Frazier Glenn Miller, 74, of Aurora, Missouri, is charged with capital murder in the April 13 attacks outside the Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City and a Jewish retirement home in nearby Overland Park, Kansas.
None of the victims was Jewish.
William Lewis Corporon, 69, and his grandson Reat Griffin Underwood, 14, were at the community center for a singing contest audition, while 53-year-old Terri LaManno was visiting her mother at the retirement complex.
Prosecutors initially charged him with one count of capital murder in the deaths of Corporon and Underwood, and one count of first-degree murder in LaManno's slaying. Last month they dismissed the first-degree murder count and combined all three killings into one capital murder charge. Miller's attorney, Ron Evans, said Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe had indicated he plans to seek the death penalty something Howe has not publicly acknowledged.
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Evans is with the Kansas Death Penalty Defense Unit and had sought to push back the preliminary hearing, but Miller told Johnson County District Judge Kelly Ryan on October 31 that he didn't want to wait.
He was the target of a nationwide manhunt in 1987, when federal agents tracked him and three other men to a rural Missouri home stocked with hand grenades and automatic weapons. He was indicted on weapons charges and accused of plotting robberies and the assassination of the Southern Poverty Law Center's founder. He served three years in federal prison.
Three days have been set aside for his preliminary hearing.