The Manual

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1:12Hi, it's Phoebe. You're about to hear one of the stories we've never been able to stop thinking about. Because there's something about it that's been a mystery for decades. Until now. Who exactly wrote the manual? We have an update about it at the end of today's episode. How did you first meet Mildred Horn? I was retained to represent her child, who was severely disabled, in a lawsuit against a Washington, D.C. hospital for medical malpractice. This is Howard Siegel. He's a lawyer, and the case he's talking about took place in 1990 after a baby named Trevor Horn was injured while undergoing a procedure in the hospital.

2:04The hospital's respirator failed, and Trevor Horn suffered severe brain damage. He became paralyzed and would need a breathing tube and 24-hour nursing care for the rest of his life. The family sued the hospital. I represented the family in that lawsuit. And what was the result of the lawsuit? It was a multi-million dollar settlement. Nearly$2 million to pay for Trevor's medical care. Trevor's mother, Mildred Horn, was a single parent living in Silver Spring, Maryland. She was raising Trevor and his two sisters. Mildred's family lived nearby, and a nurse named Janice Saunders spent every night in Trevor's room, watching over him.

2:49This family was just totally committed to making this child's life as comfortable and as loving as was possible. Now, his mother, Mildred Horn, and her husband, Lawrence Horn, were separated and eventually divorced. and the father was at that time living in L.A. And he was a sound engineer for Motown. After he and Mildred split up, he had little contact with their children until he heard that his ex-wife was suing the hospital. When the trial started, Lawrence Horn flew from California to be there. Just after opening statements, the hospital's lawyers approached Howard Siegel and offered to settle the case out of court.

3:42Miltred Horn accepted their settlement offer. Lawrence Horn wasn't happy about it. Mr. Horn turned to me, and he said, that's not enough. And I said, well, what are you talking about? And he wrote down on a yellow sheet, it was a legal yellow pad, and he wrote down a million dollars times 10%, which is$100 ,000 a year. He said, I came here looking for this amount of money for me. And my jaw just dropped open. And I said, what makes you think that you're entitled to a nickel of this child's money? And he looked me right in the eye and he said, Trevor lives through me. And I'll just never forget that moment as long as I live, because I went out in the hall and I said to my co-counsel, I have never seen anything like this man.

4:53Three years later, early in the morning on March 3rd, 1993 Mildred Horn's sister went over to the house, as she often did And found the garage door open And Trevor's medical monitor alarm going off Police found Mildred Horn dead just inside the front door In Trevor's room, police found that his life support system had been disconnected His nurse, Janice Saunders, had been shot three times. The other children were safe. They'd spent the night somewhere else. The house had been turned upside down, and the car was missing. I was driving to work, and I heard the news that Mrs. Horn and Trevor and their nurse had been murdered.

5:40And I didn't even blink. I just, it's Larry Horn. There was not a question in my mind that Larry Horn had somehow perpetrated this murder. Police officers in Los Angeles were sent to question Lawrence Horn immediately after the bodies were discovered. And they found a piece of paper in his pocket that had an airline flight number and flight times written on it. Mildred Horn was a flight attendant, and those numbers matched the flight she was scheduled to work the day she was murdered. Police obtained a warrant to search his apartment. They took computers, videotapes, recording equipment, and whatever papers they could find.

6:24But none of it linked him to the murders. Seven weeks passed. They were still unable to make an arrest, even though Mildred Horn's family and friends were absolutely certain it was Lawrence Horn. Howard Siegel was certain. Even the judge from the hospital malpractice case told police that Mr. Horn had been unusually interested in the settlement money. But there wasn't any evidence, and Lawrence Horn had an alibi, a good one. At the time of the murders, he was on the other side of the country in his apartment in Los Angeles with his girlfriend. About two months after the murders, Lawrence Horn agreed to an interview with the Washington Post.

7:11He said he was grieving the loss of his ex-wife and son and unequivocally denied having anything to do with the crime. For me to do that, I would be dead now, he said. I would not be living on, because what would be the purpose? I'd be a monster. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

7:42Maryland police investigated the case for the next 16 months. A spokesperson called it the most exhaustive and labor-intensive investigation in the department's history. They tapped Lawrence Horn's phones. And if I'm not mistaken, they figured out Lawrence Horn had a pay phone near his house in Los Angeles. and they put a tap on that phone. They figured out he was smart enough not to have been using his own phone to contact whoever he was in cahoots with in this. And they found out he had been communicating with a guy in Detroit named James Perry. Police found 136 calls between Lawrence Horn and this man, James Perry.

8:28They got a warrant to search Perry's house in Detroit And in the house, they found a book. And the book was titled Hitman, A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors, which was essentially a how-to-commit-murder book. What do you mean a how-to-commit-murder? Well, that's what it was. It was a murder manual. It was a publication that would teach anyone who was so inclined what steps to go through to commit a murder and get away with it. The author of Hitman, a technical manual for independent contractors, was someone named Rex Farrell. The book was published in 1983 by Paladin Press. They ordered the book.

9:20Law enforcement ordered the book from Paladin Press. And when they started to go through it and compare it to what they had found out took place in the crime, they were able to find 27 instructions that Perry followed. And these aren't instructions like run and hide or be careful. These were very specific instructions. I mean, I am so surprised that people actually hire hitmen. I thought it was just something we see in the movies. Oh, it's amazingly common. Husbands hire hitmen to kill their wives. Wives hire hitmen to kill their husbands. Business deals go bad. You know, I don't want to say it's a common occurrence, but it's much, much more common than you would ever imagine.

10:20Paladin Press, the publisher of this hitman manual, was owned by a former army ranger named Peter Lund, who sold books primarily through mail-order catalogs and at gun shows. The best-selling title in Paladin's catalog was a guide to shooting someone at long range from a hiding place. It's called The Ultimate Sniper. They published a book called Be Your Own Undertaker, How to Dispose of a Dead Body. Then they published How to Make a Homemade Flamethrower, Smuggling Made Easy, How to Rip Off a Drug Dealer, Kill Without Joy, the complete How to Kill book, How to Destroy Bridges. Their book, Homemade C-4, a recipe for survival, was reportedly read by Timothy McVeigh before he made a truck bomb that killed 168 people in Oklahoma City.

11:22Hitman, a technical manual for independent contractors, had sold more than 13 ,000 copies by the time James Perry ordered his own. How closely did James Perry follow the instructions in Hitman? Okay, think of a complicated recipe that you get in a cookbook with 12 steps in it. And if you want to make these cookies, you have to follow these 12 steps exactly the way it's described or the cookies will not turn out. James Perry followed 27 steps in this book. in committing this crime. And it was truly a recipe for murder. We'll be right back. To listen without ads, join Criminal Plus.

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13:06savings based on Harris X billing snapshots from Q3 2021 to Q4 2025 compared to average AT &T and Verizon bills comparison includes discounts credits and optional charges$400 with new account on qualifying line unlock device credit ported 90 plus days with device and carrier entirely redemption required virtual mastercard typically takes 14 weeks no cash access and expires in six months card issue by Sunrise banks and a member FDIC visit team mobile.com when I got a new car I thought my insurance premium would increase and empty my bank account Like if Fetween won the lottery. I've invested most of my winnings in chicken tenders because they're bomb.

13:36But bro, I bought a house and it's sick, bro. I'm thinking the floor is going to be all trampoline, bro. With the helipad on the roof. The contractor said it's structurally unsound. They're just being babies. But switching to Geico saved me hundreds, so my bank account is safe. It feels good to save some hard-earned cash. It feels good to Geico. Police figured out that Lawrence Horn was planning to pay James Perry from Trevor's settlement money, the almost$2 million he expected would come to him after he arranged to have his wife and son killed. But Mildred Horn's sisters weren't going to let that happen.

14:15They filed a lawsuit of their own, blocking Lawrence Horn from receiving anything from his son's estate. So James Perry had been hired to do a job and had done it, but had not been paid. He kept calling Lawrence Horn and asking for his money. It was these repeated phone calls, going on for months, that brought them both down. They were each indicted on three counts of first-degree murder and one count of conspiracy. Actually testified in both cases. I wonder when Lawrence Horn saw you walking into the courtroom if he thought to himself, oh, no. Well, I think Lawrence Horn knew what I was going to say.

14:59He knew I was going to relate that incident that happened in the courtroom, which I did. And any father that would come to a trial like that concerned with how much money he was going to get when his son was profoundly disabled and needed the money desperately to take care of his daily needs is just evil incarnate. Did he look you in the eye? Did you make any kind? Oh, yes. What was his reaction as you were testifying? Well, there wasn't much of a reaction. Lawrence Horn had not the slightest feeling of guilt for what he did. None. Lawrence Horn was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences.

15:49James Perry was sentenced to death. And while that's the end of part of the story, it's just the beginning of a whole other part. I was just astounded that such a murder manual could be published. So I ordered a copy myself and started looking into it. And it didn't take me long to reach the conclusion that something had to be done. I called my dear friend and co-counsel, John Marshall. And I said, we've got to do something about this. And, you know, we got together. And I still remember we had a meeting in the Montgomery County Library, a law library. And I looked at the book, and we talked about the First Amendment.

16:48And I remember very clearly saying, John, this shit can't be covered by the First Amendment. That was my exact quote. It just can't be. And we just felt very strongly that this was not what the framers of the First Amendment had in mind when they decided to protect free speech. In 1996, on behalf of Mildred Horn's two surviving daughters, Howard Siegel filed a civil lawsuit against Paladin Press in federal court in Maryland, arguing that the book aided and abetted the wrongful death of Mildred, Trevor, and the nurse, Jana Saunders. How did you feel this book differed from other pieces of entertainment, depictions of violence and step-by-step?

17:40That's a great question. When Tom Clancy publishes a book that has detailed descriptions of how someone made a bomb, his intent is to entertain. He doesn't intend that people will misuse his book and commit crimes. So when someone takes a Tom Clancy book and learns enough in it to perpetrate a criminal act, he is misusing Tom Clancy's book. He's not using it as Tom Clancy intended. it. With Hitman, a technical manual for independent contractors, the people who were buying it and using it were using it exactly, precisely the way the author and the publisher intended that it would be used. You can read the beginning of the book.

18:40It says, this is all you need to become a successful hitman. They were offering a correspondence course in how to commit murder. And that's not protected by the First Amendment. If a criminal came to me and said, I want to learn how to do burglaries. And I said, well, here's what you do. You know, here's how you break in. Here's how you get away with it. Well, I'm going to jail for aiding and abetting. So what is the difference between doing it in something that has a cover and pages as opposed to doing it orally? You're still teaching people to commit crimes. Chocolate chip cookies are going to get made if you distribute the recipes.

19:36Howard is certainly capable of hyperbole. Tom Kelly was hired to defend Paladin Press in the lawsuit. He calls himself a press lawyer. He's defended the rights of journalists and publishing companies for more than 40 years. And his version of the merits of the lawsuit are very different than Howard's. The ultimate question was, what role did this book play in the murder? Did it cause the murder? Or is this a murder that would have occurred regardless of whether the book had ever been published? He also has a different take on the book itself. I would describe it as something hard to take seriously.

20:23Some of the techniques described were fascinating. Some were preposterous. Others were familiar as someone who reads crime novels, enjoys movies like The Godfather and so forth. But in terms of true cold-blooded psychology, it didn't impress me as very realistic. Tom Kelly says that there are many instructions in the book that James Perry did not follow. Don't check into hotels in your real name. James Perry did that. Don't make long-distance phone calls from the vicinity of the crime scene, especially not to your employer. James Perry did that too. Tom Kelly also says that the instructions in the book are generic, like wear gloves and shoot for the head.

21:17There were similarities, but relatively few that had any meaning whatsoever. and it cannot be said that this book caused these murders to occur. They were with a momentum of their own, and the book, if anything, was merely window dressing. Their position always, no matter what I said, was, it's a book, it's a book, it's a book, it's a book. You can't sue a book. The judge agreed. He said, yeah, it's a book. It's protected. Get out of here. Howard appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. The question, can a book be responsible for what someone does with its content, was controversial.

22:09A number of media organizations came out in support of Paladin Press, including ABC and the New York Times. The fear was that if Paladin was found responsible, any novelist or journalist writing in detail about crime could be vulnerable to lawsuits. I'd imagine there would be a conflict in a juror's mind trying to weigh the harm caused to a human being versus harm done to an idea. That's absolutely true. And the only way to try this case was not to ask them to protect an idea, but to abide by their oath and listen to the court's instructions. Liability here requires causation in the sense that the murder would not have occurred but for this book.

23:01Ladies and gentlemen, please put on your investigator's trench coat and sift through these facts and see if that is borne out by them. and we all understand what sympathy is all about in this situation, but you took on a greater human obligation when you took an oath to follow the law and facts in this case as the judge gives you the law and the facts as they're found by you. And there's certainly no guarantee that that's going to win, but I think it should.

23:40Did anyone say to you, listen, you're getting too personal. This isn't your fight. Yes, everyone. One of the things I faced with this case was that I had to put my practice on hold. I mean, it was all-consuming. You know, there were times where it actually scared me how much time I was spending and how involved I had become in this case. And I just had too much of myself wrapped up in this case to lose it. What did the Fourth Circuit judges say? Well, Judge Ludig wrote a, as I recall, a 63-page opinion. So he said a lot. And I think the basis of their opinion was the argument that we advanced that said, when speech is used as the vehicle to commit the crime, it is not protected by the First Amendment.

24:45And I think that's all it boils down to, is this is astoundingly obvious. you can't aid and abet murder and claim the protection of the First Amendment. The higher court judge ruled in favor of Howard and the Horn family, meaning Howard could move forward with a lawsuit against Paladin. But one day before the trial began, the publisher decided to settle the case out of court. Paladin paid a confidential sum of money to the Horn family and agreed to pull all copies of Hitman, a technical manual for independent contractors, from publication. But it was picked up and put on the Internet. We couldn't stop that.

25:31And as far as I know, it may be out there right now for anybody who wants to read it. Well, I have a PDF of it sitting right in front of me. Yeah. You can't put the genie back in the bottle. The owner of Paladin Press, Peter Lund, died last year. and the press shut down. And Howard Siegel is now retired. He says this is a case that's taught in law schools all over the country. I think it left a good mark, a mark that says common sense will prevail over ideology and over strict construction of the Constitution. That's what lawyers do. I have the utmost respect for everybody that was on Paladin's side.

26:25I think they do important work. And 90 % of the time, maybe 99 % of the time, I'm going to join forces with those guys. I'm going to march arm in arm and protect the First Amendment. Not this time.

26:51This episode first aired in 2018. Recently, the author of Hitman, a technical manual for independent contractors, spoke publicly for the first time in an article for Vanity Fair written by reporter Abbott Kaler. Abbott Kaler has known the author for the past 25 years. And earlier this year, they decided they were ready to speak. In 1999, Abbott was living in Philadelphia and working as a journalist when she heard about the civil lawsuit against Paladin Press. She was curious about Rex Farrell, who their real identity was, and why they'd written the book. And, you know, one piece of information had trickled out, And it was that the person who wrote Hitman actually wasn't a hitman at all.

27:43The person who wrote Hitman was a divorced mother of two living in a trailer park in Florida. That was the only piece of information that came out. And I kept waiting for somebody to knock on this woman's door or for her to give an interview or for some kind of new revelation to come out. But it never did. So I was like, well, this is my chance. Why don't I be the one to knock on her door? Why don't I try to get the story? You can hear the full conversation with Abbott Kaler by joining Criminal Plus. Go to patreon.com slash criminal. And also, when you join, you can listen to Criminal, This Is Love, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without any ads.

28:23Plus, you'll get bonus episodes, access to special events, and you'll be able to connect with other Criminal listeners. That's patreon.com slash criminal. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Saccico, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, and Megan Kinane. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal. You can see them at thisiscriminal.com. And you can sign up for our newsletter at thisiscriminal.com slash newsletter.

29:03We're on Facebook at This Is Criminal and Instagram and TikTok at criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast. Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

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