LOS ANGELES—Convicted serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin (pictured), who is scheduled to be put to death by the state of Missouri on Wednesday, gave a death row interview to CNN that will air on AC360 tonight. The interview was conducted by Kyung Lah at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Bonne Terre, Missouri, where, unless the execution is stayed, Franklin will die by lethal injection for the murder on October 8, 1977, of Gerald Gordon.
Franklin is officially responsible for murdering 22 people, including two boys who were just 13 and 14 years old at the time of their slaying, but he also has taken responsibility for the shooting on March 6, 1978, in Lawrenceville, Georgia, that left Hustler publisher Larry Flynt paralyzed from the waist down. Flynt, as we have previously reported, has expressed his desire that Franklin not be put to death but be forced to spend the rest of his life incarcerated, and better, for Flynt to be allowed "an hour in a room with him and a pair of wire-cutters and pliers, so I could inflict the same damage on him that he inflicted on me."
But the nuance of his campaign to keep Franklin off the execution table is apparently lost on the convicted killer, who in the interview responded to the mention of Flynt's name by exclaiming, "My old pal Larry! Tell him I appreciate that. Thanks."
It was an atypical reaction by the "unblinking and empty" 63-year-old killer, who, when asked about the Flynt shooting, recounted his mindset at the time as if it were yesterday.
"I saw that interracial couple he had, photographed there, having sex," he told Lah, referring to a photo spread in the December 1975 issue of Hustler. "It just made me sick. I think whites marry with whites, blacks with blacks, Indians with Indians. Orientals with Orientals. I threw the magazine down and thought, I'm gonna kill that guy."
Flynt, of course, has said repeatedly said that he does not care about Franklin or think about him. "It is merely on principle the publisher is fighting to spare his life," noted Lah.
UPDATE
Joseph Paul Franklin was executed this morning. According to HuffPo, "Mike O'Connell, a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Corrections, said Franklin was pronounced dead at 6:17 a.m."
