterminating the Jews since at least 2009. Miller posts there as “Rounder,” and it appears his last comment was on 12 April. For a sample of the cesspool his mind wallows in, you can see here. But be warned. It’s always something of a shock to see the reality of psychotic race hatred up close. Your skin will crawl.
SPLC has more here:
One of the first white supremacists to use paramilitary tactics with his North Carolina-based hate group, the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, which later morphed into the White Patriot Party, Glenn Miller went on the lam in 1986 after mailing a letter to 5,000 people calling for “total war” against the feds, blacks and Jews.
Miller had also violated a court order, stemming from a lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, prohibiting him from continuing to operate a paramilitary organization. After a nationwide manhunt, authorities tear-gassed him out of a mobile home in Ozark, Mo.
But Miller served only three years in prison, largely because he testified against 14 leading white supremacists in a 1988 Arkansas sedition trial. Among other things, Miller told the court that the late Order founder Robert Mathews had given him $200,000 in stolen money to finance the White Patriot Party.
I don’t think we’ll have to worry that Miller or his motive has been misidentified.
And yes, Kansas does have the death penalty for capital murder.
