Three Killed at Jewish Centers Near Kansas City — New York Times Reporting

Here's the story at the country's unofficial newspaper of record (for the record), "Man Kills 3 at Jewish Centers in Kansas City Suburb":

A man opened fire outside a Jewish Community Center and a nearby retirement community in a suburb of Kansas City, Mo., on Sunday afternoon, killing three people before he was taken into custody.

The man, who was identified as Frazier Glenn Cross of Aurora, Mo., in Johnson County booking records. He was charged with first-degree murder and was scheduled to appear in court Monday afternoon.

The suspect, 73, is a former Ku Klux Klan leader with a history of anti-Semitism and racism, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization that tracks hate groups. It identified him as Frazier Glenn Miller, 73, commonly known as Glenn Miller, and said he was the founder and grand dragon of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

The shootings took place in Overland Park, Kan., a major suburb located just across the state line from Kansas City, Mo. Overland Park is the second-biggest city in Kansas and has a population of about 170,000.

A doctor and his 14-year-old grandson were killed in the parking lot at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City and a woman was killed a short time later in a parking lot at Village Shalom, a senior living community about a mile away, the police said.

Mr. Miller was taken into custody on Sunday afternoon at a local elementary school near Village Shalom, the police said. In video taken by KMBC, a local television station, the suspect yelled “Heil Hitler!” while sitting in a police car.

The Southern Poverty Law Center said it sued Mr. Miller in the 1980s for intimidating African-Americans, and he has had several run-ins with the law since then. He served six months in prison after he was held in criminal contempt for violating the terms of the court order that settled that lawsuit. He also served three years in federal prison for weapons charges and for plotting robberies and the assassination of the center’s founder, Morris Dees. As part of his plea bargain, he testified against other Klan leaders in a 1988 trial.

The police said it was too early in the investigation to determine whether the attacks were a hate crime...

The Times mentions that Miller "made several unsuccessful runs for public office," although specifically omitting that he first ran as a Democrat in South Carolina's gubernatorial primary in 1984. (More at the link, FWIW.)

NBC News picked up Miller's KKK partisanship, as Instapundit points out, "NBC NEWS: KANSAS CITY SHOOTER IS FORMER DEMOCRAT GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE, KLANSMAN. Okay, they pushed the Democrat part down a ways in the story. Can you imagine the glee at the SPLC, though? They’ll fundraise off this for a decade."

Yeah, they just pushed that part way down, but at least they got it in there.

More from Ed Driscoll, "Meet Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr."

PREVIOUSLY: "Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr., Kansas Jewish Murder Suspect, Made Democrat Congressional Bid in 2006, " and "Three Dead in Shootings at Kansas City Jewish Centers."