All language subtitles for Signs.of.a.Psychopath.S06E02.Hey.Look.Im.a.Serial.Killer.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-BurCyg_track3_[eng]

[theme music playing]

MAN: The thing inside of me,
it's like...

the appetite --
it's like a wolf that's...

feeling the hunger.

REPORTER: He was a sniper,
carrying his rifle

and scope in guitar cases --
in St. Louis,

he staked out a synagogue
and gunned down Gerald Gordon.

In Madison, Wisconsin,

a young interracial couple --
in Salt Lake City,

Franklin killed two young
black men who were jogging with

white female friends --
even civil rights leader,

Vernon Jordan, and Larry Flynt,
infamous pornographer,

founder, and publisher
of Hustler magazine,

shot with Franklin's
sniper rifle, but survived.

So you hunted him down?

Yeah, I was --
I was hunting him down.

Yeah, I ain't gonna
deny that.

[chuckles]

REPORTER:
The single unwavering drive

in Joseph Paul Franklin --
murder.

You know, just go out
and kill somebody at random?

I would never do that.

REPORTER: 14-year-old Darrell
Lane and his 13-year-old cousin,

Dante Evans, were killed

at random as they walked
along Reading Road to

a corner grocery store,
June 8th, 1980.

Franklin admits
he was in the Cincinnati area

the day before the murders,

but he won't admit to
the murders.

Police still work on the case
to this day, and they still

think Franklin did it,
but there isn't

enough evidence to prove it.

He hates men.
He would never talk to you.

He said, "But if you have
a pretty assistant prosecutor,"

and I brought in
Missy Powers.

I think men took the approach,

if you send in a pretty face,
they're gonna confess,

but I was hoping
that some --

you needed more
than just that.

REPORTER: Franklin
agreed to meet with Powers,

but there were ground rules --
no video, only a tape recorder,

and no meeting on
Hitler's birthday.

SAHNI: Melissa Powers is brought
in to talk with Franklin in

the hopes that maybe
they will catch him off guard.

For narcissistic offenders
and psychopathic individuals,

the idea of having
an attractive young woman come

in to talk to him would have
given him the sense that he was

in a position of power
and authority, and maybe

a willingness, hopefully,
to actually talk

and share more about
the crimes he had done.

So here we have Franklin,
who's been silent for 17 years

about these crimes,
and within minutes

of talking to
this female prosecutor,

he starts to just unload
everything, saying, "I did it.

I wanted to get rid of all
the ugly people in the world."

The clear connection
between racism

and psychopathy is inherent
grandiosity and narcissism.

He really seems to think
he has a special purpose.

This is his way of saying,

"I am white
and therefore better than you."

But it also has a little bit
of attention-seeking behavior.

It invites people
to want to know more.

SAHNI: Franklin's desire
to talk about what he wanted to

talk about not only was
his narcissism at play,

but his need to maintain
control of the interview.

Franklin decided
that he needed to pump up

his notoriety.

Crimes are no good
for a narcissist

if you don't get credit
for them.

"Look at how many of
these crimes I've committed

and never got caught for
and how many people I killed."

And he says it with pride.

The fact that he uses
the word prolific,

he's putting himself in
a position of authority.

He's not bothered
by what he's done.

He's getting a high
off of it.

FOX: Very few things
are as dangerous

as a psychopath
that feels rejected.

It infuriates them.

The only way he has to respond
is taking all

the anger and frustration that
he's feeling and essentially

kill more people specifically
so he would get more publicity.

He wanted the coverage and
the grandiosity of being able to

be the person on the news,

even though it was
for a horrible thing.

But he was known, and people
were talking about him.

He's talking about these
two child victims as adults.

He's depersonalizing them by
talking about them as dudes,

and the fact that he's referring
to it as a lucky shot,

it's also dehumanizing them.

He's talking about them
like they're target practice.

It's not that
they're someone's children,

somebody's brother.

It is a lack of caring
about human life and compassion,

but the predatory component is
also thrill-seeking.

FOX: Larry Flynt published
in Hustler magazine

a man and a woman that were
interracial together.

So because Larry Flynt did
something that Franklin

essentially disagreed with,

he thought he should die for
it -- in his mind, he failed.

He called it a tragedy, but not
because Larry Flynt was wounded

and paralyzed forever, but
because he didn't kill him.

FOX: In his mind, these girls
did something wrong.

He wanted to kill
that day, and no matter what

they said, he was going to
do it.

But the M.O. is different,
which shows that he's really

escalating in what
he needed to achieve

the same level of power and
control, to get the same level

of gratification
from these crimes.

Sniping isn't a very
intimate experience.

There's a distance.

You don't really get to see
the expression

on the face as the people
are dying,

but killing somebody
point blank,

especially if they're begging
for their lives,

that's really when he feels
the most power

over somebody else's life
and really has that grandiosity

that he's so desiring

He's really going
through basic problem solving

strategies without
any consideration

for human emotions,
for the fear these women must

have felt.

You see this total
depersonalization of

the victims,
and when Franklin

recounts what he did
to these victims and how

he terrorized them emotionally
in those moments leading up to

their death,
he's callous about it.

FOX: He had self-monikered
himself as a serial killer,

basically saying,
"Well, you know,

"I just wasted them before I
really told them the thing that

would have very much
scared them."

But he's just writing this off
as a loss.

He got the kill,
but that really wasn't what he

was after --
he wanted the response.

And he was almost disappointed
when they didn't show

that fear.

DERIGHT: Franklin really
seems to like to

stay in control of
his victims,

like many psychopaths, because
it feeds into the idea

that they are important
and that they are superior.

In this situation, when he
encountered resistance of

any kind,
he just shot them to death.

SAHNI: He's saying,
"It didn't upset me,

it didn't traumatize me,"
because he was just

doing his job.

He was doing that unsavory
task that needed to get done,

even if it's not pleasant.

That's consistent with
a psychopathic individual

who doesn't have normal
connections to other

human beings.

This is a very predatory
individual who gets

his sense of self-confidence

and station in life from
deciding who lives and who dies.

But there's a little bit of
euphoria you hear in his voice.

There's a chuckle.

He is glib about how he's
describing the crime, and that

arousal does speak to
some energy or adrenaline

that he was experiencing both
at the time of the crime,

as well as now, recounting it
for this interviewer.

REPORTER:
Why did you decide to confess?

Well, I had a dream that told
me to confess to this.

DERIGHT: It's a few weeks away
from Franklin's execution,

and he's doing this media tour,

accepting all kinds of
interviews from reporters,

both locally and nationally.

He really wants
to make sure that he is

well-known to the world
about what he did.

Franklin gets his pleasure
from notoriety --

not the actual act
of killing,

but being known
as someone who does that.

He's not saying,
"I regret what I did.

"I regret the harm
that I put

on these victims
and their families."

It's all about him.

REPORTER: Joseph, uh, you've
been on death row now for what,

- 16 years?
- Yeah, about 16 years.

REPORTER: And now the execution
date is growing very near.

What are your -- what are your
feelings with that?

Well, I'm hoping to get a stay
of execution.

I would love to be out on
the streets right now.

It's not uncommon
for psychopaths to sort of

shift their identity

and play off of what
works in the moment.

And at that moment,
the thing that was

going to work best for him
was, "I'm repenting.

"I see the light.

I believe in God, and I'm
asking God for forgiveness."

Whether he believes any of
that is completely disputable.

He wants clemency, and he's
trying to do anything he can

to still play the fiddle and
see what makes people dance.

I guarantee you,
if you asked him two

days later, and he didn't get
what he wanted,

he would take it all back.

[Franklin laughing]

KARAS: Wow.

While there's no doubt that
early childhood trauma,

emotional neglect, abuse
are not optimal ways

for a child to be raised,

Franklin is attributing a lot
of his formation of hatred

and racist attitudes and being
a dysfunctional, anti-social

human being and psychopathic,

he's blaming all of it
on that.

Franklin is doing nothing
other than shifting

the blame and minimizing
the seriousness of what

he's done,

and ultimately, that lack of
willingness to take true

responsibility for his own

attitudes and choices
and behaviors,

speaks to the skin surface
level of remorse and regret

he had, even up until
his dying days.

FRANKLIN: Most people out there,
I mean,

they're heading toward
a burning hell,

and they don't know it.

Do you think something
lies for you

on the other side
after November 20th?

Yeah, but it isn't a burning
hell, though, because I'm --

I'm a servant of
the Lord, though.