KKK Member Arrested After Killing 3

14 Apr, 2014

The suspect in the Passover Eve killings of three people at two Jewish community centers in the Kansas City area was scheduled to appear in court on Monday to face murder charges.

Authorities in Kansas identified the suspect as Frazier Glenn Cross, Jr., 73.

Police said it was too early to determine if Sunday’s killings were motivated by anti-Semitism, but a leading anti-hate group said the suspect was a former senior member of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan movement.

“We know it’s a vicious act of violence. Obviously two Jewish facilities, one might make that assumption,” Overland Park Police Chief John Douglass told a news conference.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups, said Cross was once the grand dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. It said his wife had told the center on Sunday that police informed her Cross had been arrested in connection with the shootings.

Cross was being held on suspicion of premeditated murder in the first degree and was to appear in court on Monday afternoon, according to jail records.

The shootings, which took place on the eve of the Jewish holiday of Passover, started around 1 p.m. at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City in Overland Park. Two males were shot in a parking lot outside the center, one dying at the scene and the other at a hospital later, police said.

The shooter then drove a mile away to the Village Shalom retirement community and fatally shot a woman there, Douglass said.

The male victims were identified as Reat Griffin Underwood, 14, a high school freshman, and his grandfather, Dr. William Corporon, family member Will Corporon said in a statement. Both were members of the United Methodist Church of the Resurrection.

Underwood was an Eagle Scout who loved camping and hunting, Corporon said. Dr. Corporon had moved to the Kansas City area in 2003 to be closer to his grandchildren.

The Jewish Community Center, which is also the site of Kansas City’s only Jewish community day school, the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy, was a hub of activity on Sunday.

Several youth groups were meeting, people were auditioning for a music production and the academy was preparing for a school dance. Many non-Jewish people regularly join the facility’s activities.

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