Dozens of robed Ku Klux Klansmen gathered around a burning cross in a remote field in North Florida. It was December 2014, and after the cross lighting ceremony ended, three klansmen asked for a quiet aside with the group’s Grand Knighthawk, a klan hitman. The knighthawk was Joe Moore, a former Army sniper who’d joined the group and quickly risen through the ranks due to his military background. The men handed Moore a photograph of a Black man that they wanted killed.
The story of the klan’s murder plot and the hitman’s secret recordings made over months in 2015 formed the basis of an Associated Press 2021 investigative series called “The Badge and The Cross,” which used the story as a jumping off point to explore the issue of white supremacist group infiltration of law enforcement.
