Joseph Paul Franklin has spent the better part of two decades confessing to murders he committed during a multistate, racially motivated killing spree between 1977 and 1980.
But every time he talked about his crime wave, the self-avowed racist was careful to avoid mentioning one case: the June 1980 sniper slaying of two teen-age cousins, killed as they walked along Reading Road in Bond Hill.
There was just one reason he refused to own up to that crime until Sunday, the 47-year-old said Wednesday.
''I didn't want to be on death row in Ohio - they have the electric chair there,'' Mr. Franklin said during a 75-minute interview from death row in Missouri, where he is awaiting execution by lethal injection. ''I don't want to die in the electric chair.''
He told The Enquirer that he admitted to killing Darrell Lane, 14, and Dante Evans Brown, 13, only after Assistant Hamilton County Prosecutor Melissa Powers told him he could not be sentenced to death; Ohio's death penalty law was invalid in 1980, meaning Mr. Franklin faced only life in prison.
''All I can get on that is two lifes, and that ain't going to affect me at all,'' he said. ''I already got eight life sentences.''
The drifter from Alabama was sentenced to die in Missouri for the October 1977 sniper murder of a Jewish man outside a synagogue.
Four of his life sentences are in Utah, where he killed two black men as they jogged with white women. It is the last homicide that authorities have attributed to him, though Mr. Franklin refuses to classify it as his last.
Two more life sentences stem from his first two murders: the August 1977 shootings of an interracial couple in Madison, Wis. In all, authorities say he is responsible for 18 deaths in 10 states. Mr. Franklin will not confirm those figures.
All the victims fit into one of several groups - blacks, Jews, interracial couples - that Mr. Franklin admittedly despised.
Nearly all victims were shot sniper-style, with a high-powered rifle.
The only time Mr. Franklin deviated from his pattern, was in Cincinnati. Killing two boys never made sense, and authorities theorized that he shot them because they were the only ones who wandered past the train trestle where Mr. Franklin had crouched for hours, waiting for a target.
But Mr. Franklin, who cannot see with his right eye and wears thick glasses, said that as he was squeezing the trigger about 11:30 p.m. on June 8, 1980, he didn't realize he was breaking from tradition with what he called his ''12th and 13th murders.''
''They didn't look like little kids to me,'' he said. ''They looked like grown men. It was dark out.''
Though he says the cousins brought his body count to 13, authorities - who have compiled a list of crimes attributed to Mr. Franklin - mark the deaths of the boys as Nos. 11 and 12.
A 'really quiet kid'
Joseph Paul Franklin was born James Clayton Vaughn Jr. on April 13, 1950, in Mobile, Ala. He describes his parents, James Clayton and Helen Vaughn, as alcoholics.
Previous accounts have portrayed the two, who are deceased, as poor, abusive and inattentive to their children.
Mr. Franklin says he rarely went to school because he ''made very low grades. The only thing I got A's in was conduct, 'cause I was one of those really quiet kids.'' He said he finally dropped out his junior year in high school.
His favorite pastime, he says, was dressing up like a cowboy: He had black cowboy boots, a little black hat and a holster for his toy pistols. He watched countless westerns and would pretend that he was a cowboy or an outlaw. He said he was in his late 20s, with at least two murders already under his belt, before he stopped dressing like a cowboy.
He spent the summer he was 11 at his uncle's in rural Georgia, toting a loaded rifle as he roamed the wooded lot.
''I was just pretending like I was shooting,'' he said, ''but I wasn't really shooting the rifle.''
The next summer, he returned to the same house. He shot a pistol for the first time, but he didn't enjoy it. Then, at 16, his older brother, Gordon, who died of cancer years ago, gave him a 16-gauge shotgun, took him into the woods and taught him how to hunt.
From that point, he said, he almost always had a gun.
He married twice, both times for only about a year. One wife gave birth to a daughter. His former wives have described him as abusive.
He said he spent much of the time between his late teens and mid-20s ''reading Nazi literature.'' By the time he left Mobile at age 17, he had developed a deep hatred for blacks, especially those who dated whites.
''Once you consciously go over the stuff over and over again, it just goes down in your conscience and you begin to think that blacks and Jews are not even people at all,'' he said.
A new identity
The man born James Clayton Vaughn Jr. has been Joseph Paul Franklin almost since the day of his first documented racial attack.
On Sept. 21, 1976 - 13 days after he was arrested in suburban Washington, D.C., for spraying a black man and his white girlfriend with a chemical irritant - he legally changed his name.
He said he put a great deal of thought into his new name, ultimately choosing to honor ''leaders of the American revolution and the German government.''
The last name he chose was for Benjamin Franklin, whom he admired. He knew he wanted his first name to honor a Nazi, and he ultimately selected Joseph Paul - a twist on Paul Joseph Goebbels, who served as Adolf Hitler's propaganda chief - because it made him ''sound like an English person.''
Less than a year later, at age 27, Mr. Franklin killed for the first time.
He was driving through Madison, Wis., in his 1972 Capri. He was wearing his black cowboy hat. And he was stuck in traffic behind an interracial couple. He kept blowing the horn, trying to make them drive faster, but they only drove slower. Finally, he says, the man pulled to the side and walked to Mr. Franklin's car.
Mr. Franklin, who had just robbed a Columbus, Ohio, bank and was carrying a stolen weapon, says he panicked.
''That was done on the spur of the moment,'' he said. ''I hadn't planned it. I just whipped the pistol out and shot him right there.''
He then shot the woman, who was still in the car, and drove away before he was caught. But, he said, as he was running back to his car, his hat blew off. He didn't have time to reclaim it, and authorities later used it as evidence against him.
He said he had no remorse and did not regret the shootings.
''It just happened to be two people that I totally hated, so I didn't dislike it,'' he said. ''Once (whites) began having sex with blacks, in my mind - as steeped as I was in that - they weren't even human.''
From that first killing, Mr. Franklin staged a sniper attack every four months or so for the next three years, robbing 16 banks along the way to fund his crime spree. Then, in the spring of 1980, the frequency increased.
Beginning of the end
On May 29, 1980, Mr. Franklin sat on a grassy knoll outside a Fort Wayne, Ind., hotel and took aim at civil-rights leader Vernon Jordan.
The shot from his high-powered rifle struck the president of the National Urban League in the back, wounding him. Mr. Franklin was acquitted in 1982, but he later admitted the crime.
Ten days after shooting Mr. Jordan, angered that the media had missed the racial motivation behind the attack on Mr. Jordan, Mr. Franklin drove to Cincinnati to reinforce his point. His victims were the two young cousins.
He says now that when he killed the boys - and all the others - he was fulfilling his lot in life.
''To me, that was my mission,'' he said. ''I just felt I was engaged in a war with the world.
''I just basically felt my mission was to get rid of as many evil-doers as I could. If I did not, then I would be punished. I felt that God intended me to actually kill people.''
After shooting Darrell and Dante, Mr. Franklin drove to Johnstown, Pa., and killed an interracial couple on June 15, 1980. From there, he went to West Virginia and killed two hitchhikers. He confessed to both crimes Sunday.
But it was after the August shooting deaths of two black men in Salt Lake City that the nationwide manhunt for Mr. Franklin intensified.
On Sept. 25, 1980, he was arrested at a Florence motel. He was taken to the police station for questioning, but after 5 1/2 hours of interrogation, he slipped out a window. After having his blond hair shorn and died black, he quickly left town.
He remained on the run until Oct. 28, 1980.
That day, as federal authorities were swarming across the Tampa, Fla., area, preparing for a visit from then-President Jimmy Carter, Mr. Franklin walked into a blood bank to donate plasma for money.
Nurses at the center - which had been blanketed with photos of Mr. Franklin, who had threatened Mr. Carter years earlier - recognized the drifter by the Grim Reaper and American eagle tattoos on his forearms.
They quietly called the FBI and Mr. Franklin was arrested without incident as he walked to the neighboring store to cash the $5 check he had received for donating plasma.
Life on death row
After 16 1/2 years behind bars, Mr. Franklin says he is a changed man.
He claims to have discovered religion, says he no longer despises
blacks (they still are not his ''favorite people,'' though) and has come to appreciate the Jewish religion.
He now says he even regrets at least one shooting: the attack outside the Missouri synagogue.
''Now I would never kill anyone at a house of worship,'' he said. ''I've come to respect the Jewish religion.''
Though he said Wednesday that he would no longer kill if he were a free man, he told a Missouri jury differently in February. At his capital trial, he asked for the death sentence, lest he kill again.
Jurors obliged.
He now sits on death row, and he says he has no plans to vigorously appeal his sentence. He expects to be executed in the next three years.
''I just felt safe when I got the death penalty,'' he said. ''I just feel really secure now.''
He said he would have no objection to returning to Cincinnati to stand trial, and although he would not plead guilty, he would serve as his own attorney and ''basically throw the case.''
Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters and others around the country have called Mr. Franklin ''an animal.'' He is described as one of the most vicious men in America, a serial killer in the mold of Alton Coleman and Ted Bundy.
But Mr. Franklin shuns the ''serial killer'' label. He prefers to think of himself as a modern-day Jesse James or Billy the Kid.
''I just look at myself as an outlaw of the Wild West,'' he said. ''They didn't go around killing innocent women. I would never do that, either.''
Previous stories
FRANKLIN THOUGHT MESSAGE MISSED April 16, 1997
CASE CLOSED April 16, 1997
''REIGN OF TERROR'' April 16, 1997
RACIST KILLER CONFESSES TO SLAYING TWO BOYS HERE April 15, 1997
HATE KILLER SENTENCED TO DIE Feb. 28, 1997
