Jewish center shooting suspect is white supremacist, former KKK leader

Jewish center shooting suspect Frazier Glenn Cross, of Aurora, Mo., was booked into Johnson County jail on a preliminary charge of first-degree murder after the attacks Sunday in Overland Park.

The man accused of killing three people in attacks at a Jewish community center and Jewish retirement complex near Kansas City is a well-known white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klan leader who was once the subject of a nationwide manhunt.

Frazier Glenn Cross, 73, of Aurora, Mo., was booked into Johnson County jail on a preliminary charge of first-degree murder after the attacks Sunday in Overland Park.

At a news conference Sunday afternoon, Overland Park police Chief John Douglass declined to publicly identify the man suspected in the attacks. But an official at a suburban Kansas City jail, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the case, identified the suspect as Cross.

Douglass said the suspect made several statements to police, "but it's too early to tell you what he may or may not have said" during the attacks. He also said it was too early in the investigation to determine whether he had an anti-Semitic motive. The Jewish festival of Passover begins Monday.

"We are investigating it as a hate crime. We're investigating it as a criminal act. We haven't ruled out anything. ... Again, we're three hours into it," he said Sunday.

SITE, a U.S.-based terror monitoring group, described the suspect as a known and vocal anti-Semite who frequently calls for genocide against Jews.

Police said the attacks happened within minutes of one another. At around 1 p.m. a gunman shot two people in the parking lot behind the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. He then drove a few blocks away to a retirement community, Village Shalom, and gunned down a woman or girl there, Douglass said. Officers arrested him in an elementary school parking lot a short time later.

Police said the attacks at both sites happened outside and the gunman never entered any buildings. Douglass said the gunman also shot at two other people during the attacks, but missed.

Authorities declined to release the victims' names pending notification of their relatives. However, the family of the first two victims released a statement identifying them as Dr. William Lewis Corporon, who died at the scene, and his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, who died at Overland Park Regional Medical Center.

They were both Christian, and the family thanked members of their church congregation, among others, for their support.

"We take comfort knowing they are together in Heaven," the family said. It asked for privacy to mourn.

Rebecca Sturtevant, a hospital spokeswoman, said family members told her Corporon had taken his grandson to the community center so that the boy could try out for a singing competition for high school students. Reat was a freshman at Blue Valley High School and an Eagle Scout.

Cross is also known as Frazier Glenn Miller. A public records search shows he has used both names, but he refers to himself on his website as Glenn Miller and went by the name Frazier Glenn Miller in 2006 and 2010 campaigns for public office.

Cross lives in a small single-story home bordered on three sides with barbed wire fences in the small southwest Missouri town of Aurora, some 180 miles south of Overland Park. A red Chevrolet adorned with Confederate flag stickers was parked outside. An AP reporter knocked on the front door of the house early Monday, but no one answered.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, said it reached his wife, Marge, by phone and that she said authorities had been to their home and told her that her husband had been arrested in Sunday's attacks.

The law center said the suspect has been involved in the white supremacist movement for most of his life. He founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and was its "grand dragon" in the 1980s. The Army veteran and retired truck driver later founded another white supremacist group, the White Patriot Party, the center said.

He was the subject of a nationwide manhunt in 1987 for violating the terms of his bond while appealing a North Carolina conviction for operating a paramilitary camp. The search ended after federal agents found him and three other men in an Ozark mobile home, which was filled with hand grenades, automatic weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition. He ran for U.S. House in 2006 and the U.S. Senate in 2010, espousing a white power platform each time.

SITE said Monday that the suspect is a prominent member of the Vanguard News Network and has posted thousands of messages — including frequent calls for genocide against Jews — on the neo-Nazi forum's website. His most recent post was Saturday.