A look back at local, national and world events through Deseret News archives.
On Sept. 28, 1981, Joseph Paul Franklin, avowed racist and domestic terrorist, was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing two Black joggers in Salt Lake City.
But Franklin’s swath of terror and murder was much bigger. His spree of robbing banks to fund his racially-motivated killing spanned the late 1970s into 1980. He also targeted Jewish people.
Franklin was convicted of several murders and received four life sentences, as well as two death sentences. He also confessed to the attempted murders of magazine publisher and pornographer Larry Flynt in 1978 and civil rights activist Vernon Jordan in 1980. Franklin was not convicted in either of those highly publicized cases, and he made his confessions years after the crimes had occurred.
Franklin was on Missouri’s death row for 15 years for the 1977 murder of Gerald Gordon. He was executed by lethal injection on Nov. 20, 2013.
The murders in Utah — the sniper-slayings of Black men Ted Fields, 20, and David Martin, 18, in Salt Lake City’s Liberty Park on Aug. 20, 1980 — shocked the community.
Franklin was arrested in September in Kentucky, briefly escaped, and was captured for good a month after that in Florida.
On Sept. 28, 1981, 3rd District Judge Jay Banks sentenced Franklin to consecutive life prison terms. He had also been convicted in civil court for violating the civil rights of his victims.
Security was tight at his sentencing. Two days earlier during a recess as the trial wrapped up, while he was in a holding area on the fifth floor in the Hall of Justice in Salt Lake City, Franklin had tampered with a key-operated elevator and rode to the third floor, where he used a sharpened piece of metal to remove the pins of a door. However, a locking device kept the door shut, and he was apprehended about 15 minutes later.
Franklin, 63, was finally executed on Nov. 20, 2013, at the state prison in Bonne Terre, Missouri, for killing a man in a sniper shooting at a suburban St. Louis synagogue in 1977.
Here are articles from Deseret News archives about the Salt Lake City portion of Franklin’s spree and trial:
“Facts back up details given by racist in 1980 slayings”
“Franklin admitted killing 2 teens”
“Joseph Paul Franklin’s racist murders shattered Salt Lake’s innocence, investigators say”
“Joseph Paul Franklin was ‘full of hatred,’ ‘evil’ in 1980, attorney says”
“Missouri executes white supremacist serial killer Joseph Paul Franklin”
“Franklin linked to many race-related shootings, bombing”
