the mayor of a Missouri town who backed the white supremacist allegedly behind a shooting rampage at Jewish community centres in Kansas last week resigned on Monday.

Dan Clevenger, the mayor of Marionville, the hometown of accused killer Frazier Glenn Cross, gave an interview after the attack in which he said that he “kind of agreed with him [Cross] on some things, but I don’t like to express that too much”.

The newly elected mayor said that he agreed with the belief that “corporations [that] are run by Jews” hurt the economy. Mr Clevenger also said that he had once been a friend of Cross.

The mayor stepped down after a majority of town council members voted to begin an impeachment process against him.

“I asked him, I encouraged him to resign,” said elected official Donna White. “I knew him since he was a little boy, but I was extremely horrified. He brought shame to our town.”

Another councillor, David Arnsmeyer, said he proposed a resolution at the hearing condemning any form of antisemitism. He was unsuccessful, however. “The mayor’s comments do not reflect the community’s attitude as a whole,” he said.

Cross, 73, is the founder and former “grand dragon” of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Patriot Party, according to the Southern Poverty Law Centre, a hate group watchdog. More than 96 per cent of Marionville’s population of 2,000 is white, according to the 2010 US census. Cross faces capital murder and first-degree, premeditated murder charges.