"I Was Into Action": Joseph Paul Franklin and FBI Profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole, Criminal Mindscape

Name: "I Was Into Action": Joseph Paul Franklin and FBI Profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole, Criminal Mindscape
Uploaded: 2026-06-27T00:00:00Z
Duration: 43 min 54 s
Description: On Missouri's death row, Joseph Paul Franklin told former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole how he stalked and shot his victims to try to start a "race war", and rejected the label "serial killer".

On Missouri's death row, Joseph Paul Franklin told former FBI profiler Mary Ellen O'Toole how he stalked and shot his victims to try to start a "race war", and rejected the label "serial killer".

Subject: Joseph Paul Franklin
Recorded: about 2009
Runtime: 43:54

Content warning: Concerns racially motivated murders, including the shooting of two boys aged 13 and 14; contains racist language and views stated by the subject, and a description of cruelty to an animal.

The Interview

In this first episode of MSNBC's *Criminal Mindscape*, Mary Ellen O'Toole, a retired FBI special agent who spent her last 15 years in the Bureau's profiling unit, interviewed Joseph Paul Franklin on Missouri's death row. The programme combines the interview with series narration, archival news footage from 1977 to 1980, O'Toole's commentary to camera, and accounts from investigators. O'Toole says she wanted insight that would help investigators with the next serial sniper.

Historical Context

Franklin, born James Clayton Vaughn Jr. in Mobile, Alabama, on April 13, 1950, travelled the United States between 1977 and 1980 shooting Black people, interracial couples and Jewish people. He killed Alphonse Manning and Toni Schwenn in a shopping-centre parking lot in Madison, Wisconsin, on August 7, 1977, and Gerald Gordon outside a synagogue in Richmond Heights, suburban St. Louis, on October 8, 1977. He later confessed to shooting the publisher Larry Flynt in Lawrenceville, Georgia, on March 6, 1978 (he was never charged), and the civil rights leader Vernon Jordan in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on May 29, 1980 (he had been acquitted of that shooting); both men survived. On June 8, 1980, he killed two cousins in Cincinnati, Darrell Lane, 14, and Dante Evans Brown, 13, and on August 20, 1980, Theodore Fields and David Martin III in Salt Lake City. He was convicted of eight murders in five states, sentenced to death in Missouri for the murder of Gerald Gordon, and executed by lethal injection at Bonne Terre, Missouri, on November 20, 2013.

Circumstances of the Interview

The episode first aired on MSNBC on October 29, 2009. The date of the prison interview is not stated; it was probably recorded in 2009 or shortly before. Franklin had been sentenced to death on February 27, 1997. O'Toole notes that he did not have to talk to her and could end the interview at any time. The upload is a third-party copy of the episode with the advertisement breaks removed.

What the Interview Covers

Franklin says he does not consider himself a serial killer and objects to being compared with Ted Bundy. He describes the Madison shooting, which he presents as his first murder, his brief time in the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan, and how he lay in wait as a sniper, comparing it to hunting. He says he stalked Jesse Jackson in Chicago, describes how he says he found Vernon Jordan's hotel room, and says his goal was to start a "race war". Asked about the two boys in Cincinnati, he claims he could not tell how young they were. He describes the Salt Lake City shooting, a childhood of poverty and abuse, and says he now regrets the killings and trusts in God's mercy. A 1980 news clip shows him, after his arrest, affirming his "white racist views".

What Makes the Recording Significant

The programme records an extended on-camera conversation between Franklin and a senior former FBI behavioural analyst, four years before his execution. O'Toole presses him on motive, on the Cincinnati shooting and on whether the killings were sexually motivated, and gives her own reading: that his racism does not fully explain the killings, that he shows traits of psychopathy (she says she made no formal assessment), and that she did not sense genuine remorse.

Archival Importance

The FBI says Franklin killed at least 15 people and possibly more than 20.

Important Caveats

Everything Franklin says about his motives, his victims and his childhood is his own claim. His statement that he could not tell the Cincinnati boys' ages is disputed by O'Toole in the programme. His expressions of regret are his own; O'Toole says she was not convinced by them. The programme's figure of "20 people" is its own estimate; he was convicted of eight murders. The narration gives the Salt Lake City victims' ages as 18 and 19 (records give 20 and 18) and places his arrest "near Tampa" (it was in Lakeland, Florida). The investigators and archival speakers are not named in the audio. O'Toole's views are her opinions as a former profiler.

Narrator: You are about to enter the criminal mindscape of Joseph Paul Franklin.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Did you feel like you were actually hunting human beings?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Well, I was. You wouldn't call that hunting them? Hunting them and shooting them.

Narrator: On a mission to start a race war in America, Franklin ruthlessly murders 20 people.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: We're asking him to open up and talk about who he is, his crimes, why he did what he did.

Police Spokesman: One thing we can tell you at this time that we're positive of is that there have been two people shot here at this location.

News Reporter: Larry Flynt, the publisher of *Hustler* magazine, he and his lawyer were walking down the sidewalk when somebody on the street opened fire.

Narrator: His methods vary, making him nearly impossible to catch.

Police Spokesman: We know that they were shot by a sniper. The rifle is a high-powered rifle with a scope on it.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Remember the two teenage boys in Cincinnati that you shot?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Mm-hmm.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: You could see that they were young.

Joseph Paul Franklin: The well-known Klan leader said, "When I go out to kill rattlesnakes, I don't make any difference between little rattlesnakes and big rattlesnakes, because I know the little ones will grow up and bite me when they get big." So I looked at blacks the same way.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: I totally understand that he will be in control of this interview, and that is the way I'm planning it.

Narrator: Now, a veteran FBI profiler enters death row and steps into the criminal mindscape. [music]

Mary Ellen O'Toole: These interviews for me are fascinating. They are absolutely the most intriguing experience that I've had in the FBI.

Narrator: Mary Ellen O'Toole spent her career at the FBI, including 15 years in the Bureau's famed profiling unit.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: I work specifically on profiling serial murder cases and assisting law enforcement all over the world in how to understand these offenders and how to make sense out of their crimes. I think Joseph Paul Franklin will be very interesting to talk to, because if you scrape away the racism, he is still a cold-blooded, predatory individual who was driving around the country shooting and killing people. And so to say that that's the reason that he killed is very difficult for me to accept.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Interviews like this are extremely helpful. Will they identify all the answers? No. But they will give insights into why certain behavior at the crime scene, why not certain behavior. Who are we looking for? What were they like 20 years ago? What was their family like? How are they deciding on their victims? Why did they kill some victims and some they didn't? He doesn't have to talk to me. He does not have to open up to me. He can walk out of that interview anytime.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: By way of background, I'm a retired FBI agent, after about 28 years as an agent.

Joseph Paul Franklin: Oh yeah. And [unclear: "learned a lot during that 28 years" / "you learn a lot"].

Mary Ellen O'Toole: A lot. And actually the last 15 years I've spent back in the FBI's profiling unit.

Joseph Paul Franklin: Yeah.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: And we're located at the FBI Academy. And most recently, my, um, area of expertise was in the serial killer unit.

Joseph Paul Franklin: Well, I don't claim to be a serial killer, though.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Okay. And I want to talk to you about that.

Joseph Paul Franklin: I don't put myself in that category, you know.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Okay. Can you tell me what your idea of a serial killer is?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Uh, well, I've read in the news, the definition in the newspaper, you know.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Sure.

Joseph Paul Franklin: And it says that, uh, somebody who commits various killings with cooling-off periods in between.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Tell me why you don't fit into that definition of a serial killer. Let's say Ted Bundy, who was, um, out when you were out.

Joseph Paul Franklin: I don't, uh, feel like I have anything in common with the dude, you know. I'm just a completely different type of person, you know. A lot of these other criminals, you know, these serial killers, they were just into one thing, strangling women and stuff like that. See, they've been trying to associate me with the scumbags like Ted Bundy, who were killing innocent women, you know. [unclear: "You take everything political away from my case" / "it's been taking everything political away from my case"]. Over and over again, you would hear on the newscast, serial killer this, serial killer that, to try to incite hatred against people like me, you know. I wasn't out for my own pleasure. I was motivated by the love of the white race.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Joseph is a serial killer, and he's different from other serial killers, just like they're different from him. There's no one profile of a serial killer.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: So you have cases where you were a sniper, and then you have, um...

Joseph Paul Franklin: 'Cause I was not a sniper.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: ...where you were not a sniper. So you really have both.

Joseph Paul Franklin: Yeah.

Narrator: In 1977, Joseph Paul Franklin, age 27, is a versatile criminal, a successful shoplifter and bank robber who is ready for murder. He claims to have found his very first victims, somewhat spontaneously, in Madison, Wisconsin.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: He was in the parking lot of a shopping center. He had his .357 Magnum tucked alongside of him. This first case in Madison, Wisconsin, was kind of an unplanned thing.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: What put you in that parking lot that day of the shooting?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Well, I, I was driving around, and I saw a couple of, uh, young girls standing at a bus stop. I pulled over and picked them up. I would often do that. I would just pull over and see a couple of broads waiting at a bus stop and offer them a ride. They said, well, they're going to this mall, so I gave them a ride to that mall. And, uh, a pretty tall black dude, about 6'2", was sitting in the car with a white girl. And I beeped at him, 'cause he was driving too slow. He then began traveling about five miles an hour just to aggravate me, you know? So I sat on the horn, man, you know? [unclear: "Deep" / "D-"], he rolled out. So he stopped his car in front of me, got out of the car and began walking toward me. He had this real scowl on his face at first, you know, walking toward me.

Joseph Paul Franklin: So without even thinking, I just reached down there with my right hand and whipped out my, uh, .357 Magnum with a six-inch barrel. And then, when he saw the gun, the scowl turned into surprise, you know? And then, then he just [unclear: "closed his eyes like that" / "closes out like that"] and just keeled over.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: That was a very risky thing for you to do. There you were in a shopping center, and it was daylight, and there were a whole bunch of people, broad daylight. Why did you shoot the woman in the car?

Joseph Paul Franklin: I figured, well, I'm against interracial couples. She was one half of an interracial couple, you know? I thought, well, I might as well get both of them, 'cause I'm going to probably get caught for this. So I shot her and sped out of the parking lot. Man, I was burning rubber, man, you know? Trying to get out of there. And luckily, there was a whole bunch of lights all in front of this mall, you know? And every single one of them turned green for me. I got on the interstate and took off and got out of Madison, Wisconsin.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: It's pretty amazing that that's the first time that you committed murder. That's a pretty cold-blooded thing to do to a complete stranger.

Joseph Paul Franklin: Yeah.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Joseph identifies a first murder, which is a double murder, at point-blank range. Joseph has very good recall of that incident, broad daylight in a parking lot of a shopping center. My question is, is that, in fact, the first incident, or is that the first one that he wants to talk about?

Mary Ellen O'Toole: What were you feeling at the time you pulled that trigger?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Uh, fear, you know. I feared if I get into a fight with that guy, I'll be arrested for all this bank money I got in the trunk. I just hit the bank in Columbus a few days earlier, you know?

Mary Ellen O'Toole: He had a very difficult time describing his own internal feelings. He could say what he was thinking, but he could not articulate or describe how he was feeling.

Joseph Paul Franklin: I don't know. I guess it's kind of like, uh, you know, you see this stuff going on on TV a lot, you know, and it seems to desensitize you. Maybe that was it.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: I did not do an official assessment of Joseph as to whether or not he was a psychopath, but it's my opinion that he does show traits of psychopathy. This underlying personality disorder known as psychopathy does seem to be present in most serial killers. It's difficult for people who do have traits of psychopathy to identify feelings, because they don't feel the same way that regular people feel.

Narrator: Coming up.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Did you feel like you were actually hunting human beings?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Well, I was. You know, [unclear: "it's just the way people" / "the white people"] would sit down there and wait for wild game, I guess.

Narrator: Before launching his career as a serial killer, Joseph Paul Franklin was a deeply troubled young man, searching for identity and belonging, first among evangelical Christians, then with right-wing extremists.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: During the early '70s, you kind of see a metamorphosis with Franklin. He begins to associate with the Nazi Party. He begins to associate with the Ku Klux Klan. And then you see a little bit of the trial and errors of his criminal behavior.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: You became, for a brief time, a member of the American Nazi Party, and, um, and even the Ku Klux Klan.

Joseph Paul Franklin: I was involved with the party, and then, uh, that was in 1973.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: And you weren't a member very long.

Joseph Paul Franklin: Just a year for that one, yeah. I didn't stick with any of them. They're, all of them were just, they're filled with FBI informants and people who are just, you know, always trying to get information from you.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: But how did these groups think about you? I mean, you weren't there for a very long time. Did, were they too conservative for you?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Uh, they were mostly, weren't doing anything, you know? Most of them were into talking. That's what the average Klansman and average Nazi, you know, they're, they're all about talk, and that's, that's it.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: And what were you into?

Joseph Paul Franklin: I was into action, you know? Doing things, you know? I wanted to get, you know, actually do something. I wasn't sure exactly, specifically, what I wanted to do, you know?

Mary Ellen O'Toole: So you became kind of a loner.

Joseph Paul Franklin: Yeah, yeah. You've got to be, because you can't trust anybody.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: I thought when he gave that explanation, he was more or less legitimizing why he left those organizations. Even though he touched on it, I think part of the reason he left was because they weren't extreme enough for him. Then you begin to see him focus a little more and more on what he ends up being for the rest of his time before he's arrested, which is a sniper.

Narrator: St. Louis, 1977. Two months after Franklin's first murder in Wisconsin, a group of people [unclear: "chat" / "chant"] in the parking lot of a synagogue. They are about to become the targets of Joseph Paul Franklin's first sniper shooting.

Investigator: There was a total of five shots. One shot, uh, struck a man in the chest, which killed him. Police that are arriving on the scene didn't know where it was coming from.

Police Spokesman: One thing we can tell you at this time that we're positive of is that we have the weapon, the rest post, and we have five spent cartridges, which is right up there at that telephone pole. It appears to be someone planned to come here and do just this.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: This was not an impulsive act whatsoever. This was an act that required planning, lots of patience. He chose this location. It had all the features that he was looking for, or that he needed, to set up his rifle, to give him an escape route, and to be able to sit there for two hours, laying in wait for his perfect victim. The victim is almost the last thing he decides to do before he commits the homicide.

Narrator: For his first sniper killing, Franklin boldly leaves the murder weapon behind, having removed both his fingerprints and the serial number from the rifle. Though St. Louis police eventually trace the gun back to Texas, it would never lead them to Franklin.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Being a, a sniper is a very, um, unusual type of serial killer. You choose the place that you're going to shoot. You're kind of off, so it minimizes any contact whatsoever with the people you're going to shoot. And I'm wondering, what is it like when you're laying there, getting ready to have a, a person walk in front of your, uh, sights?

Joseph Paul Franklin: The way people would sit down there and wait for wild game, I guess. I guess it's the same, you know, hunters who, you know, find a tree stand or something, you know. It's a similar situation. You just sit there, waiting till the target appears, and shoot. I would just stake out an area, find a good place to hide, you know, bushes, or just a vacant yard, as long as it was dark, you know. And I knew that I could see them, but they couldn't see me. You go over everything, every little step you'll take, so that when you do [unclear: "get all your adrenaline going" / "get off, you're generally going"], you can just follow the plan that you already had in mind. You don't have to worry about getting so scared that you can't even move, you know?

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Did you feel like you were actually hunting human beings?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Well, I was. You wouldn't call that hunting them?

Mary Ellen O'Toole: I would.

Joseph Paul Franklin: Well, hunting them and shooting them. Well, you know, a lot of people, uh, in the military do the same thing all the time. Kill people they don't even know. Some of the heroes of this country were the same way, you know? But they killed the enemy soldiers, so they're not looked down, despised by the society, whereas people like me are. Some people are just born homicidal, is what I'm saying. And believe it or not, you'll find a lot of people in the Bible who fit into that category, who are prophets of God. Look at all the Philistines Samson killed.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: He's implying, how can you judge me for doing the same thing that people in the Bible have done, and, and heroes in Vietnam have done, and soldiers in Iraq have had to do? As though he's saying, I had to do this. This was a good thing. I mean, it may sound bad, but it's a good thing and I had to do it. So don't judge me on the basis of my actions, because I'm not that different from people in the Bible. I'm not that different from heroes in Vietnam and in the Iraq war.

Narrator: Coming up.

Joseph Paul Franklin: Blacks all over the country would be afraid to walk down the street. I would be terrorizing the entire United States. Just one man.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: What a sense of power.

Narrator: After his St. Louis sniper killing, Joseph Paul Franklin hits the interstates, looking for new opportunities to carry out his racist wrath. From 1977 to 1979, he commits similar shootings in Virginia, Tennessee and Oklahoma.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: You begin to see this, really, what I would call very mission-oriented serial killer, who's killing a lot. He's driving around a lot. He seems to have perfected the method of his killing.

Narrator: In addition to blacks and Jews, Franklin sets his sights on an infamous magazine publisher who dared to print pictures of an interracial couple.

News Reporter: Larry Flynt, the publisher of *Hustler* magazine, he and his lawyer were walking down the sidewalk when somebody on the street opened fire, shooting Flynt in the stomach and his lawyer in the side, and then escaped. Both are in critical condition.

Narrator: To Franklin's frustration, neither the police nor the media recognized that one person is behind this shooting, the one in St. Louis, and those in other cities.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: These would have been very difficult crimes to link. There's such a limited amount of evidence at those crime scenes. There's no interaction with the victims, so the detective has very, very little to go on.

Narrator: By 1980, Franklin finds a strategy he thinks will demand law enforcement's full attention.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: So what did you decide to do in 1980?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Well, just to keep doing a whole lot more of them, so they could not ignore it, you know. All the law enforcement officers knew all about it, but they wouldn't tell the media that it was a national thing. I guess they figured, until we catch the guy, we're not going to let, give him any kind of national publicity.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: That had to be frustrating.

Joseph Paul Franklin: Yeah, it was kind of frustrating, but that just made me want to do even more, you know. That's why I wanted to shoot Jesse Jackson the most, you know. That's the one I stalked up in Chicago, went to Operation PUSH headquarters up there. Evidently, I might have been a little too obvious, 'cause I was driving down that road one day, and I looked and saw a car behind me, and I thought, "It looks like that dude is following me in that car, [unclear: "an unmarked police car" / "in a more police car" / "I'm more police car"]." I'm going to take the next right, and if he takes the right too, I know he's following me. So I took the next right, and sure enough, he took the right too, and kept on going. I thought, "Somebody's tailing me here. I better get out of town, you know."

Mary Ellen O'Toole: The paranoia, really, in a way, is very justified, because he knows that he has shot and killed people all over the United States. It's that personality trait of his that actually led to his identity, and ultimately to his arrest.

Narrator: After Franklin's plan to shoot Jesse Jackson fails, he stumbles upon another high-profile target, civil rights leader Vernon Jordan.

Joseph Paul Franklin: So I left Chicago at that time, headed toward Indiana, and I stopped in Fort Wayne that night, and just happened to hear on the news that Vernon Jordan was speaking at the Marriott Hotel at such and such time. I thought, "Well, if he's speaking at the motel, he's probably staying at the motel." So I called the motel up from my motel room, and I said, "Could you, uh, tell me what room number Vernon Jordan's in, you know?" She said, "Sir, it's against policy. I can't do that. We aren't supposed to do that." Somehow I was able to convince her to give me the room number. So that's all it took. I was able to set up an ambush outside by the interstate, you know. That's how that went down.

News Anchor: Vernon Jordan is said to be in very serious but at least stable condition at a Fort Wayne, Indiana, hospital this morning, while local and federal officials are trying to find out who shot him and why.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: He talks about going after high-profile targets like Mr. Jordan and, uh, Larry Flynt, um, and actually stalking them, getting up close to where they were staying and where they were at the time, which really is very stupid, because when you go after people who are famous, you're going to unleash law enforcement from all over the country.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Was there something that triggered it, that happened to you, or [unclear: "what did you decide" / "when did you decide"] that I need to kill somebody?

Joseph Paul Franklin: I was actually trying to get a race war started. That was my goal: commit enough racial incidents all over the country to get the blacks all stirred up, you know, and, uh, they would start killing whites, and then the whites would then get angry and retaliate for that, and it would go back and forth until a full-scale race war was going on.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Joseph wanted blacks and Jews to fear that anywhere they went, they could be gunned down. That is such a grandiose scheme, and it's unrealistic, and having unrealistic goals is consistent with people who manifest traits of psychopathy. In fact, that's one of the traits of that disorder, is that they have unrealistic goals. That never would have happened, and yet he believes that he was capable of being able to accomplish that.

Joseph Paul Franklin: I guess if I would have been able to do it long enough, they would have had to give me national publicity. Blacks all over the country and interracial couples would be afraid to walk down the street. I would be terrorizing the entire United States. Just one man.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: What a sense of power.

Joseph Paul Franklin: Yeah. They didn't want to freak out the blacks all over the country. That's why they wouldn't give me all that [unclear: "that new" / "they knew"] national publicity.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Wow, that must have made you feel pretty important.

Joseph Paul Franklin: No, I wasn't really important, you know. It was just the, the fact, the acts I was trying to do. My goal was to get the race war started, you know.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: But you weren't successful.

Joseph Paul Franklin: No, I wasn't successful in that. No, I was, I got caught after the Salt Lake City shootings, three years later, you know.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: I think underpinning a lot of his criminal behavior was this need for attention, this need to get credit for these crimes. It's what we call need-driven behavior. And his need-driven behavior was law enforcement recognizing that one person, and one person alone, was capable of creating chaos and fear in the United States.

Narrator: Coming up.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Remember the two teenage boys in Cincinnati that you shot?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Mm-hmm.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: You could see that they were young.

Joseph Paul Franklin: Yeah, I was trying to ratchet up the violence.

Narrator: In 1977, serial sniper Joseph Paul Franklin begins wandering the country, shooting people he calls enemies of the white race. His victims are chosen at random, except for two: civil rights leader Vernon Jordan and *Hustler* magazine publisher Larry Flynt were targeted for their high-profile work. By 1980, Franklin, feeling that his crimes are not getting the attention they deserve, escalates his violence.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: A serial sniper is a tough, tough offender to understand. He decides who will be in his sights. He realizes that that person's life rests in his hands. So the ultimate thrill and sense of power and control over another human being has to be considered as part of the motivation for being a serial sniper.

Narrator: It appears that Franklin also decides to expand his target list to include children. On June 8, 1980, the sniper unleashes his pain on Cincinnati, Ohio.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: You have two teenage boys who were shot and killed in Cincinnati. No one sees anything. No one identifies anybody that was responsible.

Narrator: The victims, Dante Evans Brown and Darrell Lane, cousins and best friends, were 13 and 14 years old.

Funeral Officiant: Give our brother Dante a peaceful rest in this grave. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit come on you and remain with you forever. Amen.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Up until that point, we had not seen really young victims, 13 and 14 years of age, who now were targeted by this serial sniper. And it really suggests that Joseph was changing his MO. He was increasing the number of crimes, and he was even changing his victimology to include these two very sympathetic victims.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: If we could go back to the choice of, of the two... Remember the two teenage boys in Cincinnati?

Joseph Paul Franklin: The what?

Mary Ellen O'Toole: The, the two teenage boys in Cincinnati, [unclear: "that you shot" / "that he shot"]. Um, they were 13 and 14, and this was during that period of time that you described that you were going to do things differently.

Joseph Paul Franklin: Yeah, I was trying to ratchet up the violence.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Uh, is that why you picked two young teenage boys? 'Cause you had a scope on your weapon at that time, and you would have been able...

Joseph Paul Franklin: Yeah, I had a scope on that little rifle, yep.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: You could see that they were young.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: There was only one time during the interview when his body language became defensive, and that was when we started to talk about the homicide in Cincinnati involving two young African-American boys, ages 13 and 14.

Joseph Paul Franklin: I couldn't really tell exactly how old they were. I figured they were young, but maybe just 18 or 19 years old, you know, sitting there in the dark, you know, and seeing just their silhouettes, you know, their shadows, you know. It's kind of hard to tell how old somebody was. I had no idea they were that young.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: I knew from reviewing the case and from talking to other people that not only could he have seen through that scope, but he wasn't all that far away from those two young victims. When you knowingly shoot young children, the repercussions for you as the offender can be far greater, especially when you are incarcerated in prison, and people think of you differently when you shoot and kill children.

Joseph Paul Franklin: It didn't really matter to me, you know. I had no conscience as far as the blacks go, you know. You know, when you're a member of the Klan and you spend years around white supremacists, you begin thinking of blacks as, as non-human. Connie Lynch, who was a well-known Klan leader, said, "When I go out to kill rattlesnakes, I don't make any difference between little rattlesnakes and big rattlesnakes, because I know the little ones will grow up and bite me when they get big." So I looked at blacks the same way.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: So it appeared to me that he was speaking out of both sides of his mouth. He was talking about not knowing that they were younger victims, and yet, if he shot two young boys, he knew that he would get much more attention from the media and much more attention from law enforcement.

Narrator: Coming up.

Joseph Paul Franklin: I was a little kid that was beat up and starved. You get so traumatized, you're just trying to pay back other people all the pain that you suffered.

Narrator: In the summer of 1980, an unusual type of serial killer, a racist sniper, roams the U.S. looking for targets. In states from Virginia to Oklahoma, he's used high-powered rifles, shotguns and a .357 Magnum to kill. In Salt Lake City, detectives are facing a double homicide that has all the [unclear: "trademarks" / "traits"] of this serial killer.

Police Officer: We had reports of several shots fired. When we arrived here, we had two victims down. We do have confirmed on two of the victims that they have expired.

Narrator: Two young men, 18 and 19, both black and well regarded in the community, are dead. The two white girls they were jogging with escape.

Investigator: I responded that night. It looked like the sniper had laid in wait inside this field and then shot these four people as they were coming across the lighted intersection. Both the boys were shot even after they had quit moving. They weren't wounds to the legs or the extremities. These were all, in shooter's talk, these were all like kill shots.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: I'd like to talk to you about the Salt Lake City shooting. That was August 1980. Why did you travel to Salt Lake?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Well, I'd been there before already, back in 1975.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Okay.

Joseph Paul Franklin: And had noticed a lot of miscegenation.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: What is that?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Mixing of the, of the races, especially white with, with non-whites. It would be a good place to target. I saw two interracial couples jogging toward the park, two black dudes and two white chicks, you know. So I thought, well, I'll just keep waiting here till they come back. And so, uh, there was a mound of dirt there, so I was, you know, concealed in tall grass and everything, you know.

Investigator: Salt Lake City had been used to dealing with a number of very violent crimes, so there was tremendous experience in the department, but this was a very different kind of offender.

Narrator: Although Franklin has killed his intended targets, the crime is sloppy.

Investigator: We did find some tire tread marks in the field where the shell casings were found. They were a prototype tire, and they were only sold in a very limited amount of states, but every one of those states were east of the Mississippi River. They had to be from somewhere back east.

Narrator: It's not long before witnesses come forward and describe seeing a dark-colored Camaro parked in the field near the sniper's position.

Investigator: We found a man who was walking by about a week later. He actually saw the Camaro, and he gave us a very good description of the car.

Narrator: Soon a local prostitute confirms that she's done business with a man who drove a similar car.

Investigator: He didn't want to trick in the car, so he says, "We'll go to my motel room." She thought he was from the South, because he had a southern accent, but she couldn't remember where in the South. What made it interesting to me is she mentioned that she saw some handguns and rifles in his room. Then he told her that he was a hit man for the Ku Klux Klan.

Narrator: The witness is able to help police put together a composite of the suspect.

Investigator: Well, we knew that there'd been other killings back east, and we now knew that this guy was from that area. But I think from the composites alone, we're pretty much convinced that we were on the right road.

Narrator: The registration card from the motel also lists the Camaro's license plate number and the name of its driver. While the information is phony, Salt Lake City police soon discover a trail of similar aliases in motels across the region.

Investigator: So from the 9th of August to August 20th, we could place him in, I think, seven or eight different motels. We never found him after August 20th, which was the night of our shooting. It's like he just disappeared off the face of the earth.

Narrator: But Salt Lake City police catch a break when one astute motel owner writes down the Camaro's real license plate number. A month later, this information pays off.

Investigator: I think 11 o'clock one night I got a call saying, "Head to the airport. They found this guy, and we're flying you to," I think the little town was called Erlanger, Kentucky. And they'd arrested him at a motel on our warrant.

Narrator: In an odd turn of events, police in Boone County, Kentucky, while arresting a burglar at a local motel, encounter an angry and paranoid man in the room next door.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: They check his identification, they check his vehicle, and they realize that his vehicle parked in the parking lot is a vehicle that is wanted by the Salt Lake City Police Department in a double homicide.

Narrator: Finding two high-powered rifles and handguns in the man's room, police take him in for questioning.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: So law enforcement in Kentucky didn't realize, when they brought him into the interview room, really who they had. They didn't know how many homicides that he had committed, and how committed he was to not being apprehended.

Investigator: And it wasn't until they got him into the station, and then they started talking about Salt Lake City and shootings, I think then that's where he got worried, and he manufactured his escape and he took off.

Narrator: During a break in the interview, Franklin escapes out an open window and disappears. One of America's deadliest serial killers is back on the street. But now police have his real name. On September 25, 1980, Joseph Paul Franklin, age 30, is now the object of a nationwide manhunt. One month later, the FBI, aware that Franklin regularly sells his blood, catches him at a blood bank near Tampa, Florida. Franklin proclaims his innocence while proudly admitting his racist views.

News Reporter: Mr. Franklin, do you have white racist views?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Oh, definitely, yeah.

News Reporter: Well, how do you feel about blacks?

Joseph Paul Franklin: I'm against the race mixing and communism.

Narrator: His denials don't last. In the coming years, Franklin confesses to numerous murders. For the sniper killing at the St. Louis synagogue, Franklin is sentenced to death.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Mr. Franklin has said that his motivation was to eliminate what he referred to as ugly people from the community. In my opinion, that is an explanation that he thinks would give him more credibility. But as far as what caused him to become a serial killer, I think that was an excuse.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: So how did you, Joseph, evolve to the point where you could do something that seems so cold-blooded?

Joseph Paul Franklin: You, you get so traumatized that you're just trying to pay back other people all the pain that you suffered. That's what happened to me, from the time I was a little kid and was yelled at all day long and beat up and starved. It had an effect on me when I got older, you know? Just about everybody in the family had an alcohol problem, you know? They all drank like crazy, including my, my dad was an alcoholic. After spending all his paycheck, my mother would start fussing at him. They would be fighting, cussing and screaming at each other, and he would be beating her, and, you know, that's the way it went. I remember the landlord would come and bang on the side of the trailer, and they would just terrorize us, you know? He would hit the trailer real bad and start yelling at my mother to pay the rent, you know? And she had no money, 'cause my father would take all the money and spend it for alcohol.

Joseph Paul Franklin: Eventually they split up. In 1965 they were divorced, and it was, you know, and that left us on welfare, you know? And so she began abusing us even worse after he left, you know? I was the only child in the family who was always bringing animals home. One afternoon, there was a little terrier dog, you know, from the neighborhood. We were all out in the yard, all of us kids, petting this little terrier. It was a cute little dog, too, you know, with a little tail that stuck straight up, you know, and just as friendly as can be, you know. [unclear: "Mama" / "Mom"] had been sitting in her lawn chair watching us, and went into the house, set a pot of, uh, water on the stove and began boiling it. She got the water up to a full boil, you know, and poured it right on the little dog's back, you know, and he went [imitates the dog's cry], you know, screaming and running away real fast, you know.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: She had a lot of cruel behavior.

Joseph Paul Franklin: [unclear: "Oh, man" / "I mean"], she was a sadist.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: How old were you?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Uh, about 10 or 11.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Joseph talked about a childhood that was chilling. The question is, despite the harshness and the severity of the abuse, does that act as a cause and effect for him later to go on and become a serial killer? We have no research at this point to say that there is a cause and effect just with childhood abuse, because we know that there are, unfortunately, many people who are raised in very abusive situations, and they don't go on to become serial killers. So I think we have to incorporate that environment that he described, but I think it would be wrong to say that he was a serial killer strictly and solely because he was raised in an abusive environment.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Do you think you were born to kill?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Yeah, I guess you could say that. I was under the influence of the devil.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: What do you think's going to happen to you when you die?

Narrator: Joseph Paul Franklin has been on Missouri's death row for more than a decade. Extreme hatred and what appears to be an utter lack of conscience drove him to kill some 20 people and injure many others.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: How do I feel about someone like Joseph? Do I pity him? I mean, what are my feelings towards him? I feel that it's important that we understand how he developed, to be able to go back and say, was it possible early on to prevent this? Was it possible to do something that would have changed the course of history?

Mary Ellen O'Toole: And your first thoughts of killing somebody, how old do you think you were?

Joseph Paul Franklin: About 17 years old, I think. When I would watch all these Westerns on TV, and I guess I would see people wanting them to get shot.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Here he was, watching TV, watching Westerns, lots of shootouts. He particularly enjoyed when, when the bad guy was successful. In the late '50s and during the '60s, the era of Vietnam, John Kennedy was assassinated by a sniper. Charles Whitman was a particularly successful sniper at the University of Texas in 1966. It was a period of time of a lot of violence, a lot of violence that didn't make any sense. So you have to wonder about the impact of some of the events of that period, and what role they played in him and his decision to ultimately become a serial sniper.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Was there a point in time where something could have been done to put you on a different course? Was there some kind of intervention that could have happened?

Joseph Paul Franklin: If I'd had some people to teach me and encourage me to go to school and get an education and all when I was little, my life would have turned out a whole lot differently, you know.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Do you think you still would have become a serial sniper?

Joseph Paul Franklin: I don't think I would. I know I wouldn't have built up all that hatred over the years, you know. It's the thing that people, everybody does, when they get hurt, they want to pass that pain on. I just kept getting angry, you know.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Do you think you were born to kill?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Yeah, I guess you could say that. Some people are just born with a streak that they can do something like that. There's other people, I guess, if the same thing had happened, they wouldn't have done anything, you know.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Joseph referred to himself in previous interviews as a natural-born killer, and I asked him about that, and he agreed that that was a possibility for him. Again, almost a recognition that, in spite of this environment that he described as abusive, he still was a natural-born killer. And the research up to this point seems to suggest that there seems to be some part of it that is hardwired, in other words, a genetic link to this personality disorder.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Do you think there was a part of you that, at that time, enjoyed the killing?

Joseph Paul Franklin: I don't, I wouldn't say enjoyed it. It was just something I felt I had to do. There was nobody else doing it, so I figured I had to do it.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: How did you feel once you finished the shooting?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Uh, I was just glad to, to get away.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Was it sexually arousing when you were pulling the trigger?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Not at all, no.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Have you had, um, violent sexual fantasies?

Joseph Paul Franklin: What do you mean by violent sexual fantasies?

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Violence and sex are involved in your fantasies.

Joseph Paul Franklin: That'd be a VSF, huh? No, I never had any of those. I wasn't under that. The only thing I got sexually aroused with was women. I was either out chasing skirts, trying to get laid, or I was out trying to kill an interracial couple or a black man. That was what I was spending most of my time doing.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: For some people, though, killing is very sexual.

Joseph Paul Franklin: Yeah, I know. There's some sick puppies out there. I don't fall in that category, though.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: The most frequently seen serial killers in my unit are those serial killers who are motivated for sexual purposes. In other words, they're sexually gratified in some way as a result of murdering the victim. Joseph does fit the definition of a serial killer. Now, his motivation was different, and he talked about his motivation being non-sexual, which is obviously a very touchy area to get into with an individual. Is he telling the truth? There's no way to know that. We're depending on him to tell us that. If it is true, maybe too embarrassing for him to admit, or they may not have been sexually motivated.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: And as we close, let me, let me ask you this. Um, how do you feel about the people that you killed?

Joseph Paul Franklin: I feel sorry for [unclear: "them" / "him"]. I regret having done that, you know.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: What does regret feel like to Joseph Paul Franklin?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Well, I just, in other words, I just wish I had not done it, you know. I feel sorry for the people, you know. It was really wrong for me to do that.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: I think, like, um, most serial killers, Joseph knows right from wrong. He talked about regret, but whether or not that was a sincere, remorseful regret, I can only tell you what my opinion was, based on my experience with these types of offenders, and I did not walk away with the sense that he had those feelings of remorse and guilt.

Joseph Paul Franklin: I was under the influence of the devil, to be quite honest. I know that sounds, you know, I'm not trying to say the devil made me do it, but, you know, the devil does put thoughts in people's minds. That is a fact. At the time when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were both assassinated the same year, and the [unclear: "paper" / "party"] carried an article that had, uh, was titled, uh, "Two Enemies of the White Race Die." That's the kind of stuff I was feeding my mind for years and years. That's why I began thinking of blacks as nothing but subhumans, who go around committing nothing but rapes, and raping white women, and killing. I know that's just the criminal element now. There's a lot of hardworking blacks who don't do that stuff, you know.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: You mentioned heaven and hell, um, and [unclear: "your" / "you're a criminal"] [inaudible]

Joseph Paul Franklin: Yeah, the Bible mentions those, and so does the Quran.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: What do you think's going to happen to you when you die?

Joseph Paul Franklin: Well, I'm trusting in, in Jehovah's mercy, you know, trusting in God's mercy.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: I think Joseph lives in the here and now. I think he lives for the present moment. I think he's obviously cognizant or aware that he has the death penalty hanging over his head, but there also may be a part of him that thinks that something may happen ultimately and he won't be executed. Many serial killers who are psychopaths are very optimistic in terms of their future.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Thank you very much.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: Joseph was hardly a disappointment. Joseph's smart, he's articulate, and listening to him talk about what he wanted to do, what his whole purpose was, made him even more frightening of an individual than we realized thirty-some years ago. I think that he was absolutely a very, very dangerous serial killer, set apart from many of the other ones that we saw then and that we see today.

Mary Ellen O'Toole: One of the reasons for this kind of interview is not just to develop a better understanding of these kinds of offenders, but also to help investigators the next time that this type of crime occurs. Joseph Paul Franklin will not be our last serial sniper, and we know that because we had the Beltway snipers right after 9/11. A lot of the information that Joseph talked about is information that we can take into, not only prepare the investigation, but to also help prepare for the interview with the next serial sniper. [music to end] ---