One gunman attacked five people at two different Jewish facilities in Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City, Missouri, killing three. The man arrested at the scene of the second shooting smiled and yelled, “Heil Hitler!” after being taken into custody. It’s not the first time Frazier Glenn Miller (also Cross) has tried to spread hatred, either:

The perp was a world-class attention-hound, running for public office as members of both major parties:

According to the SPLC, Cross quit high school as a senior to join the Army. In a 20-year Army career he had two tours in Vietnam and 13 years as a member of the elite Green Berets before he was forced to retire because of his Klan affiliation in 1979.

Later he went on to be active in a neo-Nazi group called “The Order” that advocated violence against Blacks and Jews among others, the SPLC said.

He even unsuccessfully ran in the Democratic primary for North Carolina governor in 1984 and as a Republican for a state Senate seat in 1987, the SPLC said.

McClatchy pulled this story from KC Star’s Mike Hendricks out of its archives from 2010, when Cross tried to run a write-in campaign against US Senator Kit Bond:

Last week I had the distinct displeasure of speaking with Glenn Miller, the race-baiting, anti-Semitic bigot running a write-in campaign to replace U.S. Sen. Kit Bond in Missouri.

And while we agreed on almost nothing, Miller was correct about one thing: Radio stations are doing him a favor by running disclaimers before and after his hate-filled commercials.

“Everybody’s ears perk up,” a gloating Miller said over the phone from his home near Springfield.

“They know something controversial is about to come on the air, and by the time my voice comes on, everyone is at full attention.”

Sad but true, said two radio execs I spoke with Tuesday.

But then you can’t blame stations for disassociating themselves from the vile garbage they’re required to air. Federal laws forbid them from denying any “legally qualified candidate” access to the public airwaves.

For the stations, it’s self-preservation. Would you as a listener stick with any station you thought willingly sold ad time to hatemongers like Miller, who, by the way, founded the Ku Klux Klan-affiliated White Patriot Party back in the 1980s and later spent three years in federal prison for using the mail to advocate war on blacks, Jews and the federal government?

So expect to hear more radio disclaimers in the days ahead as Miller’s media buy continues on 10 to 12 Missouri stations.

In 2012, Miller was given time to speak to a class at Missouri State University by a professor who wanted his students to know that white supremacists were both real and dangerous. BuzzFeed contacted Professor David Embree, who is still trying to decide whether that was the right call:

Reached by phone on Sunday evening, Embree confirmed that Miller had spoken to an intersession class he teaches during the winter period between fall and spring semesters. Embree teaches a class called New Religious Movements, and during the intersession period he often teaches a weeklong class about a particular subgroup — he has done these before on Scientology and the Church of Latter-Day Saints, he said.

“One of the groups that students were pretty fascinated by and wanted more on was white supremacists,” Embree said. “One of the things I’ve found with many of these groups is that if I tell the story myself [the students] don’t believe me, they just think I’m trying to let make them look bad.” So Embree invited three white supremacists — Miller, Kingdom Identity Ministries leader Mike Hallimore, and Dan Gayman, the Missouri-based leader of the Church of Israel — to come speak. …

Embree said it was a “galvanizing” experience for his students to see real extremists up close.

“They came out of there convinced that white supremacy is a real thing and a dangerous thing,” Embree said. “They thought, ‘now we know, now we get why these guys have to be watched out for. These guys are for real.’”

“I asked the class, I said what did you think about bringing these people in? And they said ‘you’re absolutely right, if we had not heard these people we wouldn’t believe such hateful people exist,’” Embree said.

Hate and evil are real — and dangerous — things. Miller appears to be not just hate-filled and evil, but also in deep need of attention. His ridiculous 2010 Senate campaign apparently didn’t give him enough. Three people died as a result. Rather than focus on the perpetrator’s twisted psyche, let’s focus on what was taken from Overland Park’s community — including an Eagle Scout with so much promise:

Pray for all of the victims, their families, and their friends. Let’s hope that Reat Griffin’s name outlives that of the man who took his life. This kind of virulent hatred is fading fast, but it’s not entirely gone. Unfortunately.