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White supremacist could face death penalty for killings outside Jewish community center

U.S. attorney may bring federal hate crime charges against F. Glenn Miller, the white supremacist charged with killing three at Jewish institutions.

By Frances Burns
Frazier Glenn Cross, also known as Frazier Glenn Miller. (Credit: Johnson County Sheriff's Office)
Frazier Glenn Cross, also known as Frazier Glenn Miller. (Credit: Johnson County Sheriff's Office)

OLATHE, Kan., April 15 (UPI) -- A white supremacist charged with killing three people outside Jewish institutions in Overland Park, Kansas, was formally charged with capital murder Tuesday.

Frazier Glenn Cross Jr., who also calls himself F. Glenn Miller and is better known under that name, could face the death penalty if he is convicted of killing Dr. William Lewis Corporon, 69, and his grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, 14. Miller was charged with the first-degree murder of Terri LaManno, 53, and faces 25 years to life on that count.

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Prosecutors have not yet said if they will seek the death penalty. Barry Grissom, the U.S. attorney for Kansas, has said he will ask a grand jury to add a federal hate-crimes charge. That could make Miller eligible for the federal death penalty if he is convicted.

Miller, a resident of Aurora, Mo., was arrested on Sunday not long after Corporon and his grandson were gunned down at the Jewish Community Center and LaManno at Village Shalom, a senior living facility where she was visiting her mother. Although investigators say Miller hoped to kill Jews on the eve of Passover, LaManno, a mother of three from Kansas City, was Catholic and Corporon, who was taking his grandson to a performing competition, a Methodist.

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On Monday, police said Miller called "Heil Hitler" when he was put in a police car after his arrest.

The Southern Poverty Law Center says that Miller has a long history as a white supremacist and anti-Semite. He founded the South Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1980s and served as its "grand dragon" and then formed the White Patriot Party, the group said.

Miller served three years in federal prison after pleading guilty on weapons charges and testifying against other supremacist leaders.

The center quoted a radio ad Miller ran during a 2010 campaign for the U.S. Senate that called white men "the biggest cowards ever to walk the earth" and concluded: "America is no longer ours. America belongs to the Jews who rule it and to the mud people who multiply in it.”

[Kansas City Star] [KSPR] [Southern Poverty Law Center]

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