Featured Image Credit: WHNT News / YouTube
Topics: US News, Crime, True Crime
Joe Harker
On 10 March, 1998 a man was sitting topless in the back of a police car in Huntstville, Alabama and he smiled at the camera.
That man was Jeffrey Franklin who had just murdered his parents, Cynthia and Gerald, while armed with a sledgehammer and a knife.
The 17-year-old had also attempted to murder three of his younger siblings, and police were called after someone saw one of the children lying outside in a puddle of blood, as per Morbidology.
When police and an ambulance arrived, they were horrified by what they discovered, thinking they were responding to a case of one injured child.
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Franklin, who'd fled the family home by this point, was chased down by police in a pursuit that ended when he crashed into a fence.
The Alabama-based killer was shirtless as officers dragged him out of his car and into the back of theirs, resulting in an infamous image of him grinning as he sat there.
According to WHNT, he had carved an upside-down cross into his torso and an investigator claimed that he had been awake for days before committing the murders.
Footage of them taking him away shows him smiling as he's led away in handcuffs and spitting at people nearby.
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Cynthia and Gerald were pronounced dead at the scene of the crime, their family home, while all three children were able to survive albeit with life changing injuries.
Franklin claimed that he was home but did not initially admit to being the killer, according to AL.com, he'd tried to claim that an 'evil being' had taken over his body.
Though he initially submitted a not-guilty plea, in 2001, Jeffrey Franklin pleaded guilty to two counts of murder and three of attempted murder, and he was given multiple life sentences to be served consecutively.
"I don't blame anybody for the reactions to me because I feel that I justify most of them," he would later say in an interview about his crimes.
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At the time of his sentencing, he said he would 'hope and pray that one day my family can forgive me for the things that I have done', and that 'I know that God has already forgiven me'.
He also claimed that he was abusing the drug Ritalin, and had continued to be prescribed it in greater quantities by a doctor after telling them this.
Under Alabama law, someone serving a life sentence is eligible for parole after 15 years.
Franklin's first attempt at obtaining parole was unsuccessful in 2016, and in 2022, his attempt to get parole was denied again.