Racist Rifleman

Is the drifter a killer?

As a boy in Mobile, Ala., he was frequently beaten with a stick by his mother. At 17, he dropped out of school and began getting into frequent scrapes with the police. He was arrested for assault, carrying concealed we and disorderly conduct. 'He became an Evangelical Christian, then a Nazi finally, a Ku Klux Klansman. At one point he told friends that he was going to join Ian Smith's Rhodesian army. Instead Joseph Paul Franklin, now 30, continued to drift from state to state, driven by twin passions: his love of rifles and his hatred of blacks.

Franklin, who was being hunted by the FBI, was spotted last month selling a pint of blood for $7 in a blood bank in birmingham. Last week he was arrested in Lakeland, Fla. Authorities want to question him about a yearlong series of shootings--in Salt Lake City; Johnstown, PA,; Cincinnati; Indianapolis; Oklahoma and Fort Wayne, Ind.--which claimed the lives of eight black men and two white women and included the wounding of National Urban League President Vernon Jordan in May. All the attacks occured without warning, involved a high powered rifle, and, in four of the assaults the black victims were with white females.

Franklin, who was being held on $1 million bail, faces a hearing this week on whether he should be transferred to Salt Lake City, where he was indicted for violating the civil rights of two black men Theodore Fields, 20, and David Martin 18, who were shot to death in August while jogging with two teen-age white girls. Franklin had been arrested two months ago in Florence, Ky., but had soon escaped, leaving behind a Chevrolet camaro, two rifles and two handguns. Said he of the charges: "They are all trumped up because of my white racist views."

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