Roy Everett Frankhouser, Jr. (also spelled "Frankhauser"; November 4, 1939 – May 15, 2009) was a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan,[1] a member of the American Nazi Party, a government informant, and a security consultant to Lyndon LaRouche.
Irwin Suall, of the Anti-Defamation League, called Frankhouser "a thread that runs through the history of American hate groups.
[12] Though he faced up to fifty-one years in prison, he was sentenced to two concurrent five-year probation terms as part of a plea agreement.
[15] When the LaRouche movement learned that Frankhouser was an informant, it saw that as evidence of the "FBI-CIA-Rockefeller-Buckley" control of the extreme Right, and an example of how government connections could immunize criminal behavior.
[20] During the grand jury investigation, documents were presented which showed Frankhouser had advised members of the organization that unless they handled matters correctly they could "start writing a concerto for canaries in B major.
[8] He also said that he had been ordered by Jeffrey Steinberg, LaRouche's head of counterintelligence, to organize pickets to disrupt the grand jury proceedings.
[21] LaRouche was called as a defense witness in Frankhouser's trial but he refused to testify, exercising his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.
[8] In 1995 he was convicted in a federal court in Boston of advising the mother of Brian Clayton, the white supremacist head of the "New Dawn Hammerskins" gang, to destroy evidence linking her son to the desecration of synagogues and to attacks on black residents.
[27] According to a 1997 complaint, Frankhouser, then Grand Dragon of the United Klans of America in Pennsylvania, had been harassing Bonnie Jouhari and her daughter.
[2] After many unsuccessful attempts by Jouhari to get government agencies to act,[29] she convinced the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to take her case.
Frankhouser had to complete 1000 hours of community service, make public apologies to Jouhari and her daughter on his "White Forum" TV show and local newspapers, pay them 10% of his income for a decade, and undergo "sensitivity training".
[28][30] The settlement was supported by HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo and Reverend Jesse Jackson at a press conference also attended by NAACP president Kweisi Mfume.
The house reportedly had a small worship room with a makeshift altar, Klan flags, and pictures of Adolf Hitler and cross burnings.
In 1998, Berks County tax officials refused to recognize it as a legitimate church on the grounds that Frankhouser could not provide adequate proof that he was an ordained minister.
[32] He called himself a spokesman for the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan; however, doubts were expressed in both the KKK and anti-hate communities over whether Frankhouser had any actual connection to the group.