22: EPISODE 22 // Joseph Paul Franklin

Joseph Paul Franklin, born James Clayton Vaughan, was a white-supremacist, racist, neo-nazi Serial killer who terrorized in the late 1900s. From 1977 to 1980, Franklin traveled across the United States in search of Jewish, Black or Interracial couples that he would most often shoot and kill in the name of his mission. This mission was to ignite a national race war, and he felt that each attack drew him closer to this goal. 

Franklin was able to fly under the radar due to the fact that the murders he committed seemed to be random, isolated attacks, since he would often flee the state immediately following. This separation between attacks made it difficult for authorities to link them together and to see that there was a psychotic racist serial killer at large. Throughout this “mission” it is believed that Joseph Paul Franklin killed more than 20 people. In addition to his murders, he injured at least six of his victims, with one being Hustler Magazine founder Larry Flynt, who ultimately became paralyzed from the waist down from the attack. 

In this episode, we will be discussing how Joseph Paul Franklin escalated to become a serial killer by the age of 27, making white-supremacy and the murder of “Jews and Blacks” his entire life’s purpose and believing that they were the “enemy of the white race”, as well as details of the more than 20 murders that are believed to have been committed by him, his eventual capture and death.