Joseph Paul Franklin Thesis

Pueggel 1

Owen Pueggel

Mrs. Neuberger

English 12

13 April 2023

Joseph Paul Franklin

Joseph Paul Franklin was a serial killer in the late 1970s. He was a mentally troubled man from an abusive home that turned into a racist serial killer. (“Serial Killers..”) He was known as a neo-nazi, racist serial killer who specifically targeted black people and Jewish people. He claimed that he was purifying the world with his killings. (Blanco) He was also a religious person, he compared his killing spree to Jesus’s mission saying “Three years, the same length of time Jesus went on his mission.” (Scott).

In Franklin’s Early childhood, he suffered from severe abuse from his parents who both lived a rough life. If he misbehaved, both his mother and father

Right out of high school, Joseph found his first wife who was 16 years old at the time. He fell in love quickly as he only knew her for two weeks before getting married. Though it didn’t take long before he took after his dad and started abusing her, they did not have any kids and eventually got divorced four months after their marriage. He then married again, and again he would go on to beat his wife brutally and eventually got divorced again a year after this marriage. His second wife claimed that she would see him weeping for no reason every once in a while. (Serial

He would shoot one person and then drive across the U.S. before shooting someone else. This was smart because the crimes were so hard to connect and at the time there were no security cameras and police departments couldn’t easily communicate with each other to figure out information about Franklin. Franklin would even get brought into custody for a minor allegation but he would eventually escape custody and continue his killing spree. These tactics used by Franklin extended his killing spree to three years in total. (Serial Killers..)

Franklin killed over 15 people during his whole spree including different types of people. Most of his victims were black because of his racist nature. He would wait at certain areas where he would suspect black people to be and snipe them when he was ready. Franklin would also target interracial couples because he believed white women who were with black guys were just as much of a problem as the blacks. He would then confront a certain interracial couple outside of a pizza hut and after arguing for a while with them, he shot them both up close with a shotgun and left their bodies. (Serial