Joseph Paul Franklin

About Joseph Paul Franklin

Joseph Paul Franklin (born April 13, 1950) is an American serial killer/racist killer who may have killed as many as 20 people between 1977 and 1980. He has been convicted of several murders, and has confessed to the attempted assassinations of two prominent people: the 1978 shooting of magazine publisher Larry Flynt and Flynt's attorney, and the 1980 shooting of Vernon Jordan. Franklin has not been convicted in either of those cases. Because Franklin has changed his story about some cases, the full extent of his crimes is uncertain.

He was born James Clayton Vaughn in Mobile, Alabama, to a poor family. In 1976 he changed his name to Joseph Paul Franklin. He selected Joseph Paul in honor of Paul Joseph Goebbels and Franklin after US founding father, Benjamin Franklin.

An Evangelical Christian, Franklin is believed to have suffered an abusive childhood at the hands of both his violent parents. As early as high school he had become very interested in Nazism and later held memberships in both the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan. He also has one daughter from a 1968 marriage.