Joseph Paul Franklin

Joseph Paul Franklin (born James Clayton Vaughn, Jr.) was an American white supremacist serial killer, attempted assassin, bomber and homegrown terrorist active in several states from 1977 to 1980. He is most famous for his assassination attempt on Larry Flynt, which left the latter permanently crippled. Franklin was eventually executed in 2013.

Background
Franklin was born James Clayton Vaughn, Jr. in Mobile, Alabama, the eldest son of James Clayton Vaughn, Sr. and Helen Rau Vaughn. His father, a World War II veteran and butcher, was an alcoholic drifter who usually spent months, if not years, away from his family, then returned to physically abuse his children. Helen was described as a strict and abusive woman, and was said by Franklin himself to have never really cared about him or his siblings, who were given rarely enough to eat. Years later, Franklin stated that his dysfunctional childhood affected his emotional development so that he practically was "ten years or more behind other people in their maturity".

In his high school years, Franklin developed an interest in evangelical Christianity, later dropping out after an accident left his eyesight severely impaired, consequently exempting him from military conscription. He married in 1968, and began to physically abuse his wife, who would later find him weeping for no apparent reason.

A few years later, he came into contact with far right and neo-Nazism, joining the National Socialist White People's Party (currently known as the American Nazi Party) and, after his mother's death in 1972, the segregationist movement. Moving to Atlanta, he also enlisted in the National States' Rights Party, along with the local Ku Klux Klan. He began insulting interracial couples in public, in one instance spraying them with self-defense spray. It was circa in this period of his life that he decided to change his name to "Joseph Paul Franklin", honoring both Nazi minister of propaganda Paul Joseph Goebbels and Benjamin Franklin. Franklin later stated that he decided to start a race war after reading a copy of Mein Kampf.

Early Crimes and Sniper Shootings
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Arrest, Trial, and Execution
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Modus Operandi
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Profile
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Known Victims
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On Criminal Minds
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