The newly elected mayor of Marionville, Mo., said he had a friendship and even shares some of the same anti-Semitic views as Frazier Glenn Cross, the white supremacist who was charged Tuesday in the murder of three people.

Mr. Cross, a 73-year-old Vietnam War veteran from southwest Missouri, founded the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in his native North Carolina and later the White Patriot Party, the Associated Press reported.

Federal prosecutors are filing hate crime charges against him after he was accused of gunning down three people Sunday outside a Jewish community center and a retirement complex near Kansas City.

But Daniel Clevenger, who was elected Tuesday as mayor of Marionville, called the accused murderer a friend, a local ABC affiliate reported.

“He was always nice and friendly and respectful of elder people, you know, he respected his elders greatly. As long as they were the same color as him,” Mr. Clevenger said, laughing. “Very fair and honest and never had a bit of problems out of him.

“Kind of agreed with him on some things but, I don’t like to express that too much,” he added. “There some things that are going on in this country that are destroying us. We’ve got a false economy and it’s, some of those corporations are run by Jews because the names are there.”

The news station dug up a letter to the editor Mr. Clevenger reportedly sent the Aurora Advertiser nearly a decade ago. In the letter, the mayor refers to the accused as Frazier Miller.

“I am a friend of Frazier Miller helping to spread his warnings,” it read. “The Jew-run medical industry has succeeded in destroying the United States’ workforce.”

He also spoke of the “Jew-run government backed banking industry turned the U.S into the world’s largest debtor nation,” the station said.

But in an interview with the station, Mr. Clevenger denounced using violence to make a point and said Mr. Cross “should pay with his life.”

“It was shocking that he would do something like that, but knowing him and how much was built up inside of him, I can understand why he would be the one to do that,” said Mr. Clevenger.

“I imagine when he goes to trial, he will be able to really state his views on things, and I think he’s just wanting to go out with a bang,” he said.

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