Frazier Glenn Cross: Former KKK leader in custody over Kansas Jewish center attacks

Frazier Glenn Cross, Jr., a former Ku Klux Klan leader with a history of anti-Semitism and racism, has been identified as person of interest for the killing of three people at two Jewish centers in Kansas City, law enforcement officials said.

Frazier Glenn Cross, Jr., 73, from Missouri, is suspected of fatally shooting a 14-year-old Eagle Scout and his grandfather in the parking lot at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City campus in Overland Park then gunning down a woman at Village Shalom, a retirement community that is several blocks away from the center, law enforcement officials said.

A civil rights organization that tracks hate groups said it has long known about Cross.

The Southern Poverty Law Center says Frazier Glenn Cross is known to them using aliases – Glenn Miller or Frazier Glenn Miller – and is the former Grand Dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

The center sued Frazier Glenn Cross in the 1980’s for intimidating African Americans, and he has had several run-ins with the law since then, including being accused of violating the terms of a court order that settled the lawsuit.

A profile assembled by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) includes several anti-Semitic statements attributed to Frazier Glenn Cross.

Police only described the suspect as an elderly man with a beard in a Sunday afternoon news conference.

According to the SPLC, Frazier Glenn Cross quit high school as a senior to join the Army. In a 20-year Army career he had two tours in Vietnam and 13 years as a member of the elite Green Berets before he was forced to retire because of his Klan affiliation in 1979.

Later he went on to be active in a neo-Nazi group called “The Order” that advocated violence against Blacks and Jews among others, the SPLC said.

Frazier Glenn Cross even unsuccessfully ran in the Democratic primary for North Carolina governor in 1984 and as a Republican for a state Senate seat in 1987, the SPLC said.