Serial Killer Admits to Chattanooga Murder
A white serial killer who targeted blacks, Jews and interracial couples, and who admits to attacks on civil rights leader Vernon E. Jordan Jr. and Hustler magazine publisher Larry Flynt, pleaded guilty Wednesday to killing a black man here in 1978.
In a plea bargain, Joseph Paul Franklin was sentenced to two life terms: one for shooting William Tatum outside a restaurant because Tatum was with a white woman, and the other for an unrelated 1977 armed robbery in Chattanooga.
Franklin, 47, already faces execution in Missouri for a murder there. Tatum’s slaying was Franklin’s seventh murder conviction. He is suspected in 10 other murders in a spree that began in 1977 and ended in 1980 as he roamed the country robbing banks.
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