A neo-Nazi who murdered three people outside a Jewish community centre in Kansas City in 2014 has died in prison.
Frazier Glenn Miller Jr, 80, testified during cross examination that he wanted to kill Jewish people before he died. During his trial Miller reiterated tropes that Jewish people were running the government, media and the Federal Reserve. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection, his execution was pending appeal. Miller raised his arm in the Nazi salute when convicted.
Miller’s lawyers attempted to get his death sentence overturned at Kansas Supreme Court last March on grounds that he should not have represent himself in a death penalty case.
El Dorado Correctional Facility announced Miller’s death at Kansas Department of Corrections on Tuesday.
He was serving a life term for capital murder, attempted murder, assault and firearms convictions.
It is believed Miller died of natural causes, a spokesperson said in a news release.
His heinous crime on April 13, 2014, shocked America.
Miller, a self-confessed anti-Semite, drove from his home in Missouri, fatally shot William Corporon, 69 and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Underwood, at the Jewish community centre then drove to Village Shalom care center where he killed Terri LaManno, 53, who was visiting her mother.
Two of the victims were Methodist, the other was Catholic.
Relatives of Corporon and his grandson refused to mention his name in a statement.
They noted, “He stole so much from our family, but he didn’t steal our hearts or our dignity. He did not steal our memories, the love that sustains us or the ability to offer forgiveness and kindness in the face of such tragedy.”
The Corporon family, who added that Miller was “rotten to his core”, never asked for his family’s forgiveness. They created the Faith Always Wins Foundation to promote forgiveness, rather than retribution. The statement concluded “We don’t carry the weight of hate in our hearts.”
Miller, also known as Frazier Glenn Cross, dedicated his life to white supremacy.
He founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in North Carolina and later the White Patriot Party in the 1980s. His groups threatened Jews and Blacks and spread hate propaganda.
The FBI obtained a warrant and arrested in 1987 after discovering weapons, pipe bombs and explosives. Prosecutors offered Miller a deal to reduce his time in prison if he testified against other white supremacist leaders in what turned into a disastrous Fort Smith sedition trial in 1988, where an all-white jury acquitted the accused despite Miller’s testimony.
Miller later testified that he had reformed and become a born-again Christian. But in the 2000s, he was active in white supremacy circles, concentrating on antisemitism, posting thousands hate messages.
Miller ran for the US House of Representatives in 2006 and the US Senate in 2010 in Missouri on a white power campaign.
Johnson County District lawyer, Steve Howe, who prosecuted his 2014 case, said in a statement that Miller’s death did not repair the damage he did to victims’ families but hoped it would be a step in the healing process.
LaManno’s family settled a lawsuit with Walmart over the sale of Miller’s shotgun in the Kansas shooting as he was not legally allowed to buy a gun due to the FBI warrant.
The lawsuit alleged someone else bought the weapon at the Walmart store in Republic, Missouri.
