The suspect in Sunday’s deadly shootings at two Jewish centers in Kansas may have spent time in the early 1990s in the federal witness protection program, according to The Kansas City Star.
The Star reported Tuesday that Frazier Glenn Miller, who has been charged with killing three people, appears to have spent at least some time protected by the government. In 1987, Miller reached a plea deal with prosecutors over weapons charges. As part of the deal, he agreed to testify against 14 other leading white supremacists. According to the Star, Miller’s 1987 sentencing memorandum recommended witness protection.
Miller’s autobiography, “A White Man Speaks Out,” mentions that as part of the deal prosecutors agreed to “recommend a 5-year prison sentence, immunity from any further prosecution by either state or federal authorities, and entrance into the Federal Witness Protection Program which included the financial support of my family while I served my sentence.”
Miller’s participation in witness protection would explain the appearance of his alias Frazier Glenn Cross Jr. — the name he has been charged under. According to the Star, “Frazier Glenn Cross Jr.” received a Social Security number in 1990, the year Miller was released from prison. Public records show Miller and Cross, and both their social security numbers, associated with Miller’s address in Aurora, Mo.
Government officials would not confirm that Miller spent time in witness protection, per policy. At some point after his release from prison, Miller began using his original name publicly. Gerald Shur, who designed the federal witness protection program, told the Star that as soon as a person in the program starts using their old name, they’re “out of the program immediately.”
Read the whole thing here.
Interesting example of the relative merits of expediency and ideology, and how much the results of the internal struggle between those two factors reveal of an individual’s character.