Supremacist faces murder charges in Kansas deaths
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| Frazier Glenn Cross, also known as Frazier Glenn Miller, appears at his arraignment in New Century, Kan., Tuesday, April 15, 2014. Cross is being charged for shootings that left three people dead at two Jewish community sites in suburban Kansas City on April 13. At right is Michelle Durrett, attorney with the public defender's office. |
OVERLAND PARK,
Kan. (AP) -- A white supremacist charged in shootings that left
three people dead at two Jewish community sites in suburban Kansas City
was brought into a video conference room in a wheelchair Tuesday to make
his first court appearance.
Wearing a dark,
sleeveless anti-suicide smock, Frazier Glenn Cross stood under his own
power to face the camera, crossing his arms and speaking only when
answering routine questions from the judge in a Johnson County courtroom
several miles away. He requested a court-appointed lawyer.
A
Johnson County Sheriff's Office spokesman declined to say Tuesday why
Cross was in a wheelchair. Prosecutors declined to answer questions
about Cross' health Monday.
The 73-year-old is being held on $10 million bond and his next court appearance is scheduled for April 24.
Physician
William Lewis Corporon, 69, and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin
Underwood, were shot and killed outside of the Jewish Community Center
of Greater Kansas City. Both were Methodist. Moments later, Terri
LaManno, a 53-year-old Catholic occupational therapist and mother of
two, was gunned down outside Village Shalom, a Jewish retirement complex
where she was visiting her mother.
Johnson
County District Attorney Steve Howe said specific details about actions
that led to the charges against Cross are contained in an affidavit,
which under Kansas law is not considered public information. The
criminal complaint released Tuesday describes the charges and includes a
list of witnesses, but nothing else.
In
Kansas, one of the narrow circumstances in which capital murder cases
are pursued includes the intentional killing of more than one person in
"the same act or transaction or in two or more acts or transactions
connected together or constituting parts of a common scheme or course of
conduct."
In this case, a single charge was
applied to the deaths of Corporon and his grandson because the deaths
occurred in a very short period of time as part of the same act,
prosecutors said. LaManno's death doesn't meet the standard for capital
murder, Howe said, but he would not provide details or evidence to
explain.
Federal prosecutors say there's
enough evidence to warrant putting the case before a grand jury as a
hate crime, but U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom said Tuesday that federal
charges were likely a week or more away. Cross' state case would have to
be resolved before he could be moved to a federal trial.
"Our
system is more nimble, we can move a little bit quicker than the
federal system. ... This isn't about retribution, this is about seeking
justice," Howe said.
Cross is a Vietnam War
veteran from southwest Missouri who founded the Carolina Knights of the
Ku Klux Klan in his native North Carolina and later the White Patriot
Party.
Cross shouted "heil Hitler" at
television cameras as he was arrested after Sunday's killings, which
shocked the city on the eve of Passover and refocused attention on the
nation's problem with race-related violence.
The
Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights made a
presentation on white supremacists at the Jewish Community Center in
August, the Kansas City, Mo.-based group's vice president Devin Burghart
said. That discussion included a description of Cross as an example of
dangerous anti-Semitic figures in the region.
It
wasn't clear what, if any, steps were taken by the center to act on the
information. Annette Fish, director of the "Day of Discovery" event
during which the presentation was given, said she did not attend that
session - one of 30 offered in what she called an educational program
for the Jewish community.
The Southern Poverty
Law Center, a nonprofit that monitors the activities of known white
supremacists, says Cross also went by the name Frazier Glenn Miller.
During the early 1980s, Cross was "one of the more notorious white
supremacists in the U.S.," according to the Anti-Defamation League.
He
was the target of a nationwide manhunt in 1987, and federal agents
tracked him and three other men to a rural Missouri home stocked with
hand grenades and automatic weapons. He was indicted on weapons charges
and accused of plotting robberies and the assassination of the law
center's founder. He served three years in federal prison.
Cross also ran for the U.S. House in 2006 and the U.S. Senate in 2010 in Missouri, each time espousing a white-power platform.
