road trip to an American Nazi Party conference in Virginia with David Duke (then a student) and Don Black. Crimes For much of his life, Franklin was a drifter, roaming the East Coast seeking chances to "cleanse the world" of people he considered inferior, especially black people and Jewish people. His primary source of financial support appears to have been bank robberies. Franklin supplemented his income from criminal acts with paid blood bank donations, which eventually led to his subsequent capture by the FBI. 1977 July 29, 1977: Franklin firebombed Beth Shalom Synagogue in Chattanooga, Tennessee, destroying it. Loss of life was prevented because some of the worshippers left early that Friday evening and as a result, there were not enough worshippers for a minyan. August 7, 1977: Franklin shot and killed a young interracial couple, Alphonse Manning Jr. and Toni Schwenn, in a parking lot at East Towne Mall in Madison, Wisconsin. October 8, 1977: In suburban St. Louis, Missouri, Franklin hid in the bushes near Brith Sholom Kneseth Israel synagogue and fired on a group attending services. In this incident, Franklin killed 42-year-old Gerald Gordon. He also wounded Steven Goldman and William Ash. 1978 March 6, 1978: Franklin, according to his later account, used a Ruger .44 caliber semi-automatic rifle to ambush Hustler publisher Larry Flynt and his lawyer Gene Reeves in Lawrenceville, Georgia. In his confession, Franklin said this was in retaliation for an edition of Hustler displaying interracial sex. Neither Franklin nor anyone else was ever charged in that shooting. July 29, 1978: Franklin hid near a Pizza Hut in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and shot and killed Bryant Tatum, a Black man, with a 12-gauge shotgun; he also shot Tatum's white girlfriend, Nancy Hilton, who survived. Franklin later confessed and pleaded guilty, being given a life sentence, as well as a sentence for an unrelated armed robbery in 1977. 1979 July 12, 1979: Taco Bell manager Harold McIver, a black man, was fatally shot through a window from in Doraville, Georgia. Franklin confessed but was not tried or sentenced for this crime. Franklin said that McIver was in close contact with white women, so he murdered him. October 21, 1979: Franklin killed Jesse E. Taylor, a black man and his white wife Marion Bresette in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. 1980 May 29, 1980: Franklin (according to him) shot and seriously wounded civil rights activist and Urban League president