By Austin Spradlin
The following article is on mass murderer Richard Leasure and serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin. What connects these stories is a woman named Althea Sue Flynt (if the name doesn’t ring any bells, it soon will as you read the article.) Before I begin, I’d like to thank Mark Rice for his time when I went out on the Flynt farm, he helped me tremendously.
June Leasure and her four kids had been living with her parents for quite some time due to her and her husband Richard Leasure having marriage problems. The home was south of Lewisville. On Monday February 26, 1962, June and her mother Belva were sitting in the living room. Her father Frank walked downstairs. The radio in the living room was playing “Last Kiss” by Wayne Cochran.
That morning, Richard had been trying to get her to go down to Florida with him. She refused and he accused her of having another man. The accusation irritated June. Things were going to get worse – a lot worse.
Little did they know, walking through the snow-covered lawn was Richard. He had drove but no one had heard him pull into the driveway most likely because of the radio being up.
They heard a knock on the door. Bemused by who would be knocking that late. Frank decided to go see who it was, thinking it might’ve been someone from work. He opened the door seeing it was Richard.
“Richard, can I help you?”
“I came to see my kids.” He replied.
“Well you know, they’re asleep.”
Richard scowled, “I want to see my kids.”
June got off the couch walking to the door, she was still upset with him. “I’m going to need you to leave.”
“Not until I see my kids.”
“Our kids.” June fired back sharply.
“Last chance to go to Florida with me.” He said. His undiplomatic greed made him incognizant to June’s dejection.
“We’re done here.” Frank slammed the door in Richard’s face, he locked the door. Richard spent a moment ferociously knocking on the door, before pacing back and forth anxiously.
Frank ignored him. June went upstairs to make sure the four kids hadn’t been woken up.
Richard went to his car and pulled out a .38 special. He glanced through the kitchen window and saw Frank in the kitchen, Frank had gone to get him a beer. Richard came back to the door, he kicked it open, entering the house.
Frank started to stalk around the kitchen counter, he was shot down.
Belva screamed as she hurtled upstairs. Richard fired a shot – missing her.
Curious to see what was going on, their neighbor Hazel Gardner ran over. Richard saw her coming through the backyard. He was in a fit of rage. He gunned Hazel down, shooting her twice before she could make it up the porch.
Unfortunately, Richard wasn’t done. He went upstairs. He heard his kids in the room they were sharing. Richard didn’t enter their room. He went into the other guest room. He began to search under the bed for his wife June. He couldn’t find her. He went to the closet opening the door – there he saw her trembling in fear.
“Richard, please!”
June’s trepidation was unable to detente her husband's rage. Richard pulled her out of the closet by her hair, she was scared to fight him off, afraid he’d kill her. He took her outside on the porch.
“Who is he?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She cried.
“Last chance to move to Florida with me, you whore,” he sneered.
June didn’t say a word. She’d accepted this was it for her. Her mother believed she died fearing their kids would be next. She closed her eyes tightly, keeping her head down low.
Richard would fire two more shots. One killing her and then killing himself. He lied beside her on the cold wooden porch, snow started to fall from the dark sky.
Belva summoned authorities after she looked out the window and saw them both lying on the porch. When the kids woke from the gunshots being fired, Belva kept them calm and had told them to be quiet. Her heart was deeply shattered when she saw that he had killed June.
Richard Leasure was a World War Two sergeant, who came back an entirely different person. Most were surprised by what he had done, a lot of people had sympathy for him.
“He might’ve come back home, but the Richard we knew died over there,” A relative said, acknowledging that most soldiers come back with mental illnesses. “Richard came back from the war, but the Richard we knew died over there.”
After the sickening events the four kids became orphans. One of those four kids was co-publisher of Hustler magazine and wife of Hustler founder and first amendment advocate Larry Flynt. She lived a very mystique lifestyle with Larry. She a lot like him grew up poor, struggled to survive in their youth. It’s unfortunate to say her father going postal with a gun would not be the only time she had a run in with gun violence.
On Monday March 6, 1978. Larry Flynt was fighting in an obscenity trial in Georgia. When he and his attorney Gene Reeves were shot by white supremacist Joseph Paul Franklin. He shot Larry twice. Larry did not die from the horrific shooting; he was however left paralyzed from the waist down.
Joseph Paul Franklin’s motive: Franklin was appalled to see a photograph of an interracial couple having sex in the magazine.
Franklin had killed 22 people and left two injured. That of course being Larry Flynt and Gene Reeves.
When Franklin was on death row for a murder in Missouri, he had an unlikely supporter trying to get him off – the supporter was none other than Larry Flynt.
"If it was a deterrent, I'd support the death penalty, but it's not,” Flynt stated.
What makes this truly heartbreaking was that Flynt had said in his autobiography “An Unseemly man: my life as pornographer, pundit, and social outcast.” That his paralyses may have even been the cause for Althea drowning in the bathtub.
Before Franklin’s execution he said: “Larry Flynt is the only man I know, that could be shot twice with a .44 caliber and live.”
Franklin was executed on Wednesday November 20, 2013.
Larry Flynt passed away on Wednesday February 10, 2021.
Althea Sue Flynt passed away on Saturday June 27, 1987.
When I went out on the Flynt farm, I was informed Althea is no longer buried there, sometime after Larry remarried, Althea’s sister was able to take her body back to Ohio.
To most Larry and Althea would not be the first to come to mind when thinking about role models. However, the monument serves as hope to the people from Salyersville Kentucky. You can come from a small place and do something incredible. Be what you want, don’t be afraid of hard work.
Editor's note: this article ran in Serial Killer Magazine and is reproduced as written. Joseph Paul Franklin is recorded in this archive as convicted across a series of trials with around twenty killings confessed, and he was executed in Missouri on 20 November 2013, as the article says. Richard Leasure has no entry here and should not: the killings described are one event, which makes it a mass murder rather than a series, and the article calls him a mass murderer in its own first line. Franklin shot and paralysed Larry Flynt in 1978 and was never charged with it; he admitted it years later, and Flynt's opposition to his execution is a matter of public record. The connection the article draws between the two cases runs through Althea Flynt, and it is a connection of circumstance, not of evidence.