Suspect In Jewish Shootings Has An Appalling History Of White Supremacist Activities
A former Ku Klux Klan leader with a known history of anti-Semitism is suspected of killing three people in shootings at a Jewish community center and a Jewish retirement community in Kansas.
The attacks also left a 15-year-old boy in critical condition Sunday. The FBI is investigating the shootings as a hate crime.
Frazier Glenn Miller, a 73-year-old man from Aurora, Mo., has been taken into custody. Miller also goes by the alias Frazier Glenn Cross.
From the back of a police car after he was arrested for the shootings, Miller can be heard yelling "Heil Hitler."
He's accused of shooting at five people total at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City and Village Shalom, a Jewish retirement community a few blocks away, according to CNN. The shooting occurred a day before the start of Passover.
The Southern Poverty Law Center calls Miller a "raging anti-Semite" and notes that he has written 12,000 posts on the Vanguard News Network, whose founder advocates for "exterminating" Jews. He is reportedly one of VNN's largest donors and distributes thousands of the organization's newsletter, The Aryan Alternative.
In the 1980s, Miller founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The SPLC later sued the organization for using intimidation tactics against black people, so Miller formed another Klan group, the White Patriot Party. He was then sentenced to six months in prison for violating his court settlement with the SPLC.
A year later, the FBI caught Miller with a cache of weapons and he was indicted for plotting to obtain stolen military weapons and for planning to kill SPLC founder Morris Dees. He testified against other Klan leaders and served three years of a five-year sentence he received as part of his plea deal.
While he was in prison, Miller wrote a book that he has posted online called "A White Man Speaks Out."
He has also posted a series of "hate videos" on his website in which he espouses his beliefs.
In the book, Miller says he is a former member of the Nazi party and tried to emulate Hitler in organizing "the White masses."
From the book:
My racist and anti-Semitic thoughts consumed me every day of my life. And, I was therefore, compelled to do everything possible to awaken White people, to organize them, and to try to save the White Race and Western civilization from those whom I believed were working to destroy both.
The SPLC highlights a 2010 U.S. Senate radio ad in which Miller said:
"We've sat back and allowed the Jews to take over our government, our banks, and our media. We've allowed tens of millions of mud people to invade our country, steal our jobs and our women, and destroy our children's futures. America is no longer ours. America belongs to the Jews who rule it and to the mud people who multiply in it."
Before he became active in the white supremacist movement, Miller quit high school to join the U.S. Army, according to the SPLC. He was a Green Beret and served two tours in Vietnam.
Miller claims he read a racist newspaper in the early 1970s that sparked his interest in white supremacy, and in 1979, he was forced to retire from the Army because of his ties to the Klan. Later, when Miller founded his white supremacy groups, he used military tactics to train his recruits.
He reportedly wanted to create an all-white nation in North Carolina and South Carolina. In the 1980s, Miller was recruiting people to steal military weapons and explosives to "create a paramilitary guerrilla unit for later use in establishing a White Southland," according to a witness who testified in his trial.
Miller has also run for political office on several occasions as both a Democrat and a Republican. He's tried for nominations for North Carolina governor and state senate and has also run for Congress as an independent and for U.S. Senate as a write-in candidate.
He now faces charges of premeditated, first-degree murder.