Jury Decision: Life or Death for Racist Killer Miller?

A jury in Kansas will soon begin the task of deciding whether white supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. should face the death penalty or spend the rest of his life in prison for the racially motivated murders of three people.

After a six-day trial in Olathe, Kan., it took the same jury panel less than two hours Monday to find the 74-year-old racist guilty of capital murder in the April 13, 2014, deaths of William Corporon, 69, and his grandson, Reat Underwood, 14, outside the Jewish Community Center in Overland Park, Kan. 

Moments after those murders, Miller gunned down Terri LaManno, 53, in the parking lot of a nearby Jewish retirement community.  Miller, a virulent anti-Semite and life-long racist, targeted the victims in the mistaken belief they were Jewish.

The jury also found Miller guilty of three counts of attempted first-degree murder for shooting at other people and firing numerous bullets and shotgun blasts into the Jewish community center.

 “I believe the fat lady just sang,” Miller shouted out in the Johnson County courtroom with a Nazi salute after the guilty verdicts were read. “Sieg Heil!” he added. He also told the jurors he hoped they would have trouble sleeping.

Miller, also known as Frazier Glenn Cross Jr., yelled similar neo-Nazi shouts when he was arrested just minutes after the three shootings in Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City, Mo.

He chose to represent himself at the trial, frequently interrupting the court with inappropriate comments that prompted District Judge Kelly Ryan to threaten he be removed from the courtroom. 

During the trial, Miller admitted to the killings, claiming his racist beliefs directed him to target Jews. In his closing argument, he wrote on a display board that “diversity is a code word for white genocide," an idea derived from "The Mantra." 

Before the trial, in audio files posted on the hate forum Vanguard News Network, Miller confessed to the killings in conversations with neo-Nazi National Alliance member Kevin Alfred Strom.

Miller told the jury that a half-century ago, his father first instilled in him the idea that Jewish people were seeking to destroy the white race, the Kansas City Star reported.

In the 1980s, Miller founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and, later, the paramilitary White Patriots Party. He previously served prison time for plotting robberies and the assassination of SPLC founder Morris Dees, who brought a successful civil lawsuit that decimated Miller’s Klan group.

The jury didn’t hear about Miller’s previous history, but heard him say “armed revolution was my only option” and that he considers himself a martyr who hopes to die “with a smile on my lips,” the Kansas newspaper reported.

Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe told the jury in closing arguments that Miller took the lives of three innocent, peaceful people.

“Clearly his mission was to kill as many people as possible,” the prosecutor told the jury, composed of seven men and five women.

Miller objected, saying he only wanted to kill Jews.

After the verdict, the prosecutor said he intends to call only one witness during the penalty phase and will rely on “mountain of evidence” presented during the trial to convince the jury to send Miller to death row. A court-appointed standby attorney who is assisting Miller said the convicted murderer wants to call nine witnesses, including members of his family, during the penalty phase, the Kansas newspaper reported.

Miller also is expected to call two death penalty attorneys to testify about the cost of capital punishment compared with life in prison and a man who served with Miller in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War.

Miller also is expected to testify and be allowed to present articles and videos that he says helped form his opinions about Jews, the newspaper reported.