A Eugene man who ran a white supremacist website and sent letters that terrorized a community college professor was sentenced Monday in federal court to four years in prison, followed by three years of supervised release.
Gary Edward Franklin, 58, pleaded guilty on Jan. 4 to two counts of threatening communications by mail.
Franklin targeted a community college professor in part because of her sexual orientation, the U.S. Department of Justice stated in court documents.
Around 2010, Franklin took a class taught by a professor identified in court documents as “Adult Victim 1.” He wore a jacket with a “large swastika symbol” on the back to an intercultural communications class, federal prosecutors stated in court records.
The professor asked Franklin not to wear it again, noting it was particularly offensive given the nature of the class.
In December 2020, Franklin sent the first of two letters to the community college professor.
One included a picture of Diane Whipple’s body, a lesbian killed in 2001 by dogs owned by the attorneys for the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacy group. Like Whipple, “AV1″ is also lesbian.
State police later found Franklin’s fingerprints on the letter, which also contained the words: “What I’d like to do to you.”
Under the photo, Franklin wrote, “Don’t think for a second that I forgot about you.”
The second letter, which AV1 did not receive, had a photo of a dismembered woman’s body stuffed into a trunk.
“Franklin made clear, calculated and specific choices when he threatened the victim with violent death and dismemberment,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Adam Delph argued in court Monday. “He made her afraid for the safety of herself and her family that she or them would be mutilated, tortured or murdered. She was targeted in part because of her sexual orientation.”
When the FBI searched Franklin’s home, they found two firearms, body armor, multiple knives and books on death, torture and sexually motivated killings. They also found evidence he ran a white supremacy website. Inside the cover of the book “Medicolegal Investigation of Death: Guidelines for the Application of Pathology to Crime Investigation,” the FBI found a third envelope addressed to AV1 at an old address in Astoria. With the envelopes, there was another photocopy of a dismembered person inside a storage trunk. When the FBI searched Franklin’s residence they also found a similar trunk.
During Monday’s sentencing hearing, the college professor testified that she was terrified for months until the FBI arrested Franklin.
“We didn’t know who wanted to kill us,” the woman said. “It’s horrible knowing someone hates me and wants to kill me. It’s another thing to not know who the perpetrator is. This is its own type of cruel terrorism.”
Franklin’s defense argued it was not a hate crime because the letters amounted to threats and did not “willfully cause bodily injury,” as the federal statute requires. Federal prosecutors didn’t charge the case as a hate crime, though initially sought a “hate crime motivation” sentencing enhancement. They later backed off “given the lack of case law and the burden of proof.”
The professor added that not calling this a hate crime was semantics.
Kurt Hermansen, an assistant federal public defender and Franklin’s attorney, pushed back on the insinuation that Franklin committed a hate crime.
“The letters aren’t an explicit threat,” Hermansen said. “They are threatening letters. They don’t say ‘I’m going to do this —.’”
U.S. District Court Judge Michael McShane interrupted.
“Hermansen, I have received explicit threats that would not have horrified me as much as if I had received those,” McShane said.
McShane said during the hearing he’s a member of the LBGTQ community.
“If those letters had been sent to me, I’d have my family in a hotel that night. I would consider moving. I’d probably go and do something I’d never imagine. I’d go get a gun,” McShane said. “That’s how they would’ve impacted, I think, anyone who got them.”
Franklin has a long history of mental illness without the appropriate treatment, according to records Hermansen filed as part of the court record. McShane acknowledged that Franklin’s diagnoses of post traumatic stress disorder, agoraphobia and bipolar disorder had impacted his life and ability to hold a job.
Hermansen said Franklin has not been receiving appropriate treatment at the Sheridan Federal Correctional Institution, where he’s been held for pretrial custody. Hermansen argued his client should receive treatment rather than prison time.
“Locking him away is the opposite of what we should be doing,” Hermansen said. “Someone who is a white nationalist isn’t going to come out better on the other end.”
Franklin, who also spoke, said he never planned to harm AV1.
“That’s the assertion that Mr. Delph has made, that I had some elaborate plan to kill her and stuff her in a trunk, or something,” Franklin said. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”
“Isn’t that kind of the message you sent her?” McShane said. “Whether you intended or not to follow through, weren’t you sending her a message for her to believe you would follow through?”
“No,” Franklin said. He said his intent was to “bother her.” Franklin said he regretted sending the letter and would accept whatever punishment McShane imposed.
The judge said he thought Franklin lacked empathy and failed to fully apologize for his actions.
A restitution hearing is set for May 10.