Supremacist draws Kansas murder counts

Frazier Glenn Cross appears at his arraignment Tuesday in New Century, Kan. Cross is charged in the shootings that left three people dead at two Jewish community sites in suburban Kansas City on Sunday.
Frazier Glenn Cross appears at his arraignment Tuesday in New Century, Kan. Cross is charged in the shootings that left three people dead at two Jewish community sites in suburban Kansas City on Sunday.

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. - The white supremacist charged in shootings that left three people dead at two Jewish community sites in suburban Kansas City made his first court appearance Tuesday.

Wearing a dark, sleeveless anti-suicide smock, Frazier Glenn Cross sat in a wheelchair as he was escorted to a video room for a hearing. He stood under his own power to face the judge, crossing his arms and speaking only when answering routine questions from the judge. He requested a court-appointed lawyer.

A Johnson County sheriff’s office spokesman declined to say Tuesday why Cross was in a wheelchair.

Under state charges filed Tuesday, Cross faces one count of capital murder in the deaths of a 14-year-old boy and his grandfather and one count of first-degree premeditated murder in the death of a woman, Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe said at a news conference.

Cross is being held in lieu of $10 million bond and his next court appearance is scheduled for April 24.

Physician William Lewis Corporon, 69, and his 14-yearold grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, were shot and killed outside the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City on Sunday. Both were Methodist.

Minutes later, Terri LaManno, a 53-year-old Catholic occupational therapist and mother of two, was gunned down outside Village Shalom, a Jewish retirement complex where she was visiting her mother.

The Justice Department said Tuesday that Attorney General Eric Holder will travel to Overland Park on Thursday to pay tribute to the three victims in an interfaith memorial ceremony scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. EDT.

In Kansas, one of the narrow circumstances in which capital-murder cases are pursued includes the intentional killing of more than one person in “the same act or transaction or in two or more acts or transactions connected together or constituting parts of a common scheme or course of conduct.”

In this case, a single charge was applied to the deaths of Corporon and his grandson because they occurred in a very short period of time as part of the same act, prosecutors said. LaManno’s death doesn’t meet the standard for capital murder, Howe said, but he would not provide details or evidence gathered in the case to explain why.

Howe said specific details about actions that led to the charges against Cross are contained in an affidavit, which under Kansas law is not considered public information. A criminal complaint released Tuesday describes the charges and includes a list of witnesses, but nothing else.

Federal prosecutors say there’s enough evidence to warrant putting the case before a grand jury as a hate crime, but U.S. Attorney Barry Grissom said Tuesday that federal charges were likely a week or more away. Cross’ state case would have to be resolved before he could be moved to a federal trial.

Howe said: “Our system is more nimble, we can move a little bit quicker than the federal system. We’ve alleged he came into the community I’ve been elected to protect. … This isn’t about retribution, this is about seeking justice.”

Cross is a 73-year-old Vietnam War veteran from southwest Missouri who founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in his native North Carolina and later the White Patriot Party.

Cross shouted a Nazi slogan at television cameras as he was arrested after Sunday’s killings, which occurred on the eve of Passover.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit that monitors the activities of known white supremacists, said Cross, who also has used the name Frazier Glenn Miller, has been immersed in white supremacy most of his life. During the early 1980s, Cross was “one of the more notorious white supremacists in the U.S.,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.

He was the target of a nationwide manhunt in 1987 for violating terms of his bond while appealing a North Carolina conviction for operating a paramilitary camp, and federal agents tracked Cross and three other men to a rural Missouri mobile home stocked with hand grenades and automatic weapons.

A federal grand jury indicted Cross on weapons charges and accused him of plotting robberies and the assassination of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s founder. He served three years in federal prison.

Cross also ran for the U.S. House in 2006 and the U.S. Senate in 2010 in Missouri, each time espousing a white-power platform.

Front Section, Pages 4 on 04/16/2014

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