The Southern Poverty Law Center said the suspect in the deadly shootings at a Kansas Jewish center and assisted living facility is a “raging anti-Semite” who has been on their radar for a while.
Frazier Glenn Miller, 73, of Aurora, Mo., who also goes by the last name Cross, allegedly drove to Overland Park, Kansas, and killed a 14-year-old boy and his grandfather outside the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. He then drove to the Village Shalom Retirement Community in Leawood, where a woman was shot to death.
The SPLC sued Miller, the former “grand dragon” of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, in the 1980s 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,” the SPLC said.
“Miller is a raging anti-Semite who has posted more than 12,000 times on Vanguard News Network (VNN), whose slogan is ‘No Jews, Just Right.’ VNN founder Alex Linder has openly advocated ‘exterminating‘ Jews since December 2009. Miller, a close partner to Linder, has called Jews ‘swarthy, hairy, bow-legged, beady-eyed, parasitic midgets.’ Miller is also one of VNN’s largest donors and he printed and distributed thousands of copies of VNN’s newsletter, The Aryan Alternative.”
The SPLC said it spoke with Miller’s wife, Marge, “who has apparently never been active in the white supremacist movement,” and confirmed that Miller had gone to a casino in Missouri.
In a statement late last night, President Obama said he had his team “to stay in close touch with our federal, state and local partners and provide the necessary resources to support the ongoing investigation” in this “horrific shooting.”
“While we do not know all of the details surrounding today’s shooting, the initial reports are heartbreaking,” Obama said.
“I want to offer my condolences to all the families trying to make sense of this difficult situation and pledge the full support from the federal government as we heal and cope during this trying time.”
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kansas) said he was “shocked and sickened” by the slayings.
“Kansas is a place where every person of every kind should be safe from violence or persecution,” Moran said. “My deepest regrets are with the victims’ loved ones and my thoughts are with the entire community, which has had its sense of comfort and safety threatened by today’s events. I join all Kansans in proclaiming that these horrific acts of violence have absolutely no place in our communities, our state or our country.”
Miller has run for public office three times: as a Democrat for North Carolina governor in 1984, as a Republican for the Senate in North Carolina in 1986, and as an independent write-in candidate in 2006 for the House seat held by now-Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.).
The SPLC said it is preparing to release a two-year study showing that “nearly 100 people in the last five years have been murdered by active users on another prominent racist website, Stormfront.org.”
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