On a Sunday afternoon in the spring of 2014, a life was tragically cut short in Overland Park, Kansas. Terri LaManno, a 53-year-old Caucasian female, was visiting her mother at the Village Shalom retirement community on April 13th when she was shot and killed in the parking lot. An occupational therapist from Kansas City, she was a married mother of three and a devout Catholic.
Her visit that day was part of her regular routine of caring for her mother.
The peaceful suburban setting was shattered by an act of hate-fueled violence. The gunman, Frazier Glenn Miller Jr., a 73-year-old man with a long history of white supremacy and antisemitism, had come to the area with the intention of killing Jewish people. After opening fire at the nearby Jewish Community Center of Greater Kansas City, where he killed two other individuals, he proceeded to Village Shalom. There, he encountered Terri LaManno and ended her life.
The perpetrator was swiftly apprehended by police shortly after the shootings. As he was being taken into custody, witnesses reported that he made antisemitic remarks. Miller's attack was driven by a deep-seated hatred, a fact that became even more apparent during his subsequent legal proceedings. He acted as his own attorney, using the trial as a platform to express his hateful ideology.
Ultimately, Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. was convicted of capital murder for the deaths of Terri LaManno and the two other victims, Dr. William Corporon and his grandson, Reat Underwood, who were not Jewish but were tragically in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was sentenced to death for his crimes and remained on death row until his own death in prison in May of 2021. The senseless act of violence left a community in mourning and a family forever changed by the loss of a beloved wife and mother.
