Killer fueled by racial hate set to be executed

USAToday

One of the nation's most notorious serial killers, Joseph Paul Franklin, got his idea to kill Hustler publisher Larry Flynt after looking at the magazine in Jackson in 1977.

By the time Franklin got his chance a year later, he had already begun his rampage, bombing synagogues, shooting interracial couples and killing "enemies of the white race," and, by the time it ended, leaving at least 21 dead, including Jackson State University student Johnnie Noyes Jr., according to authorities.

"I had a hatred toward blacks bordering on insanity," the 63-year-old Franklin, who is scheduled to be executed Nov. 20, said in a telephone interview from death row in Missouri. "I was flat-out mentally ill."