Kansas shooting suspect has history of racist violence

WASHINGTON — Yelling “Heil Hitler” from the back of a police car shortly after he gunned down three people at Kansas City Jewish facilities, Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. left little room to doubt that the motive for Sunday’s deadly attack was anything but a hate crime.

The 73-year-old suspect, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacist candidate for political office, has a long history of anti-Semitic violence and hate crimes, including involvement in at least one other murder.

Miller, who also goes by the alias Fraiser Glenn Cross Jr., founded the North Carolina-based White Patriot Party, an offshoot of the Ku Klux Klan, in 1980. In 1984 he ran in North Carolina’s Democratic primary for the governorship, garnering 5,790 votes – 0.61% of the total votes cast. He later attempted in 1986 to run in the North Carolina Republic primary for a Senate seat.

Miller was also involved in more violent activism. In 1984, while he ran for office in North Carolina, he and other members of a racist hate group that called itself “The Order” were accused of murdering liberal Jewish talk show host Alan Berg in Denver, Colorado.

Alan Berg (photo credit: Wikipedia)

Miller, however, agreed to testify against ten co-conspirators in exchange for a reduced sentence. With the help of Miller’s testimony, four conspirators were convicted under the anti-crime organization RICO statutes.

The testimony did not keep him out of prison for long. Shortly thereafter, Miller was served a court order to refrain from operating paramilitary groups after the Southern Poverty Law Center presented evidence that Miller and his followers were planning to assassinate SPLC founder Morris Dees. The SPLC has cited Miller as an early pioneer in forming white supremacist groups around a paramilitary model.

Miller failed to comply with the court order, and in 1987 law enforcement agents tear-gassed him out of an Ozark, Missouri mobile home.

Facing a long string of federal charges, Miller once again agreed to turn on his fellow white supremacists and testified against several during a federal sedition trial in Arkansas, in exchange for a reduced, three-year sentence in federal prison. His incarceration did, however, bring to an end the seven-year run of the White Patriot Party, which dissolved upon his prison term.

Frazier Glenn Miller, the suspect in Overland Park shootings is arrested, April 13 (screen capture: KCTV)

Upon his release, Miller wrote an autobiography detailing his white supremacist beliefs. After moving to Aurora, Missouri, he became involved with the Vanguard News Network, an anti-Semitic website whose motto is “No Jews, Just Right.” According to the SPLC, Miller has posted on the site more than 12,000 times.

In a 2010 interview with Jewish radio show host Howard Stern, Miller was asked who he hated more, Jews or African-Americans, to which he responded, “Jews. A thousand times more. Compared to our Jewish problem, all other problems are mere distractions.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMVNmABrVq8#t=110

At around this time Miller renewed his interest in politics, and ran for a Missouri senate seat in 2010. Utilizing campaign broadcasting spots to air his beliefs, the advertisements caused an uproar in Missouri. Following a challenge to the legality of his candidacy, Miller leaped to national prominence when the Federal Communications Commission upheld his candidacy, entitling him to continue to broadcast his political advertisements.

According to the SPLC, Miller did not indicate – at least to his wife, Marge – that he had any intent of carrying out Sunday’s shootings. Instead, she said, the former Klansman had gone to a Missouri casino on Saturday afternoon, calling home the next morning to say that he had won money. The Overland Park shootings occurred less than three hours after that phone call – and law enforcement agents confirmed to Marge Miller that her husband had been arrested in connection with the attack.