OVERLAND PARK, Kansas: The suspect in the Passover Eve killings of three people at two Jewish community facilities in a Kansas City suburb has a long history of racism and anti-Semitism, human rights groups said yesterday.
Frazier Glenn Cross, 73, is facing charges of premeditated murder and was scheduled for an initial court appearance yesterday afternoon. He was arrested Sunday after a shooting spree that killed a 14-year-old boy and his grandfather outside a popular Jewish community center, and a third victim outside a nearby Jewish retirement home.
Both facilities are in Overland Park, Kansas, an upscale suburb outside Kansas City, Missouri.
Police said it was too early to determine if Sunday’s killings were motivated by anti-Semitism, but both the Southern Poverty Law Center, a leading anti-hate group, and the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights (IREHR) said the suspect was a former senior member of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan movement.
The groups said Cross, a Missouri man who also goes by the name Frazier Glenn Miller, was involved in creating an armed paramilitary organization in North Carolina 20 years ago.
US Attorney General Eric Holder issued a statement Monday pledging federal help in determining whether or not the federal hate crimes statute was implicated in the “heinous” killings.
“I was horrified to learn of this weekend’s tragic shootings outside Kansas City. These senseless acts of violence are all the more heartbreaking as they were perpetrated on the eve of the solemn occasion of Passover,” Holder said.
The Southern Poverty Law Center said Cross is a “raging anti-Semite” who has posted online rantings that include “No Jews, Just Right.” And the IREHR said he idolizes Adolf Hitler.
“His worship for Hitler and Hitlerism is real,” said Leonard Zeskind, president of IREHR, in a statement issued Monday.
Overland Park Police were not commenting on the shooter’s motives.
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.
Reuters
