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Joseph Paul Franklin

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Murderer

The Resume

    (April 13, 1950-November 20, 2013)
    Born in Mobile, Alabama
    Birth name was James Clayton Vaughn, Jr.
    Murdered from 7 to 22 people between 1977 and 1980
    Shot and wounded 'Hustler' publisher Larry Flynt (March 6, 1978) and civil rights leader Vernon Jordan, Jr. (May 29, 1980)
    Sentenced to death in Missouri for the 1977 murder of Gerald Gordon (1997)
    Convicted of six other murders in other jurisdictions and received six life sentences
    Executed by lethal injection

Why he might be annoying:

    He was a paranoid schizophrenic.
    He joined the Ku Klux Klan and the National Socialist White People's Party (American Nazi Party).
    He was inspired to try to start a race war after reading Hitler's 'Mein Kampf.'
    His prefered targets were black and Jewish people and interracial couples.
    He tried to kill Larry Flynt because an issue of 'Hustler' depicted interracial sex.
    He robbed 16 banks to finance his cross-country killing spree.
    He repeatedly changed his accounts of his actions, making it difficult to determine the full extent of his crimes.
    Fellow white supremacist William L. Pierce dedicated the novel 'Hunter' to him.
    One of his defense attorneys later said, 'I don't know that I've ever come across in the years that I've been practicing someone else that is so full of completely irrational hate.'

Why he might not be annoying:

    He was physically abused as a child.
    He managed successful sniper attacks despite being legally blind in one eye and severely impaired in the other.
    Larry Flynt asked for clemency for him.
    He claimed to have renounced his racist views as a result of interacting with black people in prison: 'I saw they were people just like us.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 120 Votes: 60.83% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 132 Votes: 57.58% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 116 Votes: 43.97% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 258 Votes: 53.88% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 21 Votes: 38.10% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 458 Votes: 56.33% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 10 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 19 Votes: 26.32% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 57 Votes: 54.39% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 55 Votes: 50.91% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 178 Votes: 64.61% Annoying