At 32, Frank Spisak was a walking exercise in contradictions. Neighbors on the near East Side of Cleveland knew him as "Frankie Ann Spisak," a frizzy-haired transvestite who looked forward to the prospect of a sex-change operation, but he had another side, as well. When not in drag, Frank Spisak worshipped Adolf Hitler, ultimately casting off his gowns and makeup in a bid to emulate his idol, growing a toothbrush mustache and slicking his hair down in classic Hitlerian style.

In February 1982, Spisak launched a series of "search-and-destroy missions" designed to "clean up" the city. Selecting his targets at random, Spisak invaded the campus of Cleveland State University, shooting a black minister, Rev. Horace Rickerson, to death in a men's room. Four months later, he wounded another black, 55-year-old John Hardaway, rebounding in August with a full-scale rampage. Before the month was over, Spisak killed 50-year-old Timothy Sheehan, assistant superintendent of buildings and grounds at CSU, and 17-year-old Brian Warford, gunned down at a bus stop near campus. A third attack failed, with Spisak narrowly missing CSU employee Coletta Dartt. Both Sheehan and Dartt were Caucasians, but Spisak had suspected the building superintendent of being a Jew.

Arrested in September 1982, after firing a gun from his apartment window, Spisak was released on bail before an anonymous caller advised police to reexamine his .22-caliber weapon. Test bullets matched slugs retrieved from the Warford murder, and Spisak later confessed to the other homicides, gloating that "my aim was pretty good."

Pleading insanity at his trial, in August 1983, Spisak declared that his one-man war had been launched under orders from God, his "immediate superior." Jews were to blame for his earlier transvestite episodes, having "seized control of his mind" when Frank wasn't looking. How, a defense lawyer asked, was his brain working now? "Never better," the gunman replied.

With the results of psychiatric tests in hand, Judge James Sweeney ordered jurors to disregard Spisak's insanity plea for lack of evidence. Convicted after five hours of deliberation, he was sentenced to death on August 10, 1983. Defiant in the face of judgment, Frank addressed the court. "Even though this court may pronounce me guilty a thousand times," he declared, "the higher court of our great Aryan warrior god pronounces me innocent. Heil Hitler!"