BY DAN HORN
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Linda Lane got home from work just in time to wave goodbye to her little brother.
He was walking with his cousin to the grocery store a block away, determined to spend his last dollar on a late-night snack.
He wouldn't be gone long, he told her.
But the next time she saw him, he was sprawled on the sidewalk with a bullet wound in his chest and a crumpled dollar bill in his hand.
"It was a scene of incredible horror," Hamilton County Prosecutor Joseph Deters said Monday.
Eighteen years later, Ms. Lane will recount that horror in court when she tells a jury how her brother's trip to the store in 1980 turned into a fatal encounter with a sniper.
She is expected to be the first witness prosecutors call today when they begin to build their murder case against Joseph Paul Franklin, a convicted serial killer who is linked to as many as 18 murders. Mr. Franklin is accused of using a high-powered rifle to shoot Darrell Lane and Dante Evans Brown as the teens walked along Reading Road in Bond Hill shortly after 11 p.m. on June 8, 1980.
The case remained unsolved until Mr. Franklin gave prosecutors a statement last year admitting his involvement in the crime. In the statement, Mr. Franklin said "I did it . . . I shot those dudes." He since pleaded not guilty and argued that he made the incriminating statement because he was tricked by an attractive female prosecutor.
As the trial began Monday in Hamilton County Common Pleas Court, Mr. Deters told jurors that Mr. Franklin's confession includes details only the killer would know. He said it also includes comments about his career as a bank robber and chilling remarks about his plan to "cleanse the world of blacks."
"Joseph Paul Franklin, in June of 1980, was robbing banks for a living and killing people for a hobby," Mr. Deters said in his opening statement. "Darrell Lane and Dante Evans Brown had the god-awful circumstance to cross paths with him."
Mr. Franklin has said he climbed a railroad trestle over Reading Road in hopes of shooting an interracial couple. When he got tired of waiting, he said, he set his sights on two African-American boys. Mr. Deters' said Ms. Lane's testimony will show jurors how that decision devastated the victims' families.
Several relatives sat in the courtroom Monday, staring at Mr. Franklin as he conferred with his attorneys.
"He did a crime here and he's got to pay for the crime," Dante's brother, LaVon Evans, said during a break in the trial Monday. "Dante was my big brother. He was my role model."
At the time of the shootings, Dante was 13 years old and Darrell was 14.
Mr. Deters said the jurors will hear in Mr. Franklin's own words how he fired his first shot at Darrell and his second at Dante as the boy tried to run away.
He said Darrell was killed instantly by a shot to the chest that pierced his heart and passed through his spine. Dante died days later from a bullet wound to his abdomen.
Significantly, Mr. Deters said, Mr. Franklin's description of the shooting matches the forensic evidence uncovered by the coroner. He said the angle of the bullet wounds, the number of shots fired and the placement of the shots all are consistent with Mr. Franklin's statement.
"Joseph Paul Franklin described in perfect detail what occurred," Mr. Deters said.
Although he is acting as co-counsel to his attorney, Dale Schmidt, Mr. Franklin remained silent in the presence of the jury.
He did, however, complain about the bulky "shock belt" he is required to wear under his shirt. The belt, controlled by sheriff's deputies, is designed to knock defendants to the floor with a non-lethal electric current if they attempt to escape.
"It's kind of uncomfortable," said Mr. Franklin, who has a history of escape attempts. "I've never had to wear one before." "Well, you do now," said Judge Ralph Winkler.
