Missouri executes serial killer Franklin
BONNE TERRE, Mo. (AP) – White supremacist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin has been put to death in Missouri. It was the state’s first execution in nearly three years.
The 63-year-old Franklin targeted blacks and Jews in a cross-country killing spree from 1977 to 1980. He was executed Wednesday at the state prison in Bonne Terre for killing Gerald Gordon in a sniper shooting outside a suburban St. Louis synagogue in 1977.
Franklin was convicted of eight murders, including one in Chattanooga, Tenn. He was finally arrested in Kentucky, escaped, and was captured for a good a month after that in Florida.
The execution was the first in Missouri using a single drug, pentobarbital.
Franklin’s fate was sealed early Wednesday when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a federal appeals court decision overturning stays granted Tuesday.
