Cover Story

By Kevin Lee Associate Editor

The door clicked shut behind Melissa Powers, cutting off the only escape from the killer on the other side of the room. Though a guard was just outside, it was little solace against Joseph Paul Franklin, the Mobile-born murderer who left a trail of close to 20 victims across the South and Midwest during the late ‘70s and early ‘80s.

His stature was unimpressive. “Looks like he probably doesn’t weight more than 140 pounds,” recalled Powers. “I’d say he’s about 5-9.” It didn’t dent his confidence. “At one point, he stood up and said, ‘I could kill you right here right now and you’d be dead because nobody could get in here fast enough. There’s nothing to you.’”

“When he killed…that’s when he came alive”

Powers, a Hamilton County, Ohio prosecutor, was chosen to interview the serial killer, to solicit a confession for his slaying of two African-American boys in Cincinnati in the summer of 1980. It was now 1997 and Franklin was finally in custody.

Franklin set the terms of the interview. “When I met with the guy,” said Powers, now in private practice, “he wanted to meet with me face-to-face. And I begged for that thing to be videotaped, but he’d only allow a tape recorder.”

Powers recently recalled her meeting with the murderer, his racially-motivated impulses a rarity among serial killers. “Here’s what I think,” said the blonde attorney, “Yes, he’s a racist. I asked him if there was a sexual component to his killing, he said never. But he was very weird about when it came to sex.”

Powers noticed a difference in Franklin’s narration of his crimes. “He was very flat-lined when he was talking about everything,” she said, “even the crime here (Cincinnati) where he killed the two boys. It didn’t get him nearly as excited as when he was talking about killing the MRCs, which was what he called mixed-race couples.”

“I think a sexual component was involved when he killed the interracial couples,” explained Powers. “That’s when he came alive, like he was turned on. He became very animated, very excited. When I asked him about it, he denied it.”

“The FBI thought he might possibly be impotent in some way,” revealed Powers. “It was disgusting, very sickening.”

Powers found Franklin’s ideas unoriginal. “I think he kind of drew off of Charlie Manson, too,” she said. “He’s kind of a copycat.”

Powers pressed him further. “I said, ‘Why did you shoot them?’”

“And he said, “Because I consider the black people to be the ugliest,’ or something like that.’

Franklin had developed a method. “He told me he learned you have to shoot the black man first because if you shoot the white woman first, the black man will just run away,” said Powers. ” He said if you shoot the black man first, the woman will just stay by his side ‘like a dumb fucking idiot.’ He said, ‘It’s the funniest thing, it happened every time.’”

“He claimed there were physical changes if a white woman had ever been with a black man,” remembered Powers “He said he could tell, that there were physical changes ‘like their ass gets real saggy and their boobs get different.’”

“The guy’s very crafty, very manipulative,” described Powers. “He’s probably the ultimate of all manipulators.”

Franklin also has a bizarre ego, one that craves attention for his depravity. He told a Mobile Register reporter in 1998 that he resents his lack of renown, that “he did the work. He wants the fame.”

Reportedly, Franklin also dislikes the fact he wasn’t made famous on the silver screen. The 1996 film “The People vs. Larry Flynt” never touched on the fact it was Franklin who claims to have sniped the pornographer outside a Georgia courtroom. In fact, the credits list the character simply as “The Assassin.” The diminished role was via request from Flynt as the publisher was presumably clever enough to withhold gratification from the felon.

Franklin was indicted for the crime, but never brought to trial.

Franklin was also acquitted in the shooting of Bill Clinton crony Vernon Jordan, but still maintained to others that he committed the act.

Confessions resonate

During her interview, Powers coaxed the killer into revealing the details of other crimes. “The Johnstown crime is the one he wanted to talk about in great detail, where he gave out his philosophy about preserving the white race,” she said. Franklin killed an interracial couple, Arthur Smothers and Kathleen Mikula, on June 15, 1980 in a wooded area near the Pennsylvania town.

It didn’t stop there. “He confessed six murders to me,” she said. “Two here, two in Johnstown and the Rainbow killings. So they were all in 1980.”

His revelation on the “Rainbow killings” had repercussions far beyond Franklin’s sentencing.

On June 25, 1980, Franklin cruised a West Virginia highway, the summer sun glinting off his glasses. He spied a pair of hitchhikers and pulled over.

Vicky Durian, 22, and Nancy Santomero, 19, a pair of latter day hippies on their way to a Rainbow Family gathering in Monongahela National Forest, were brimming with idealism and naivete when they gladly climbed into Franklin’s car.

The forest thickened, miles passed and conversation started. Franklin asked the girls if they had ever been with black men. One freely admitted to prior relations with an African-American, the other said she would have no problem with it.

Franklin’s anger flared. “I just decided to waste ‘em,” he told Powers. He quickly pulled a .44 caliber pistol on the women, firing so closely that Santomero had powder burns on her chin.

Pocahontas County officials found the bodies and the investigation eventually settled on one man: local farmer Jacob Beard. When Beard was finally arrested in 1992 and convicted the following year, law enforcement was thoroughly convinced of his guilt. Despite the fact that it was discovered officers had beaten a damning statement out of the key witness for the state – a man, it was later discovered, who had never seen what he claimed – Beard sat behind bars.

When Franklin discussed the case with Powers he let slip details never revealed to the public. “He said exactly where he dropped off the bags, that’s where they were found,” said Powers. “What was in their stomach; what they ate when they stopped at that little food store; how he laid the bodies, which he never told anybody. All of it matched. I mean this guy gave details like no other. This guy told me, ‘You know, it’s very traumatic to shoot somebody in your car.’”

Franklin’s eventual cooperation freed Beard after seven years in custody. But Franklin had toyed with the farmer as well as the West Virginia authorities had.

“This guy’s quirky,” described Powers. “The defense attorney that represented Beard went out to meet with him, he (Franklin) was going to give a deposition. He walks into the room and the defense attorney is talking with the prosecutor and laughing when Franklin walked in, so Franklin wouldn’t speak. Sent them all home and Beard sat in prison.”

What ticks

Is Franklin all that different? How does the rarity of racial serial killers factor into his assemblage?

Some would say it’s not earth-shattering. Dr. Mary Ellen O’ Toole is a Supervisory Special Agent of the Behavioral Analysis Unit – with an expertise in serial killers – at FBI Academy in Quantico, Va. and a 25-year veteran. “There’s not any one general profile for serial killers,” she said. “They look differently, act differently, some will have certain patterns that others don’t have.”

Their motivations vary. “Some will certainly have a sexual component to their killings, yes,” said O’ Toole. “Others will do it for other reasons, like killing for hire.”

It seemed to give Franklin satisfaction “That’s when he felt the most alive.” said Powers. “There’s still a power thing with it. When he talked, he can relive it. That’s why he can remember the details he can. The details are just incredible.”

But the full force of the nation’s foremost analysis was never turned on Franklin. Powers recalled the feds’ cursory information. “You know the FBI profile on him was very generic,” said Powers.

The reason was obvious. “We don’t really have that information on Franklin’s case per se simply because there’s normally no need to work up an investigative analysis on someone who has confessed and is already in custody,” explained O’ Toole.

Franklin’s craftiness remains. He was originally convicted by federal authorities, but was attacked during initial incarceration. “He got stabbed 18 times by blacks when he was in federal prison,” said Powers. “That’s why he pled out to the Salt Lake City case.”

“He confessed to the Missouri murders to get transferred,” concluded Powers. Franklin originally admitted to crimes that earned him a date with the electric chair.

Quickly, he sang a new song about other crimes in another state. He now sits on Missouri’s death row, convicted of killing 42-year-old Gerald Gordon as he left a Richmond Heights synagogue with his young children. It seems Missouri uses lethal injection to carry out their sentences.

His desire for the initial transfer also comes back to the assertion of power over an individual, to the twisted schemes that drove Franklin to kill. “He thinks it’s honorable to be killed by the state, not by black men,” said Powers. “Or in a shoot-out with the police officers.”

All this from a man who told Powers he thought God rendered him invisible to carry out his missions. “That’s why he got so bold and ended up doing the Salt Lake City ones in broad daylight,” explained the attorney.

Powers believes there are more murders than may ever be discovered. “I think there’s a lot of dead prostitutes around,” she theorized. “He shot one of them in a park, he told me, because she wouldn’t shut up. She kept mouthing off to him and he knew she was dating a black man.”

A key piece of missing evidence gives clues. “There was a scrapbook of Polaroid pictures,” said Powers. “When they caught him here in Cincinnati, across the river in Florence, Ky., a scrapbook was one of the things that was taken from him. He was really surprised when it didn’t show up in discovery when he was defending himself out in Salt Lake City. And nobody knows where that scrapbook is.”

Powers has her hunches on its whereabouts. “There’s some law enforcement involved that didn’t exactly divulge everything that was requested.”

“When I was involved in ‘97 and we tried every angle we could think of to get that book. And we didn’t get anywhere,” she said.

The contents were revelatory. “There were pictures of prostitutes posing naked with his guns in that book, that’s what he told me,” said Powers . “I’d be willing to bet the women in that book are dead.”

She also doubts the purity of his racial motives. “They weren’t killed because of that,” postulated Powers. “That’s his way of justifying that they had to be wasted. That’s why I think a lot of it, he’s full of it.”

Her disgust is evident. “With him, he’s such a coward. It’s such a cowardly act, to shoot somebody from a distance.”

However, she’s still wary. “He’s into the occult. He’s smart,” said Powers. “This guy scares me.”

Franklin is presently serving six life sentences and awaits capital punishment in Missouri’s Potosi Correctional Institute.

He may not be alone for long. Dr. O’ Toole’s FBI work frequently carries her to overseas symposiums for comparisons with other nations. “For some reason, we seem to have a lot of serial killers in the United States,” she intones with curiosity, “a lot more than in other countries.”

Kevin Lee is Lagniappe associate editor. Contact him at klee@lagniappemobile.com.

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