This fit in perfectly with his earlier claim of having saved a lot of money from his job in suburban Maryland; however, the only two reasonable possibilities for where this money was coming from were burglary and robbery. The amount of cash Anita said he was bringing home seemed to support the theory that he was quite proficient at robbing banks. The previous year, there had been unsolved bank robberies in Montgomery, Louisville, Kansas City, Atlanta, and other places throughout his comfort zone.
In one case, we had a report of a robbery at a branch of the Trust Company Bank on Rockbridge Road in DeKalb County, Georgia, on the morning of Thursday, June 16, 1977. A white male about five feet, eleven inches tall, believed to be in his twenties, wearing a porkpie camouflage hat and green fatigue jacket, entered the building about twenty minutes after it opened, held out a small-caliber pistol, and said to the teller, “Give me the cash or I’ll start shooting.” No one was injured and the offender escaped with an undisclosed amount of cash. If this was Franklin’s work, it was likely his first or one of his first robberies, and the fact that he got away with it so easily would have emboldened him to keep on robbing banks for his livelihood.
Wherever investigators uncovered bank robberies that corresponded to his known or suspected movements, agents were dispatched to interview tellers and show his photo. Several of them identified him, which confirmed for us how he was financing his roaming lifestyle. (We later discovered that he had been inspired to rob banks and develop the necessary skills by reading books about Jesse James and John Dillinger.)
The agents showed Anita photographs of the bank robbery suspect the tellers had identified. She acknowledged them as the man she knew as James Cooper.
There was no reason to suspect that she had any knowledge of his illegal activities or the extent of his racial and anti-Semitic fixation, even though she did have to hear his rantings. He had told her he was a plumber and led her to believe that his frequent absences were due to complex contracting jobs for which he was paid large sums. Though he sometimes bought her expensive gifts when he was flush with cash, his bank robberies were basically a way to support himself while he pursued his real life’s work of killing African Americans and interracial couples, and attempting to foment a national race war.
In July 1979, with their baby due in a month, Franklin told Anita he did not want the responsibility of a baby and was leaving the household, although we know he returned briefly to visit her and his infant daughter in late August before going back on the road. He returned again in October, at which time he was driving a 1972 Plymouth Satellite. He stayed one day and told her he was going to Birmingham.
He came back again in August 1980, this time with the brown Chevy Camaro that police later identified. He told Anita he had been traveling constantly, and that he had been to Canada, Kansas City, and Nevada.
An October 17 teletype from the director’s office stated that investigating agents had determined that Franklin had operated for a while under the alias Joseph John Kitts, with a 1951 date of birth, a new Social Security number, and a hospital card from Grady Memorial in Atlanta.
Most important, he had been photographed giving blood for payment at the Montgomery Plasma Center on October 9 and 13, 1980. The center required photographs of all blood donors. The Mobile field office had a copy of the photo—he was not wearing glasses—and they were sending it out to all FBI field offices.
Based on the photograph, Franklin was identified at the Greyhound Bus Station in Montgomery on Tuesday, October 14, boarding the ten-thirty bus to Atlanta. This was all beginning to fit together.
Within hours of receiving the report from the Mobile field office, FBI headquarters disseminated the information throughout the Bureau. It noted that we didn’t think Franklin was aware that agents had identified and spoken with his estranged wife, and that this information should be closely guarded lest he get tipped off. The Fingerprint Division was in the process of comparing known exemplars of his prints with unidentified latent prints from various suspected crime scenes and locations he was thought to have stayed. The Kansas City and Las Vegas field offices were advised to look into Franklin as a suspect for any of their unsolved bank robberies, specifically those from August 1979 through August 1980.
As he traveled, Franklin was going to need money, and we figured that what we now strongly believed was his primary source of revenue, bank robbery, would be too risky. He was experienced enough to know that police departments, sheriff’s offices, and FBI agents would all be on the lookout and would harden the targets in locations we thought he might show up. And unless he had an actual death wish, he would also have to believe that having identified him as an armed and dangerous subject, law enforcement officials who spotted him trying to rob a bank would take no chances with their own or the bank employees’ and patrons’ safety, shooting first and asking questions later. I also thought there was a high chance that, being on the run, he would be too stressed and disorganized in his thinking to carefully plan and execute a bank robbery, which is a high-risk crime under the “best” of circumstances.
When Ted Bundy had felt the stress of being on the run the previous year, we noted that his crimes became sloppier and less well-organized, and his risks were higher. Even someone as arrogant and sure of himself as Bundy was falling apart psychically by the end and showed all the signs of breaking down emotionally. His final crimes—the murder of two young women and assault of two others at the Chi Omega sorority house in Tallahassee, the rape and murder of twelve-year-old Kimberly Leach, and the theft of a van and a car—all showed a psyche in free fall. We didn’t think Franklin was nearly as intelligent or socially sophisticated as Bundy and would gravitate to his comfort zone.
The report of the Anita Carden Cooper interview made me even more convinced that he would be in the Gulf Coast region—his comfort zone—though probably not any longer in the Montgomery area, where he had been photographed. He had taken a bus to Atlanta, but from there, he would probably travel even farther south. It would almost definitely be someplace where his southern accent would not arouse suspicion or call attention to itself. And the photo from the Montgomery Plasma Center was an enormous clue.
Though it wasn’t nearly the same payday as robbing a bank, when Franklin needed more money, we felt it was likely he would go somewhere to sell his plasma again, as he had twice in less than a week. At least it was legal and wouldn’t arouse any suspicion; that is, unless law enforcement authorities could get ahead of him. All field offices were instructed to investigate blood banks that collected plasma and alert them to the possibility that the subject could have visited, or might still stop in. His photograph and description were circulated to the blood banks with the instructions not to confront him if he did show up, but immediately contact law enforcement authorities and FBI headquarters, which would make all resources available, including the fugitive assessment I had prepared.
In my assessment I had referred to Franklin as an assassin-type personality, one “taking cover and placing distance between himself and his victim.”
As Dave Kohl had mentioned, President Jimmy Carter, a southern liberal from Georgia, was campaigning throughout the South for the election next month. The threatening letter Franklin had written to then presidential candidate and Georgia governor Carter assailing him for his pro–civil-rights advocacy, which Franklin believed made him a traitor to his region and heritage, was what had put him originally on the Secret Service radar. The letter, signed under his original name J. C. Vaughn, asserted that Carter had “sold out to the Blacks.”
We figured no other action Franklin could take would seem more meaningful or fulfilling to his sense of mission and place in history than assassinating the president of the United States. It had been less than twenty years since President Kennedy’s assassination in Dallas, and the Secret Service had instituted key lessons learned from that tragic day, including never leaving protectees vulnerable in open cars. But they also knew that another determined would-be
assassin shooting with a high-power rifle from a protected perch represented one of the most difficult and challenging threats. In every city or town on President Carter’s schedule, Secret Service agents and local police circulated pictures of Franklin with instructions to contact them immediately if anyone thought they spotted him. One of those stops was New Orleans, and that was a large enough city for Franklin to blend in and find the ideal spot for an assassination attempt.
The situation grew even more tense when it was discovered that Franklin had signed in using his original name, James Clayton Vaughn, at the Lighthouse Gospel Mission shelter in downtown Tampa, Florida. He was assigned a bed next to an African American resident and had to listen to a Black preacher at a compulsory after-dinner chapel service. When his sister Marilyn Garzan found out, she speculated that he went there because he figured it was the last place anyone would think to look for him.
Franklin stayed at the mission for three days, just before President Carter was to appear at a rally at Florida Southern College in Lakeland on October 31, about thirty-five miles away on Interstate 4. Florida senator Lawton Chiles, Governor Bob Graham, and former governor Reubin Askew would also be attending. All three were progressives who supported civil rights, so all three were potential targets for a man like Franklin. Philip McNiff, the SAC who headed the FBI’s Tampa field office, learned that Franklin had tried to buy a gun in Tampa. Whether it was to rob another bank or try to kill the president or any of the other officials attending the rally, we didn’t know.
Chapter 8
In the days after I submitted my assessment of Franklin, investigators from more than a dozen law enforcement agencies—including police from Salt Lake City, Cincinnati, Oklahoma City, Johnstown, Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, and Florence, Kentucky, as well as FBI, Secret Service, and ATF agents—converged at Cincinnati’s District 4 police headquarters for a two-day “summit” to compare notes on various cases nationwide and coordinate efforts to identify which could be linked to the fugitive. In addition to the sniper attacks, investigators brought details of unsolved bank robberies in their jurisdictions in which the suspect matched Franklin’s description. Pooling data allowed a more definite timeline of Franklin’s travels to emerge, although nothing of significance was released to the public after the summit, so as not to jeopardize efforts to apprehend—and then prosecute—the subject. In fact, attendees quoted in newspaper articles specifically played down or disputed links to some of the crimes we were investigating Franklin for, including the shooting of Vernon Jordan.
Meanwhile, the FBI was trying to cover as many bases as possible in advance of President Carter’s visit to Lakeland. As part of the effort, Special Agent Fernando “Fred” Rivero made the rounds of area blood banks and plasma donation facilities. At about eleven one morning he visited Sera-Tec Biologicals on East Pine Street, a fairly large blood bank that averaged about 120 donors a day. Rivero gave a copy of the Wanted flyer to twenty-five-year-old manager Allen Lee, who said that marginal types, drifters, and even wanted criminals often showed up to make a few quick dollars. The agent impressed on Lee the importance and urgency of the search, with the presidential visit only a few days away. He also told Lee that Franklin was a homicide suspect and “very dangerous.”
After Rivero left, Lee mentioned the agent’s warning to several of his lab technicians.
As reported by the Associated Press, “At 3 P.M., four hours after the FBI visit, a tired Claudette Mallard looked up from her receptionist’s desk to see a 200-pound man walk to the door, wearing brown corduroy pants and a long-sleeved shirt open to the waist. He was carrying a black suitcase.”
“Name?” she asked routinely.
“Thomas Alvin Bohnert,” he replied, and began filling out a form, giving an out-of-state address as his residence.
He was then examined by Dr. E. C. Wright, sixty-six, who had retired after thirty years as a general practitioner in Waynesville, Ohio, and moved to Florida. Wright went through the standard list of questions about medical conditions and allergies, and screened for infectious diseases like tuberculosis. Wright later said he found the prospective donor strangely quiet and reticent, but his urinalysis was negative, and his pulse and blood pressure were normal. The examination took about eight minutes.
The donation room had twenty-four orange-and-brown leatherette contour beds and on the wall a drawing of Disney’s version of the Seven Dwarfs, with Sleepy saying, “No sleeping while donating.” Bohnert had an IV inserted in his arm so his blood could be run through a centrifuge with an anticoagulant, the plasma spun out, and then the red blood cell component with added saline returned to his body. The entire procedure usually takes about an hour and fifteen minutes or so.
Two technicians noticed tattoos on the donor’s arms: a Grim Reaper on the right forearm and an American eagle on the left. One of the technicians quietly slipped into Allen Lee’s office and told the boss that Bohnert seemed to fit the description on the FBI flyer. Allen peered across the donation room. Though the subject’s hair was black, not brown as the flyer described it, the tattoos raised enough suspicion in Lee’s mind to go back to his office and call the FBI. As it happened, the Bureau had a resident agency in Lakeland, only about five blocks away.
Lee spoke to Special Agent Bruce Dando and explained the situation. “Try to keep him there,” Dando urged.
Lee went over to Bohnert’s bed and told him he should rest for about fifteen minutes after the transfusion was completed before getting up.
“What if I refuse to stay?” the man asked Lee, but made no move to get up.
Dando immediately called Lakeland PD for assistance. Together with Special Agent Brooke Roberts, Dando met Detectives Gerald Barlow and Ray Talman Jr. outside Sera-Tec and decided to wait for “Bohnert” to leave.
Inside, when the donor was finally told it would be safe for him to stand up and be on his way, he went back to the reception desk, where Claudette Mallard gave him a receipt to sign and then wrote out a check for five dollars.
“Where can I cash this?” he asked her.
She said the banks would be closed by then, but there was a Little Lost Diner around the corner that was open and would cash the check for him. He took the check, picked up the suitcase he had carried in with him, and left the blood bank.
He turned the corner in the direction of the diner, not noticing two cars that were slowly following him. Agent Roberts jumped out of the unmarked Bureau car, flashed his badge, and yelled, “FBI!”
He surrendered without a fight.
Interestingly, though they were taking him into custody, they accompanied him into the diner to cash his check.
Police brought him to Lakeland Police headquarters, where they fingerprinted him and determined that Thomas Alvin Bohnert was, in fact, James Clayton Vaughn Jr./Joseph Paul Franklin. The FBI agents and police officers breathed a huge sigh of relief. Was it just a coincidence that Franklin was in Lakeland, or had he gone there specifically to assassinate President Carter?
Since he denied his identity, it was difficult to know for sure. As he was being held before questioning, the agents noticed he was trying to scrape the tattoos from his arms with his fingernails. But as anyone who has tried to get rid of a tattoo realizes, they don’t come off that way; the ink is imbedded in several layers of the skin.
The FBI agents took him to the Tampa field office, where he was interviewed by Special Agents Robert H. Dwyer and Fred Rivero in a windowless room. Unfortunately, at the time of the interview, the agents were unaware of the personality assessment I had done. Compounding this was what a report from the Tampa field office characterized as “an immediate and massive response from FBIHQ, the media and other agencies having an interest in Franklin, which probably put interviewers under as much tension as they were attempting to induce in Franklin.”
The two agents alternated questions about Franklin’s whereabouts at the time of each crime he was suspected of. He would not admit any of the crimes, though he freely con
ceded being a racist and admitted his hatred for African Americans and Jews, which the report characterized as going “much beyond mere bigotry.” During the course of the five-hour interview, he was asked if he wanted something to eat or drink and replied that he would like a hamburger, but only if he could be assured it had not been prepared by a Black person, though that wasn’t the term he used. One of the agents offered him the hamburger, but he refused it since the agent couldn’t guarantee it had not been cooked or touched by any African Americans.
Franklin admitted having been in Salt Lake City from August 15 through 22 and said he had visited Liberty Park but stopped going because of all the racially mixed couples there.
Because the agents didn’t have much information beyond the date and place of the crimes, they didn’t have much to pressure him with. What they did have was a latent fingerprint that had been recovered from the getaway car in one of the bank robberies, so they tried to press him on that. He began sweating profusely, shaded his eyes with his hand, and looked down at the floor. FBI agents are trained to recognize body language, and Franklin’s became highly defensive. Still, he would not admit to anything other than where he had been on certain dates.
After the interview, the U.S. Marshals Service took Franklin to the Hillsborough County Jail in Tampa. There he was told he could make a phone call. He called his estranged wife Anita. The FBI recorded the call. He told her he was being arrested for a number of racially oriented killings. When she asked him the particulars, he told her, “They got me for twelve homicides down here and four bank robberies.” Then he added, “And the funny thing is, it’s true.”
Among the crimes he admitted to her were the sniper murders of the two joggers in Salt Lake City, according to both the Associated Press and United Press International, citing unnamed police sources. The only one he denied to Anita was the shooting of Vernon Jordan. When we analyzed the conversation afterward, we concluded that this denial wasn’t because he was ashamed of the crime compared to all the others, but likely due to the fact that, in his mind, his mission to kill the civil rights icon had not been completed.
Killer's Shadow Page 8