Shelby bookstore murders

Last updated
Shelby bookstore murders
Part of mass shootings in the United States and violence against LGBT people in the United States
Location Shelby, North Carolina, U.S.
DateJanuary 17, 1987 (1987-01-17)
TargetShelby III Bookstore
Attack type
 Mass shooting, arson
Weapons .22 LR and .45 ACP firearms, [1] gasoline
Deaths3
Injured2
AccusedDouglas Sheets, Robert Jackson
VerdictNot guilty (Sheets), charges dropped (Jackson)

On the night of January 17, 1987, three men were killed and two more were seriously wounded in a mass shooting at the Shelby III Bookstore in Shelby, North Carolina. The bookstore was an adult bookstore that was known to attract a gay male clientele. In November 1987, Douglas Lawrence Sheets and Robert Eugene Jackson, two followers of white supremacist leader Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., were indicted for the murders after Miller claimed the two had told him they committed the shooting. Sheets was tried and acquitted for the murders in 1989 and charges were dropped against Jackson after Sheets' acquittal. As of 2022, the murders are officially unsolved. [2] [3]

Contents

The shooting

On January 17, 1987, three or four masked gunmen entered the Shelby III Bookstore in Shelby, North Carolina, an adult bookstore that was known to attract gay male customers. The gunmen ordered the five men inside the store to lay face-down on the floor before shooting them in the head. Three of the men: 19-year-old Travis Melton, 29-year-old Kenneth Godfrey and 26-year-old Paul Weston were killed. The two other men, James Parris and John Anthony, survived with serious injuries. [4] [2] [5]

Before the gunmen fled the scene, they stole from the store's cash register and rigged gasoline-filled plastic jugs with detonators and set the bookstore on fire. Parris and Anthony managed to escape the bookstore as the fire began to spread. Parris and Anthony reached their vehicles and were able to alert a passing motorist on U.S. Route 74 to call police. [2]

Investigation

Initially law enforcement investigated a number of possible motives for shooting, including a mafia-hit, a business dispute or a crime of passion involving a jilted ex-lover of one of the men. [2] Authorities later turned their attention to Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., leader of the North Carolina-based White Patriot Party (WPP). On April 6, 1987, Miller and the WPP declared war on the United States federal government. Weeks later on April 30, Miller as well as Douglas Lawrence Sheets, Robert Eugene Jackson and Anthony Wydra were arrested at a mobile home in Ozark, Missouri. Inside the mobile home was a large cache weapons that included C-4 and dynamite explosives, automatic assault rifles and a half-ton of ammunition. [3] Not long after his arrest, Miller gave a statement to police implicating Sheets and Jackson in the murders. [2] [6] Sheets and Jackson were indicted for the murders in November 1987. [6] Two other WPP associates, Hugh Black and Jeff Johnston, were also implicated in the shooting by Miller and another WPP member, Robert Stoner, though neither were charged in the attack. Black spent 16 months in jail for refusing to testify about the incident to a federal grand jury. [7] [8]

Trial

Sheets and Jackson were set to be tried separately in 1989. Sheets was tried first in April and May 1989. During Sheets' trial, Miller testified that Sheets and Jackson had bragged to him about committing the murders. [2] [3] Miller stated that Jackson told him that Sheets pistol-whipped one of them men causing his gun to discharge. The gunmen then shot the men. [8] Three other witness testified that Sheets had talked about the murders while they were incarcerated with him. Additionally, fibers found on the plastic jugs used to set the Shelby bookstore on fire were matched to fibers from gloves found in the Missouri mobile home where the men were arrested in April. [2] However, prosecutors could not place either Sheets or Jackson (both Oklahoma residents) [6] in Shelby, North Carolina on the night of the shooting. Sheets had an alibi placing him in Kansas the day before the murders, January 16. A blizzard struck Kansas on January 16, making it almost impossible for Sheets to have arrived in North Carolina by the night of January 17. Sheets was acquitted of the murders and charges were subsequently dropped against Jackson. [2] [3]

During Sheets' trial attention began to turn to Miller as a suspect in the murders. Unlike Sheets and Jackson, Miller did not have alibi for the night of the murders. Miller testified about a two-way mirror inside the bookstore, a feature he likely would not have known about unless he had visited the bookstore. [3] Sheets testified that Miller had told him he "made a big boom in Shelby" and one of Sheets' lawyers alleged that in pretrial detention Miller had told Sheets and Jackson "I'm going to be pointing the finger at you, but don't worry. You can't be convicted because it's all hearsay evidence". [2]

Aftermath

While Douglas Sheets and Robert Jackson were not convicted in the Shelby murders, they both received 20 year sentences on weapons charges relating to the weapons cache in Ozark, Missouri. Miller was sentenced to a reduced sentence of 5 years in exchange for his guilty plea and testimony and was released after serving 3 years. [3]

On April 13, 2014, Miller killed three people in two separate shootings at Jewish centers in Overland Park, Kansas. Following the murders, it was reported that North Carolina authorities wanted to question Miller regarding the Shelby murders. [9] Two of Sheets' attorneys at his 1989 trial, Les Farfour and Kirk Lyons, have stated they believe Miller was one of the perpetrators of the shooting. [2] Farfour stated that a year after the shooting, Miller's White Patriot Party published a pamphlet claiming credit for burning an adult bookstore in Shelby. [2] [10]

See also

Related Research Articles

Murder, Inc. was an organized crime group active from 1929 to 1941 that acted as the enforcement arm of the National Crime Syndicate – a closely connected criminal organization that included and was started by the Irish Mob, and included Italian-American Mafia, the Jewish Mob, and other criminal organizations in New York City and elsewhere. Murder, Inc. was composed of Irish, Jewish, and Italian-American gangsters, and members were mainly recruited from poor and working-class Irish, Jewish, and Italian neighborhoods in Manhattan and Brooklyn. It was initially headed by Louis "Lepke" Buchalter and later by Albert "Mad Hatter" Anastasia.

The White Patriot Party (WPP) was an American anti-Semitic, anti-Zionist, homophobic, white supremacist paramilitary political party which was associated with Christian Identity and the Ku Klux Klan. It was led by its founder, Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., through various organizational incarnations. In the mid-1970s, the organization was founded as the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. It was involved in the 1979 Greensboro massacre, when a confrontation between Klansmen, Nazis and communists degenerated into a shootout and a mass shooting which left five people dead and twelve people wounded. The organization became the Confederate Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the early 1980s and it became the White Patriot Party in 1985.

The Gambino crime family is an Italian-American Mafia crime family and one of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City, within the nationwide criminal phenomenon known as the American Mafia. The group, which went through five bosses between 1910 and 1957, is named after Carlo Gambino, boss of the family at the time of the McClellan hearings in 1963, when the structure of organized crime first gained public attention. The group's operations extend from New York and the eastern seaboard to California. Its illicit activities include labor and construction racketeering, gambling, loansharking, extortion, money laundering, prostitution, fraud, hijacking, and fencing.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gangster Disciples</span> American Street Gang

The Gangster Disciple Nation, also known as Growth & Development, is an African American street and prison gang founded by former rivals David Barksdale and Larry Hoover; in 1968, the two came together to form the Black Gangster Disciple Nation (BGDN).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Carmine Persico</span> American mob boss (1933–2019)

Carmine John Persico Jr., also known as "Junior", "The Snake" and "Immortal", was an American mobster and the longtime boss of the Colombo crime family in New York City from 1973 until his death in 2019. He had been serving 32 years in federal prison from 1987 until his death on March 7, 2019.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lynching of Michael Donald</span> Murder by the KKK in Alabama, 1981

The lynching of Michael Donald in Mobile, Alabama, on March 21, 1981, was one of the last reported lynchings in the United States. Several Ku Klux Klan (KKK) members beat and killed Michael Donald, a 19-year-old African-American, and hung his body from a tree. One perpetrator, Henry Hays, was executed by electric chair in 1997, while another, James Knowles, was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty and testifying against Hays. A third man was convicted as an accomplice and also sentenced to life in prison, and a fourth was indicted, but died before his trial could be completed.

The Colombo crime family is an Italian-American Mafia crime family and the youngest of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City within the criminal organization known as the American Mafia. It was during Lucky Luciano's organization of the American Mafia after the Castellammarese War, following the assassinations of "Joe the Boss" Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano, that the gang run by Joseph Profaci became recognized as the Profaci crime family.

Rachelle Ranae "Shelley" Shannon is an American anti-abortion extremist who was convicted in a Kansas state court for the attempted murder of George Tiller by shooting him in his car in Wichita, Kansas in 1993. She was also convicted in U.S. federal court for ten attacks at abortion clinics using arson or acid. At her sentencing in U.S. District Court in 1995, the presiding judge described Shannon as a terrorist and agreed with prosecutors that she was a threat even from behind bars. She served her sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Waseca, Minnesota and was released in November 2018.

John "Johnny Carnegs" Carneglia is an American mobster in the Gambino crime family. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison in 1989 for racketeering and drug trafficking charges.

The Soledad Brothers were three inmates charged with the murder of a prison guard, John Vincent Mills, at California's Soledad Prison on January 16, 1970. George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Clutchette were alleged to have murdered Mills in retaliation for the shooting deaths of three black prisoners during a prison fight in the exercise yard three days prior by another guard, Opie G. Miller. Clutchette and Drumgo were acquitted by a jury while Jackson was killed in a prison riot prior to trial.

Robert F. Carrozza also known as "Bobby Russo", is an Italian-American mobster from East Boston, Massachusetts, who led a bloody internal rebellion against the leadership of the Providence-based Patriarca crime family.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Detroit Partnership</span> Italian-American organized crime group

The Detroit Partnership is an Italian-American Mafia crime family based in Detroit, Michigan. The family mainly operates in Detroit and the Greater Detroit area, as well as in other locations including Windsor, Ontario; Toledo, Ohio; and Las Vegas.

The Kansas City crime family, also known as the Civella crime family, the Kansas City Mafia or the Clique, is an Italian-American Mafia crime family based in Kansas City, Missouri.

Charles Gargotta, also known as "Mad Dog", (1900–1950) was a Kansas City, Missouri, gangster who became a top enforcer for the Kansas City crime family.

Rolando Cruz is an American man known for having been wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death, along with co-defendant Alejandro Hernandez, for the 1983 kidnapping, rape, and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico in DuPage County, Illinois. The police had no substantive physical evidence linking the two men to the crime. Their first trial was jointly in 1987, and their statements were used against each other and a third defendant.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Alite</span> American mobster (born 1962)

John Edward Alite is an American former mobster and Gambino crime family associate who turned government witness and in 2008 testified against the crime family and John A. "Junior" Gotti. That year, Alite pleaded guilty to racketeering charges, including two murders and a variety of other crimes, and in 2011, was sentenced to a total of 10 years in prison. Due to his cooperation with prosecutors, he was released on a five-year supervised release in 2012. Alite has estimated that he shot between 30 and 40 people, beat about 100 people with a baseball bat, and murdered seven people. Later in life, Alite publicly denounced the life of organized crime and became a motivational speaker, podcaster and books author.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Frazier Glenn Miller Jr.</span> American domestic terrorist (1940–2021)

Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., commonly known as Glenn Miller or Frazier Glenn Cross, was an American domestic terrorist, murderer, and leader of the defunct North Carolina-based White Patriot Party who was the perpetrator of the Overland Park Jewish Community Center shooting. Convicted of murder as well as criminal charges related to weapons, and the violation of an injunction against paramilitary activity, Miller was a perennial candidate for public office. He was an advocate of white nationalism, white separatism, Odinism, and antisemitism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Overland Park Jewish Community Center shooting</span> Two shootings on April 13, 2014

The Overland Park shootings were two shootings that occurred on April 13, 2014, at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City and Village Shalom, a Jewish retirement community, both located in Overland Park, Kansas United States. A total of three people were killed in the shootings, two of whom were shot at the community center and one shot at the retirement community. The gunman, 73-year-old Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. of Aurora, Missouri, originally from North Carolina, was arrested during the attack and was subsequently tried, convicted of murder and other crimes, and sentenced to death. Miller, a former Klansman, neo-Nazi and former political candidate, died in prison in 2021 while awaiting execution.

On April 12, 1978, Betty Gardner, a 33-year-old black woman, was sexually assaulted, tortured, and murdered by four white people during a racially motivated hate crime in St. Helena Island, South Carolina. Gardner had been hitchhiking when she was picked up by John Arnold, John Plath, Cindy Sheets, and Carol Ullman. After dropping Gardner off, Arnold suggested to the group that they kill her. Gardner was then sexually assaulted, strangled, beaten, and stabbed to death. After the murder, Arnold carved the letters "KKK" into her body.

Numerous police and international intelligence agencies classify the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (HAMC) as a motorcycle gang and contend that members carry out widespread violent crimes, including drug dealing, trafficking in stolen goods, gunrunning, extortion, and prostitution rings. Members of the organization have continuously asserted that they are only a group of motorcycle enthusiasts who have joined to ride motorcycles together, to organize social events such as group road trips, fundraisers, parties, and motorcycle rallies, and that any crimes are the responsibility of the individuals who carried them out and not the club as a whole.

References

  1. ↑ Comer, Matt; Heywood, Todd (25 April 2014). "Shelby Murder Mystery Revived: Kansas shooter has ties to 1987 bookstore murders". qnotescarolinas.com. Wayback Machine: Q-Notes. Archived from the original on July 14, 2022. Retrieved July 14, 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Heywood, Todd; Comer, Matt. "Frazier Glenn Miller's ties to a 1987 triple slaying: Did the feds protect a killer?". rawstory.com. Raw Story. Archived from the original on July 19, 2014. Retrieved July 13, 2022.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Daly, Michael (15 April 2014). "The KC Klansman's Missing Years as a Federal Informant". The Daily Beast. Wayback Machine: Daily Beast. Archived from the original on July 6, 2022. Retrieved July 14, 2022.
  4. ↑ "Authorities Investigating Background Of Store Where 3 Killed". apnews.com. Wayback Machine: Associated Press. Archived from the original on July 13, 2022. Retrieved July 13, 2022.
  5. ↑ "Trial set to begin in bookstore deaths". The Daily Independent. Associated Press. April 30, 1989. p. 2.
  6. 1 2 3 "Jury Indicts 2 Sooners". oklahoman.com. Wayback Machine: The Oklahoman. Archived from the original on July 13, 2022. Retrieved July 13, 2022.
  7. ↑ Wilson, Chip (May 12, 1989). "Ex-White Patriot Says 2 Bragged Of Killings". The Charlotte Observer. pp. 20–21.
  8. 1 2 Wilson, Chip (May 25, 1989). "Bookstore Killings Recalled". The Charlotte Observer. pp. 47–48.
  9. ↑ Hansen, Paige (24 April 2014). "Accused KC shooter may have answers in NC cold case". www.wsoctv.com. Wayback Machine: WSOC-TV. Archived from the original on July 14, 2022. Retrieved July 14, 2022.
  10. ↑ "History of hate? Alleged mass shooter testified in Shelby murder trial". shelbystar.com. Wayback Machine: The Shelby Star. Archived from the original on July 14, 2022. Retrieved July 14, 2022.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.