(JTA) — Frazier Glenn Miller, the white supremacist charged with murdering three people outside two Kansas City-area Jewish institutions, said he will change his plea to guilty.
Miller, suffers from chronic emphysema, told The Associated Press by phone from jail that he wants to speak in court about why he committed the crimes and is concerned about a long trial due to his poor health. He said he plans to use his court appearances to “put the Jews on trial where they belong.”
In late March, Miller pleaded not guilty in U.S. District Court in Johnson County, Kansas, and asked for a speedy trial, within 150 days, despite objections from his lawyers. Judge Thomas Kelly Ryan set an Aug. 17 trial date.
Miller is charged with committing three murders on April 13, 2014 — two in the parking lot of the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City in Overland Park, Kansas, and one in the parking lot at Village Shalom, a Jewish assisted-living facility a few blocks away.
In addition to capital murder, Miller is charged with three counts of attempted first-degree murder, one count of aggravated assault and one count of criminal discharge of a weapon at a structure.
State prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty.
Miller, a former Ku Klux Klan grand dragon, told the Kansas City Star that he began planning the attacks when he became so sick with emphysema that he thought he would die soon and that he conducted reconnaissance missions of the JCC and Village Shalom in the days before the shootings.
“I wanted to make damned sure I killed some Jews or attacked the Jews before I died,” he told the newspaper.
None of his victims was Jewish.
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