Why was this Nazi able to kill?

FRAZIER GLENN Miller, also known as "Frazier Glenn Cross," a prominent neo-Nazi organizer for at least four decades, murdered three people in Overland Park, Kansas, on April 13.

Miller's victims included 14-year-old Reat Griffin Underwood and his grandfather, Dr. William Lewis Corporon, who were shot and killed while sitting in a car at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City. Terry LaManno was shot at Village Shalom, a nearby assisted living center, where she was visiting her mother.

After his arrest near Village Shalom, Miller continued spewing racist and anti-Semitic filth while handcuffed in the back seat of a police car. KMBC, a local television station, recorded Miller screaming "Heil Hitler!"

In the 24 hours following Miller's murder spree, his vile opinions and political history became widely known--thanks primarily to the efforts of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), which tracks hate groups.

But the big question that comes to mind after reading this mountain of material on Miller's extensive involvement with violent Nazi groups is: Why was this man still roaming the streets?

THIS IS an especially obvious question given Miller's involvement in the Greensboro Massacre. On November 3, 1979, members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party murdered five members of the Communist Workers Party (CWP) in Greensboro, N.C.

The CWP was a tiny group that followed in the tradition of Stalinism. Its members in Greensboro--two of whom had medical degrees--dedicated themselves to union organizing, mostly focused on Black textile workers. They also organized against the Ku Klux Klan, which at the time was threatening and intimidating Black residents of the Morningside Homes housing project.

The CWP called for a "Death to the Klan" march on the November 3, 1979. The march was to begin at Morningside Homes and follow a parade route that was submitted to local police.

Despite the highly provocative title of the march and sometimes overheated rhetoric of CWP organizers, the only people planning violence and murder that day were the KKK and the neo-Nazis. Several local television news camera crews captured the slow-moving caravan of Klansmen and neo-Nazis, including Miller, driving into the midst of the march--and then methodically murdering CWP members and supporters.

Miller claims--in his biography A White Man Speaks--that he was "caught in the middle of the shootout." The extensive news footage, however, shows clearly that no one was "caught" in anything. This was a well-planned assault by armed racists against anti-racist demonstrators.

Miller had been kicked out the U.S. Army in 1979 following a 20-year career, including two tours of duty in Vietnam, as a member of the elite Green Berets. He was a member, according to the SPLC, of the National Socialist Party of America.

Given his extensive military career and combat experience, as well as his ambition to make a name for himself, Miller might very well have been central to planning of the Greensboro Massacre. But we will likely never know because of the narrow police investigation.

Forty Klansmen and neo-Nazis were involved in the massacre, but just 16 were charged with crimes. Prosecutors eventually brought to trial the six "best cases." Miller was not considered one of those "best cases." Despite the vivid and disturbing video documentation of the massacre and extensive eyewitness testimony, all-white juries in two of the criminal trials acquitted the Klansmen and the Nazis.

The trial also revealed that the local police, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were aware of the threat the Klansmen and the Nazis posed the CWP and its supporters. A local police detective followed the murderous caravan on the day of the massacre, but did not intervene, and an FBI informant in the Klan, Edward Dawson, was in the lead car.

The one important victory in the case came in 1985, when lawyers representing some of the survivors of the massacre won a $350,000 judgment in federal court against the city of Greensboro, the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party for violating the civil rights of the demonstrators. This verdict remains one of the few decisions in a Southern court against law enforcement and local government officials accused of collusion with Klan and neo-Nazi violence.

IN THE meantime, Miller was left to continue his neo-Nazi activities elsewhere. A few years later, there was another opportunity to put Miller behind bars for the rest of his life. According to the SPLC, Miller:

pleaded guilty to a weapon charge and to mailing a threat through the mail. He had been indicted along with four other white supremacists for conspiring to acquire stolen military weapons, and for planning robberies and the assassination of SPLC founder Morris Dees. In an agreement with federal prosecutors, he received a five-year prison sentence in exchange for his testimony against leaders in a sedition trial. He served three years of that sentence.

Three years--for his part in a conspiracy to steal military weapons, carry out robberies and assassinate Morris Dees!

This raises another big question about Miller: Though he was considered a traitor to American Nazis because his turncoat testimony, was he working as an FBI or police informant? The lack of attention Miller received from police isn't because he retired from neo-Nazi activities or stopped making public threats against Jews.

While Miller has been dismissed as a "perennial" candidate for public office in Missouri, he got a surprising level of news media coverage through the years. In 2006, while running for Congress, former KMBC News reporter Dan Weinbaum asked Miller if he "advocated" violence against Jews. Miller responded by saying it "depends on what you mean by 'advocate?'"

He then added that he didn't lose sleep over suicide bombings in Tel Aviv.

Weinbaum should have immediately asked him if he would support suicide bombings against Jews in the U.S. but he didn't. Miller's point was made, even if it was left hanging in the air.

In 2010, Miller ran for the U.S. Senate, and XM radio host Howard Stern interviewed him, calling him--most likely jokingly--"the only honest politician out there." Miller posted the admiring comment on his website. His campaign slogan that years was, "It's the Jews, stupid."

Miller spewed filth about Jews during the entire broadcast with Stern. "Compared to our Jewish problem, all other problems are mere distractions," Miller declared. "They control the federal government, they control the mass media, they control the Federal Reserve Bank, and with those powers, they commit genocide against the white race," said Miller.

To back up his argument he leaned on a fellow anti-Semite: "The Jews control the United States government, according to Patrick Buchanan."

In a country that regularly carries out massive surveillance of Muslim and Arab communities that have committed no crimes, where people with diagnosed mental health issues and young, frustrated men are lured into faux bomb plots by the FBI and other police forces, why are men like Miller--with long histories of violence and an eagerness to kill--allowed to roam the streets freely?

It will take a more than a police inquiry to discover the answers to that question.