BY KRISTEN DELGUZZI
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Angered that the public missed the racist motives behind his sniper attack on a civil rights leader, Joseph Paul Franklin came to Cincinnati in June, 1980, to kill again.

Mr. Franklin, who already had killed or wounded 12 people across the country, mostly with well-placed rifle shots, climbed a railroad trestle over Reading Road in Bond Hill the night of June 8, 1980, rifle in hand, and waited.

The only man ever pursued as a serial racist murderer by the Jus tice Department, Mr. Franklin celebrated his 47th birthday Sunday by giving Cincinnati authorities a gift they have wanted for almost 17 years: the confession in the 1980 slayings of 14-year-old Darrell Lane and 13-year-old Dante Evans Brown as they walked along Reading Road that night.

The long-awaited admission, made from Missouri's death row, was the key piece of evidence presented Tuesday to a Hamilton County grand jury, which indicted the serial killer and self-avowed racist on two counts of aggravated murder.

An avowed white supremacist, Mr. Franklin specialized in killing blacks, Jews and interracial couples. Somehow, he believed, the motive behind his May 29, 1980, wounding of Vernon Jordan outside a Fort Wayne, Ind., motel, had been missed by the media.

''He waited for quite some time on that overpass,'' Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters said Tuesday, ''and when no racially mixed couple passed by, he shot these two boys.

''He was impatient waiting for somebody to shoot.''

The indictment caps an investigation that logged thousands of hours over two decades, involved more than two dozen police officers and spanned the country - all in search of evidence that would let authorities build a case against the only suspect they ever had.

As far as Mr. Deters can tell, the only problem with the indictment is that it does not contain a specification that the drifter from Alabama be put to death if he is convicted of shooting.

Mr. Franklin, who now has admitted to killing 18 people in 10 states, cannot be executed in Ohio because the state did not have a death penalty law in 1980.

He is, however, awaiting death by lethal injection at the Potosi Correctional Center in Mineral Point, Mo. He was sentenced to death in February for the 1977 sniper slaying of a man outside a Clayton, Mo., synagogue.

Mr. Franklin, has accumulated six life sentences for various sniper slayings in Utah and Wisconsin. In addition to the slayings, he has claimed responsibility for 16 bank robberies, two bombings and wounding five people.

Though he has gone unprosecuted in many states for crimes he has admitted, Mr. Franklin will not be ignored by local authorities.

''These two kids were citizens of this county when this derelict came into our community and snuffed out their lives, and they deserve justice,'' Mr. Deters said. ''Both of these kids deserve that.''

So, too, do their relatives, who are ''just destroyed,'' Mr. Deters said. ''They're still grieving.''

The break finally came in March, when Mr. Franklin admitted to authorities in Falls Church, Va., that he had killed a black man in a Burger King there in 1979.

When he heard about that confession, Mr. Deters - who was in law school when Dante and Darrell were killed and has, as prosecutor, monitored the unsolved case - decided that Mr. Franklin might be ready to talk to local authorities.

Knowing that he was unlikely to talk to a male prosecutor, Mr. Deters summoned Melissa Powers, an assistant since 1991.

''I told her I had a job for her,'' Mr. Deters recalled. ''I told her she could say no.''

Ms. Powers initiated contact with Mr. Franklin, and Mr. Deters contacted Cincinnati Police Chief Michael Snowden, who assigned two homicide investigators to assist.

Last week, the work paid off: Mr. Franklin invited Ms. Powers to Missouri to talk about Dante and Darrell.

He ended up telling her not only about the slayings of the two cousins, but also about the slayings of a Johnstown, Pa., couple and the two female hitchhikers in West Virginia. Those crimes also occurred in June 1980.

CASE CLOSED
''REIGN OF TERROR''

Previous stories

RACIST KILLER CONFESSES TO SLAYING TWO BOYS HERE April 15, 1997
HATE KILLER SENTENCED TO DIE Feb. 28, 1997