August 30, 2019 • 33 mins
In pursuit of a $1.7 million trust fund, a hitman is hired. He follows two dozen recommendations in Rex Feral’s how-to manual, murders three people, including an 8-year-old child, and almost gets away with it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Before this episode published, I called Tiffany Horn. I wanted
to make sure she knew what was coming. I wanted
to let her know that we begin with her brother, Trevor.
She said to me, I put my love for him
in this box in my heart and I don't open
it often because it's too painful. But she insisted he
should be seen. He deserves it. And just so you
(00:22):
know this episode of Hitman might be hard to hear listener,
discretion is advised. A blade of grass. There was this
single blade of grass on Trevor's cheek when the police
found him on the morning of March third, nineteen ninety three.
(00:44):
He was lying in his crib wearing his white and
blue Peachays. One of the nurses would later testify that
he was given a bath every evening before bed. They
were very thorough, and the nurse she knew that grass
couldn't have been thereby accident. He stayed in his wheelchair
any time he went outside. If he played, she said,
(01:06):
it was on the rug or on the quilt in
his room. The prosecutors argued that the grass had to
have come from the killer's hands, that he wrapped one
hand around the boy's nose and mouth and the other
around his track opening and left behind that blade of grass.
I came across the crime scene photos of Trevor last
(01:28):
year and I tried not to look. It almost felt disrespectful.
But this is the reality of what happened to him,
As Tiffany said, I owed him a moment of acknowledgement
of seeing him. I understand if you've been trying to
put Trevor out of your mind, if you'd rather I
tell you more about Motown or this crazy book hit man,
(01:50):
or the French publisher behind the murder manual, or maybe
you just want me to hurry up and get to
the part where they catch the killers. But anytime someone
tells me, oh, it's just to book, it's just a book,
it's just a book. I remember that a hitman entered
a quiet home in the middle of the night and
smothered an eight year old child. I remember that blade
(02:10):
of grass. It wasn't an accident. Trevor wasn't collateral. His
death was all part of the plan. It was the plan.
Trevor had to die in order for Lawrence to inherit
Trevor's money, but Millie had to die so that Lawrence
could inherit all of it. I'm Jasmine Morris from My
(02:43):
Heart Radio and Hit Home Media. This is Hitman. It
took eighteen months for detectives to complete their investigation into
the triple murder of Trevor and Millie Horn and Janice Saunders,
but it only took one day for police to establish
(03:05):
a prime suspect in a motive. Millie had seen this coming.
She knew. She was very fearful for Trevor's life. Millie's
sister Maryland, and she was also fearful for herself because
she always said, I will not die in an aeroplane crash.
If something ever happens to me, it's Lawrence Horn. And
(03:29):
all the sisters were there and we laughed about it.
We're like Millie, he's crazy, but he's not that crazy.
She actually said that to you. She said that, she said,
if anything ever happens to me, you all make sure
that Lawrence Horn is never alone with Trevor. Lawrence never
(03:51):
took responsibility for Trevor, even on the day he was born.
I mean, he didn't even show up for the birth,
so he had no connect into this child at all.
He showed no interest. My brother being sick was such
a turn off. He totally rejected him. And that was
when my mom was finally really done with my dad,
(04:15):
which is looking back, really sad for her, but I
think she knew it just was never going to go
the way she wanted it to go with him. And
so here's where I need to tell you about how
and when Trevor's life suddenly became valuable to Lawrence Horn.
(04:36):
Remember when Trevor and his twin sister, Tammiel were born
three months premature. Trevor was really sick. He had been
born with underdeveloped lungs, but by the time he was one,
he was exceeding doctor's expectations. He was doing really well.
And then one day he went in for something routine
at Children's Hospital in d C and there was some
(04:57):
kind of accident. He was without oxygen for seven or
eight minutes, leaving him with significant brain damage. They put
him in the COLMA. Yeah, you didn't give us very
much hope, and they talked to Milly about removing him
from life support. So she talked to us about it
(05:20):
and we said, Milly, you know, what's your decision, because
I said he would you know, more than a vegetable.
She still wasn't sure what she was going to do,
and so Milly went to his room and Trevor opened
his eyes, looked urd smile, and that was the answer.
(05:41):
Doctors told Milly to put Trevor in a care facility.
They said that caring for him would be too much
of a burden on her and her family. Milly refused,
here's Tiffany. I mean she learned how to be a nurse,
Like who does that? She definitely did. She knew his
care better than the nurses that she fired, and she
would fire them if they didn't do what she wanted
(06:02):
them to do. Milly made sure that Trevor had a
life the same as any other child. At a pool party,
he's in the pool. The nurse and Trevor and Millie,
they're in the pool. Halloween, he had his costume. He
got dressed up. Actually I remember too. One was a clown,
(06:25):
another one was Peter Pain. They said he would never talk.
Trevor learned to talk. He used to say I love you.
His favorite story was Three Little Pigs. He was so smart.
I would say the wolf would huff and he would puff.
He would be laughing so much. Here's John Marshall, a
(06:49):
lawyer and close family friend. He was doing better and
better and better and defining the odds, you know, Salts Corner,
but by dint of determination of his mother and sure love.
That's who Milly was. She was determined and willful. It's
(07:12):
like she never questioned what insurmountable things she had to
do to protect the ones she loved. It reminds me
of this story Maryland told me about their childhood growing
up in South Carolina. During Jim Crow, our family decided
that we would get a better education at an integrated school.
It was horrible. I just couldn't believe that people could
(07:34):
be so mean to me because of the color of
my skin. And there was this guy on the bus.
It was a white guy, and he was bigger than
me and older than me, and every day he would
push me, and one day I decided I am not
going to take that anymore. So when he pushed me,
I pushed him back, and of course he pushed me
(07:55):
down on a seat and he's beating me up. I mean,
he's really beating me up. And Millie Millie came to
my desfense. Millie stepped in and the boys stopped beating
Maryland and started in on Millie. She was badly hurt.
She had to be taken to the hospital. Her shoulder
was dislocated. She was not going to stand by it
(08:18):
and the herd or simply so That's the way she was.
She was our big sister. It wasn't until about three
years after the accident when it became clear just how
challenging and expensive it was going to be to care
for Trevor. That's when Milly decided to pursue a lawsuit
(08:40):
against Children's Hospital. John Marshall and Howard Siegel representator. Here's John.
This was not a case where this family was going
to make millions of dollars. This was a case where
whatever money that was going to be received out of
the matter was going for Trevor's use. And that was
(09:00):
Millie's goal from day one was just how do I
take care of him? So John helped the family bring
a lawsuit against Children's Hospital. I had been in touch
with Lawrence. He called and we talked about it, and
I explained to him the cases we saw. It was
at its core Millie and Trevor. They had the bond.
(09:23):
That was the emotional heart of the case. As we've
heard from Tiffany, Lawrence was barely a father to Trevor.
Even still, the lawyers felt Lawrence should be listed in
the suit. They thought it played better to a jury,
the idea that this estranged couple came together to fight
for their son. Here's Howard Siegel, John's co council. The
(09:45):
first time I ever met him was at the trial.
He made a good impression. He was a big, nice
looking guy, and Lawrence played his part. John and Howard
went back and forth with the hospitals insurance company for months.
Finally they got a settlement offer they thought was fair.
This is a really important moment, and so for the
next couple of minutes, I'm just gonna let John and
(10:06):
Howard tell you what happened next. They offered a significant
amount of money, and Millie was clear this was going
to Trevor. Every lawyer is different, but our philosophy was,
if you get to a point where you can look
at the client in the eye and say, you know,
we can't guarantee you're gonna do better, and this number
(10:28):
in this kind of a case, will if we invest
it wisely, that he will be able to be taken
care of so Milly was fine. Lawrence Horn was sitting
at council table with us, and Lawrence turned to us
and he said, that's not enough. And I turned to
(10:49):
him and I said, what do you mean that's not enough.
It turned out that Lawrence Horn through a major bomb
into the settlement. He wrote down on a yellow pad
with a red pen a million dollars times which was
the interest rate back then is a hundred thousand a year,
(11:11):
and he said, I came here expecting this for me.
I turned to him and I said, what makes you
think you're entitled to one nickel of this child's money?
And he looked at me and he said, Trevor lives
through me. I assumed he meant that because Trevor was
(11:31):
profoundly disabled and could not enjoy life, that when Lawrence
took his money and wrote down Hollywood Boulevard in a BMW,
that Trevor would be enjoying it. I was stunned. I've
just never been so shocked by anything anybody said to
me in my life. It was the first time he
(11:52):
had revealed himself, and we were floored. It had just
never been discussed that the parents were going to get
any money at all. I just never came up from
that point on. He just dug his heels in. We
took a recess. I went out in the hall with
(12:12):
John Marshall and I said, I have just looked into
the eyes of pure evil. This man scares me. It
was the way that he said it. It was chilling,
It was detached, It was matter of fact. Lawrence Horn's
only concern was what he was going to get out
(12:35):
of it. The Children's Hospital settlement came through and the
family was awarded two million dollars, with roughly half of
that going into a trust for Trevor and three dollars
(12:59):
going to Millie, which she used to buy that big
house in Silver Spring, with the whole wing devoted to
Trevor's care. Lawrence walked away with Millie's sister Maryland. He
felt that he got cheated, that he should have gotten
more money, and it was all her fault. As long
as Lawrence was working at Motown, the majority of Trevor's
(13:21):
medical bills were covered and the settlement money would go
into that trust. But then Lawrence lost his job. In
Trevor had exhausted the lifetime maximum benefits on Milly's insurance
and we had to go to court for the first
time to ask for some money to be used for
Trevor's care, which meant that every month, now six thousand
(13:42):
dollars the cost of Trevor's care was going to come
out of Trevor's one point seven million dollar trust fund.
All of this timing was because these policies had run
out and now we were cutting into Trevor's money. There
there's no accident about this timing. This was all done
(14:04):
to maximize the return to Lawrence. I remember Millie being
very wary, very agitated that something was amiss, and of
course she was right. A month later she was killed,
and as we're about to learn, Lawrence Horn had been
(14:28):
planning this for a very long time. We'll be right back.
(14:50):
When you think about Hitman, you probably imagine the ones
you've seen in movies, like John Wick, Jason Bourne, James
Bond with his double ow license to kill. They only
killed bad men, men who deserved it. The Hitman book
plays on these same tropes. The writer Rex Ferrell insists
that he's quote the last recourse in these times when
(15:12):
laws are so twisted that justice goes unserved. But in
this story, the mark was a defenseless child and two mothers.
So I know we've been jumping around a lot in
the story telling you different bits of pertinent information. But
for the rest of this episode, I'm going to walk
(15:34):
you through Lawrence's plan. This wasn't just something that was
done in a vacuum where my dad, in a crime
of passion, just murdered them, which is not okay either way.
But there was a lot of planning. There was a
lot of time that passed by within the planning. There
was money exchange. About a year before the murders, in
(15:55):
the spring of Lawrence took a trip back home to
Detroit and reconnected with family. Here he is talking about
that in a deposition. You drove to Detroit? Did you
do it one day? Yes? You know how far it
is the Detroit seven hours, five hundred miles? And where
(16:17):
did you stay in Detroit? Had a relatives? Relatives? Did
you when you were in Detroit? Tommy Turner? What else
he related to, Oh, he's my mother's sisters son. Lawrence
(16:44):
hadn't seen his cousin, Thomas Turner in twenty years. Turner
would later take immunity, but according to his testimony, Lawrence
talked about his divorce and said quote that he was
having a problem seeing his children. Turner didn't even know
that Lawrence was married or had it's until this visit,
but that's when he told Lawrence about his close friend,
(17:04):
a straight preacher and spiritual advisor. Turner drove a truck
in the occasional taxicab and he'd helped this guy drom
up business by passing out as cards and flyers that
said things like that love problem must go, get your
luck straightened out, feel good again. Don't worry. I got it.
I see where you just feel like giving up. Listen
(17:27):
at the darkest moment, there is a light. All you
need is faith in God, and get this He has
given me to give unto you. I know just what
to do for all your problems. That friend, James Edward Perry,
(17:48):
turns out they met in prison thirteen years prior before
becoming a spiritual advisor. Perry once shot at a Michigan
State trooper in an attempted bank robbery in the seventies.
Lawrence would visit his cousin more than once in the
spring of NTO, and this is around the same time
he started showing up in Maryland to see his kids.
(18:08):
Remember those recordings we'd played last episode, the ones he'd
make while driving around with his daughters. Where am I here?
Oh I got business? Well, investigators found something else on
those tapes. At one point, he recorded himself driving the
route from a daizen in Rockville, Maryland, the same one
(18:28):
Perry would later stay at, to Milly's house. He was
not only pretending to be personable or caring for his
family and spending time with his two daughters. That's Lawrence
Horns defense attorney Jeff O'Toole. It became clear that when
(18:50):
he was doing his videotaping he was he was planning
the escape route for James Perry. These trips out to
Maryland were like reconnaissance missions. And remember that moment in
our last episode when he asked his two young daughters
where Trevor's room was. Which one? Well, that's not all.
(19:18):
There was another tape where he asked Tiffany two videotape
Trevor and where his room was in the house. He
was like, well, I have a video camera. Do you
think if I show you how to use it that
you can? You know, tape Trevor and like show me
your new house. That you keep talking about and I mean,
(19:41):
obviously I'm going to do it. He's my dad. I
went right in and came right out and gave it
to him. He made it seem like this was his
way to try to learn more about his son. I
wanted him to be that dad. I wanted him to
like dig deep down and find in the love for
his child. I felt like he was so disappointed that
(20:05):
he wasn't like a normal son that it almost broke him.
So I was trying to feel sympathetic towards my dad.
I'm trying to tell him, no, it's okay, Like you know,
we've created this life and he's he's perfect. You know,
we love him. Tiffany and her dad were close at
(20:26):
one point, and he used that he definitely manipulated me.
He was just a liar, like he was just a
sick person that I felt, just this obsessive need to
like prove something or win, and he was willing to
throw everything away, even his relationship with me. And it
wasn't the last time Lawrence would use Tiffany like this.
(20:49):
A day before the murders, late at night on March one,
Tiffany got a phone call to a dorm room at
Howard University. He never called me, but he asked me
whether my mom was going to be flying out the
next morning because he wanted to talk to my sister.
And so I told him that my sister, if she
(21:12):
wasn't home, would probably be at my aunt's house. I
called my mom right after I got off the phone
with him. He was like searching for information, which I
found odd. Tiffany said, over the course of their ten
minute call, he asked her about Millie and Tammielle four
or five times. The following evening on March two, Millie
also received a call. I talked to Millie at night
(21:36):
about ten o'clock. She called to tell me guess who
called me. Lawrence called me, and she said, do you
know I was actually nice to him. I talked nice
to him for a change. So that's the last time
I talked to her. Lawrence was also asking Milly about
Tammielle's whereabouts. Here's Prosecutor Bob Dean. Lawrence made sure that Tammielle,
(22:00):
twin sister of Trevor, would not be home the night
of the killing. And you know, we had an information
that that. You know, he was careful about that, and
I don't know what that means or shows other than
the fact that you know, she didn't fit into the
plans for the inheritance. They ordered a copy of the
(22:36):
book from Palinin Press. They did it was like, oh
my god, here it all is. It was written out,
So there were many similarities that say about what was
said in this book and what was done, and some
of the evidence that they hadn't covered also matched specifics.
(22:58):
Just so you know, there's no evidence that Lawrence ever
read Hitman. In fact, there's no evidence James Perry read
it either. Investigators never found an actual copy, but they
found the Paladin Press catalog in his apartment with the
book's title circled, and they got a copy of the
check he made out to Paladin for two books, including Hitman,
though that checked it bounce. Paladin even shared the order
(23:19):
form with investigators, so they believed he ordered it. And
the similarities between rex Ferrell's manual and the murders of
Millie Horn, her son, Trevor, and Janice Saunders are difficult
to ignore. I'm going to walk you through some of those.
Now we've already told you about a few Hitman instructs,
An explicit detail with photographs how to build a homemade
(23:42):
silencer from material available in any hardware store. The silencer
is one of the most important tools a professional will
ever have. Again, we got that same actor to read
these lines. The silenced weapon, when fired will not draw attention.
Lack of adenda means more time. More time means getting
a job done right. According to the Deputy Chief Medical
(24:04):
Examiner for Maryland, Donald writes testimony, one of Janis Saunder's
gunshot wounds indicated Perry likely used a silencer. A hitman
without a gun is like a carpenter without a Hammer's
not very effective. The first weapon listed in the basic
Equipment Checklist for Beginners on page twenty one of Hitman
is an a R seven rifle, exactly what was used.
(24:27):
Hitman goes on to instruct its readers on where to
find the rifles serial number here's Bob Dean. It suggested
that you drill out the serial numbers to the weapon,
which James Perry did. But beyond obscuring the serial number,
Hitman also explains that the gun barrel needs to be
altered with a rattail file as well. Each one of
(24:48):
these items leaves its own definite mark and impression on
the shell casing, which if any shell has happened to
be left behind, can be matched to the gun under
a microscope. In the police laboratory, we found the file
in the BA back yard, the file that was used
to go into the barrel of the gun. We had
that file tested. That file had elements of ammunition on
(25:12):
the file. It's clearly consistent with rubbing through and defacing
the interior of a rifle. Hitman suggests shooting at close
range to ensure quote the desired result has been achieved.
It's best to shoot from a distance of three to
six ft. You'll not want to be at point blank
range to avoid having the victim's blood splatter you or
(25:34):
your clothing. Ballistics showed Millie and Jennie were shot from
about a foot and a half to three ft away,
aimed for the head, preferably the eye sockets. If you
are a sharp shooter. Lawrence Horns defense attorney again Jeff O'Toole,
the book suggested shooting the victims in the eye because
that was going to be the most assured way to
(25:57):
to make sure they're dead. That's an image from the
book that you just can't. You just can't let go.
And the reason Rex Ferrell recommends the a R seven
in his book, it's a gun that's easily disassembled. The
book suggested that you dismantle the gun in the silence
room and throw it along the way as you're escaping.
So they did a drag net search of these woods
(26:18):
and they found a small piece of a gun, but
it was the trigger mechanism only, which is an odd thing.
They were instructed to break the gun into many pieces
and distribute them wherever, you know, felt like it. We
had an analysis done on the pieces of the gun
(26:40):
and according to the FBI expert did he did a
rust development analysis. He felt that based upon the weather
conditions of March of that year that they had been
outside for you know, the side of the road for
for several weeks, a matter of weeks, it was clear
that this was the weapon, the weapon that was used.
(27:02):
If the hit was supposed to look like a burglary.
Messed the place up a bit, take anything of value
that you can carry concealed. There was some disheveling and
disturbance of pieces of furniture. There's a bookshelf that was overturned,
but it didn't appear that much was stolen. There were
some items that were taken from um, the purse of Mildred.
(27:23):
Of course, you can't keep anything. These items have to
be ditched, along with your work clothes and the weapon. Actually,
the day of the murder, there was a jogger who
found Mildred Horns credit cards and identification cards that had
been taken from her purse hours before. He had done
exactly what the book said to do. I've been thinking
(27:53):
a lot about accountability as I report this story. Was
the book an accomplice of sorts? The courts would later
say just that the story is a whole tangled knot
of accountability. It's like that saying it's turtles all the
way down. Lawrence was clearly the mastermind. And sometimes I'm
tempted to just look through Perry to see Lawrence the
(28:14):
hitman becomes a tool or a pawn or an instrument
to just get the job done. But it was James
Perry's hands that killed Trevor. It was his hands that
left that blade of grass. Lawrence recorded so many things
as part of his plan. The surveillance tapes, the LBI tape,
(28:34):
the one where he's standing in front of his TV,
clearly displaying the time and date, which was pretty much
the exact time of the murders. But there was one
other recording the investigators found in the search of Lawrence's apartment,
and it took everyone by surprise. You heard an excerpt
from this in our first episode. Remember this call was
made from a payphone not far from Millie's house, and
(28:56):
investigators believed it was made just hours after the murders.
It's a little hard to understand, but basically you hear
Lawrence answer the phone, and then another man we now
know to be James Perry, presumably calling to say the
job was done, all right? Then you him right right.
(29:23):
It was cryptic, but investigators believed this meant he was
going to take a photograph of Trevor to prove he'd
done his job, but the noise of Trevor's alarm was distracting.
I didn't want to go. Was this on an answering
machine machine? Remember those answering machines, And sometimes if you
(29:45):
picked up too late, it would record exactly So is
that what happened? Horn didn't mean to record it. I
don't think he did. It cuts off because actually it
comes at the very end of this answering machine tape.
It literally ran out of tape. The fact that this
tape even exists is kind of hard to believe. Lawrence's
own defense attorney Jeff O'Toole. So Lawrence was this person
(30:07):
who taped everything. He made a career of taping Stevie
Wonder and all the different people and the songs that
the Holland Brothers wrote. He knew how to tape things well. Unfortunately,
he was taping his telephone conversation when Perry called him.
That was a tape recording that was accidentally either taped
(30:28):
or certainly accidentally kept by Lawrence Horn. What did he
have to say about that tape? You know, I think
he shook his head Jasmine and said sort of. I'm
not sure we had the expression back then, but I
think he said it is what it is. I think
he he wasn't able to say that wasn't his tape.
He wasn't able to say that was not James Perry.
The tape was was really something to hold up and
(30:50):
go here it is, ladies and gentlemen. Was there a
smoking gun? Probably The second phone call that Perry made
to Horn was was a crucial one, of course, that
was made you know, an hour or so after the murders.
The plan almost worked, They almost got away with it.
Perry left no identifying evidence behind. Lawrence had his alibi,
(31:13):
and if Perry hadn't checked into the hotel under his
own name, who knows what would have happened. Here's what
we're going to talk about next week. Even as investigators
telled the Hitman and the mastermind, why are tapping their phones?
Building their case, Lawrence was trying to pull off the
last piece of his plan, getting the one point seven
(31:36):
million dollars and his son's trust fund. Just one thing
stood in his way, well, a couple of things. Millie's sisters,
my aunts were really strategic, especially my aunty Lane. She
made sure to file a civil suit like immediately to
block my dad from receiving my brother's estate, which is
(31:58):
essentially the reason why he had them murdered in the
first place. And that became like a primary goal, even
without him being arrested, because we knew that was always
about power and control, of course, but the money he
wanted that money. Hitman is a production of I Heart
(32:26):
Radio and hit Home Media. It's produced and reported by
me Jasmine Morris. Our supervising producer is Michelle Lance. Mark
Latto is our story consultant. Executive producers are Main gesh Ha,
Tiktor and Me. Mixing by Josh Rogison, Michelle Lance and
Jacopo Penzo. Our fact checkers are Austin Thompson and Natsumi Ajisaka.
Special thanks to Andrew Goldberg, the Montgomery County States Attorney's
(32:50):
Office and the Criminal Department in Central Files at the
Montgomery County Courthouse. Our theme song by Alice McCoy in.
Additional music written and produced by the students at DIME,
powered by the Detroit Institute of Music Education,
Before this episode published, I called Tiffany Horn. I wanted
to make sure she knew what was coming. I wanted
to let her know that we begin with her brother, Trevor.
She said to me, I put my love for him
in this box in my heart and I don't open
it often because it's too painful. But she insisted he
should be seen. He deserves it. And just so you
(00:22):
know this episode of Hitman might be hard to hear listener,
discretion is advised. A blade of grass. There was this
single blade of grass on Trevor's cheek when the police
found him on the morning of March third, nineteen ninety three.
(00:44):
He was lying in his crib wearing his white and
blue Peachays. One of the nurses would later testify that
he was given a bath every evening before bed. They
were very thorough, and the nurse she knew that grass
couldn't have been thereby accident. He stayed in his wheelchair
any time he went outside. If he played, she said,
(01:06):
it was on the rug or on the quilt in
his room. The prosecutors argued that the grass had to
have come from the killer's hands, that he wrapped one
hand around the boy's nose and mouth and the other
around his track opening and left behind that blade of grass.
I came across the crime scene photos of Trevor last
(01:28):
year and I tried not to look. It almost felt disrespectful.
But this is the reality of what happened to him,
As Tiffany said, I owed him a moment of acknowledgement
of seeing him. I understand if you've been trying to
put Trevor out of your mind, if you'd rather I
tell you more about Motown or this crazy book hit man,
(01:50):
or the French publisher behind the murder manual, or maybe
you just want me to hurry up and get to
the part where they catch the killers. But anytime someone
tells me, oh, it's just to book, it's just a book,
it's just a book. I remember that a hitman entered
a quiet home in the middle of the night and
smothered an eight year old child. I remember that blade
(02:10):
of grass. It wasn't an accident. Trevor wasn't collateral. His
death was all part of the plan. It was the plan.
Trevor had to die in order for Lawrence to inherit
Trevor's money, but Millie had to die so that Lawrence
could inherit all of it. I'm Jasmine Morris from My
(02:43):
Heart Radio and Hit Home Media. This is Hitman. It
took eighteen months for detectives to complete their investigation into
the triple murder of Trevor and Millie Horn and Janice Saunders,
but it only took one day for police to establish
(03:05):
a prime suspect in a motive. Millie had seen this coming.
She knew. She was very fearful for Trevor's life. Millie's
sister Maryland, and she was also fearful for herself because
she always said, I will not die in an aeroplane crash.
If something ever happens to me, it's Lawrence Horn. And
(03:29):
all the sisters were there and we laughed about it.
We're like Millie, he's crazy, but he's not that crazy.
She actually said that to you. She said that, she said,
if anything ever happens to me, you all make sure
that Lawrence Horn is never alone with Trevor. Lawrence never
(03:51):
took responsibility for Trevor, even on the day he was born.
I mean, he didn't even show up for the birth,
so he had no connect into this child at all.
He showed no interest. My brother being sick was such
a turn off. He totally rejected him. And that was
when my mom was finally really done with my dad,
(04:15):
which is looking back, really sad for her, but I
think she knew it just was never going to go
the way she wanted it to go with him. And
so here's where I need to tell you about how
and when Trevor's life suddenly became valuable to Lawrence Horn.
(04:36):
Remember when Trevor and his twin sister, Tammiel were born
three months premature. Trevor was really sick. He had been
born with underdeveloped lungs, but by the time he was one,
he was exceeding doctor's expectations. He was doing really well.
And then one day he went in for something routine
at Children's Hospital in d C and there was some
(04:57):
kind of accident. He was without oxygen for seven or
eight minutes, leaving him with significant brain damage. They put
him in the COLMA. Yeah, you didn't give us very
much hope, and they talked to Milly about removing him
from life support. So she talked to us about it
(05:20):
and we said, Milly, you know, what's your decision, because
I said he would you know, more than a vegetable.
She still wasn't sure what she was going to do,
and so Milly went to his room and Trevor opened
his eyes, looked urd smile, and that was the answer.
(05:41):
Doctors told Milly to put Trevor in a care facility.
They said that caring for him would be too much
of a burden on her and her family. Milly refused,
here's Tiffany. I mean she learned how to be a nurse,
Like who does that? She definitely did. She knew his
care better than the nurses that she fired, and she
would fire them if they didn't do what she wanted
(06:02):
them to do. Milly made sure that Trevor had a
life the same as any other child. At a pool party,
he's in the pool. The nurse and Trevor and Millie,
they're in the pool. Halloween, he had his costume. He
got dressed up. Actually I remember too. One was a clown,
(06:25):
another one was Peter Pain. They said he would never talk.
Trevor learned to talk. He used to say I love you.
His favorite story was Three Little Pigs. He was so smart.
I would say the wolf would huff and he would puff.
He would be laughing so much. Here's John Marshall, a
(06:49):
lawyer and close family friend. He was doing better and
better and better and defining the odds, you know, Salts Corner,
but by dint of determination of his mother and sure love.
That's who Milly was. She was determined and willful. It's
(07:12):
like she never questioned what insurmountable things she had to
do to protect the ones she loved. It reminds me
of this story Maryland told me about their childhood growing
up in South Carolina. During Jim Crow, our family decided
that we would get a better education at an integrated school.
It was horrible. I just couldn't believe that people could
(07:34):
be so mean to me because of the color of
my skin. And there was this guy on the bus.
It was a white guy, and he was bigger than
me and older than me, and every day he would
push me, and one day I decided I am not
going to take that anymore. So when he pushed me,
I pushed him back, and of course he pushed me
(07:55):
down on a seat and he's beating me up. I mean,
he's really beating me up. And Millie Millie came to
my desfense. Millie stepped in and the boys stopped beating
Maryland and started in on Millie. She was badly hurt.
She had to be taken to the hospital. Her shoulder
was dislocated. She was not going to stand by it
(08:18):
and the herd or simply so That's the way she was.
She was our big sister. It wasn't until about three
years after the accident when it became clear just how
challenging and expensive it was going to be to care
for Trevor. That's when Milly decided to pursue a lawsuit
(08:40):
against Children's Hospital. John Marshall and Howard Siegel representator. Here's John.
This was not a case where this family was going
to make millions of dollars. This was a case where
whatever money that was going to be received out of
the matter was going for Trevor's use. And that was
(09:00):
Millie's goal from day one was just how do I
take care of him? So John helped the family bring
a lawsuit against Children's Hospital. I had been in touch
with Lawrence. He called and we talked about it, and
I explained to him the cases we saw. It was
at its core Millie and Trevor. They had the bond.
(09:23):
That was the emotional heart of the case. As we've
heard from Tiffany, Lawrence was barely a father to Trevor.
Even still, the lawyers felt Lawrence should be listed in
the suit. They thought it played better to a jury,
the idea that this estranged couple came together to fight
for their son. Here's Howard Siegel, John's co council. The
(09:45):
first time I ever met him was at the trial.
He made a good impression. He was a big, nice
looking guy, and Lawrence played his part. John and Howard
went back and forth with the hospitals insurance company for months.
Finally they got a settlement offer they thought was fair.
This is a really important moment, and so for the
next couple of minutes, I'm just gonna let John and
(10:06):
Howard tell you what happened next. They offered a significant
amount of money, and Millie was clear this was going
to Trevor. Every lawyer is different, but our philosophy was,
if you get to a point where you can look
at the client in the eye and say, you know,
we can't guarantee you're gonna do better, and this number
(10:28):
in this kind of a case, will if we invest
it wisely, that he will be able to be taken
care of so Milly was fine. Lawrence Horn was sitting
at council table with us, and Lawrence turned to us
and he said, that's not enough. And I turned to
(10:49):
him and I said, what do you mean that's not enough.
It turned out that Lawrence Horn through a major bomb
into the settlement. He wrote down on a yellow pad
with a red pen a million dollars times which was
the interest rate back then is a hundred thousand a year,
(11:11):
and he said, I came here expecting this for me.
I turned to him and I said, what makes you
think you're entitled to one nickel of this child's money?
And he looked at me and he said, Trevor lives
through me. I assumed he meant that because Trevor was
(11:31):
profoundly disabled and could not enjoy life, that when Lawrence
took his money and wrote down Hollywood Boulevard in a BMW,
that Trevor would be enjoying it. I was stunned. I've
just never been so shocked by anything anybody said to
me in my life. It was the first time he
(11:52):
had revealed himself, and we were floored. It had just
never been discussed that the parents were going to get
any money at all. I just never came up from
that point on. He just dug his heels in. We
took a recess. I went out in the hall with
(12:12):
John Marshall and I said, I have just looked into
the eyes of pure evil. This man scares me. It
was the way that he said it. It was chilling,
It was detached, It was matter of fact. Lawrence Horn's
only concern was what he was going to get out
(12:35):
of it. The Children's Hospital settlement came through and the
family was awarded two million dollars, with roughly half of
that going into a trust for Trevor and three dollars
(12:59):
going to Millie, which she used to buy that big
house in Silver Spring, with the whole wing devoted to
Trevor's care. Lawrence walked away with Millie's sister Maryland. He
felt that he got cheated, that he should have gotten
more money, and it was all her fault. As long
as Lawrence was working at Motown, the majority of Trevor's
(13:21):
medical bills were covered and the settlement money would go
into that trust. But then Lawrence lost his job. In
Trevor had exhausted the lifetime maximum benefits on Milly's insurance
and we had to go to court for the first
time to ask for some money to be used for
Trevor's care, which meant that every month, now six thousand
(13:42):
dollars the cost of Trevor's care was going to come
out of Trevor's one point seven million dollar trust fund.
All of this timing was because these policies had run
out and now we were cutting into Trevor's money. There
there's no accident about this timing. This was all done
(14:04):
to maximize the return to Lawrence. I remember Millie being
very wary, very agitated that something was amiss, and of
course she was right. A month later she was killed,
and as we're about to learn, Lawrence Horn had been
(14:28):
planning this for a very long time. We'll be right back.
(14:50):
When you think about Hitman, you probably imagine the ones
you've seen in movies, like John Wick, Jason Bourne, James
Bond with his double ow license to kill. They only
killed bad men, men who deserved it. The Hitman book
plays on these same tropes. The writer Rex Ferrell insists
that he's quote the last recourse in these times when
(15:12):
laws are so twisted that justice goes unserved. But in
this story, the mark was a defenseless child and two mothers.
So I know we've been jumping around a lot in
the story telling you different bits of pertinent information. But
for the rest of this episode, I'm going to walk
(15:34):
you through Lawrence's plan. This wasn't just something that was
done in a vacuum where my dad, in a crime
of passion, just murdered them, which is not okay either way.
But there was a lot of planning. There was a
lot of time that passed by within the planning. There
was money exchange. About a year before the murders, in
(15:55):
the spring of Lawrence took a trip back home to
Detroit and reconnected with family. Here he is talking about
that in a deposition. You drove to Detroit? Did you
do it one day? Yes? You know how far it
is the Detroit seven hours, five hundred miles? And where
(16:17):
did you stay in Detroit? Had a relatives? Relatives? Did
you when you were in Detroit? Tommy Turner? What else
he related to, Oh, he's my mother's sisters son. Lawrence
(16:44):
hadn't seen his cousin, Thomas Turner in twenty years. Turner
would later take immunity, but according to his testimony, Lawrence
talked about his divorce and said quote that he was
having a problem seeing his children. Turner didn't even know
that Lawrence was married or had it's until this visit,
but that's when he told Lawrence about his close friend,
(17:04):
a straight preacher and spiritual advisor. Turner drove a truck
in the occasional taxicab and he'd helped this guy drom
up business by passing out as cards and flyers that
said things like that love problem must go, get your
luck straightened out, feel good again. Don't worry. I got it.
I see where you just feel like giving up. Listen
(17:27):
at the darkest moment, there is a light. All you
need is faith in God, and get this He has
given me to give unto you. I know just what
to do for all your problems. That friend, James Edward Perry,
(17:48):
turns out they met in prison thirteen years prior before
becoming a spiritual advisor. Perry once shot at a Michigan
State trooper in an attempted bank robbery in the seventies.
Lawrence would visit his cousin more than once in the
spring of NTO, and this is around the same time
he started showing up in Maryland to see his kids.
(18:08):
Remember those recordings we'd played last episode, the ones he'd
make while driving around with his daughters. Where am I here?
Oh I got business? Well, investigators found something else on
those tapes. At one point, he recorded himself driving the
route from a daizen in Rockville, Maryland, the same one
(18:28):
Perry would later stay at, to Milly's house. He was
not only pretending to be personable or caring for his
family and spending time with his two daughters. That's Lawrence
Horns defense attorney Jeff O'Toole. It became clear that when
(18:50):
he was doing his videotaping he was he was planning
the escape route for James Perry. These trips out to
Maryland were like reconnaissance missions. And remember that moment in
our last episode when he asked his two young daughters
where Trevor's room was. Which one? Well, that's not all.
(19:18):
There was another tape where he asked Tiffany two videotape
Trevor and where his room was in the house. He
was like, well, I have a video camera. Do you
think if I show you how to use it that
you can? You know, tape Trevor and like show me
your new house. That you keep talking about and I mean,
(19:41):
obviously I'm going to do it. He's my dad. I
went right in and came right out and gave it
to him. He made it seem like this was his
way to try to learn more about his son. I
wanted him to be that dad. I wanted him to
like dig deep down and find in the love for
his child. I felt like he was so disappointed that
(20:05):
he wasn't like a normal son that it almost broke him.
So I was trying to feel sympathetic towards my dad.
I'm trying to tell him, no, it's okay, Like you know,
we've created this life and he's he's perfect. You know,
we love him. Tiffany and her dad were close at
(20:26):
one point, and he used that he definitely manipulated me.
He was just a liar, like he was just a
sick person that I felt, just this obsessive need to
like prove something or win, and he was willing to
throw everything away, even his relationship with me. And it
wasn't the last time Lawrence would use Tiffany like this.
(20:49):
A day before the murders, late at night on March one,
Tiffany got a phone call to a dorm room at
Howard University. He never called me, but he asked me
whether my mom was going to be flying out the
next morning because he wanted to talk to my sister.
And so I told him that my sister, if she
(21:12):
wasn't home, would probably be at my aunt's house. I
called my mom right after I got off the phone
with him. He was like searching for information, which I
found odd. Tiffany said, over the course of their ten
minute call, he asked her about Millie and Tammielle four
or five times. The following evening on March two, Millie
also received a call. I talked to Millie at night
(21:36):
about ten o'clock. She called to tell me guess who
called me. Lawrence called me, and she said, do you
know I was actually nice to him. I talked nice
to him for a change. So that's the last time
I talked to her. Lawrence was also asking Milly about
Tammielle's whereabouts. Here's Prosecutor Bob Dean. Lawrence made sure that Tammielle,
(22:00):
twin sister of Trevor, would not be home the night
of the killing. And you know, we had an information
that that. You know, he was careful about that, and
I don't know what that means or shows other than
the fact that you know, she didn't fit into the
plans for the inheritance. They ordered a copy of the
(22:36):
book from Palinin Press. They did it was like, oh
my god, here it all is. It was written out,
So there were many similarities that say about what was
said in this book and what was done, and some
of the evidence that they hadn't covered also matched specifics.
(22:58):
Just so you know, there's no evidence that Lawrence ever
read Hitman. In fact, there's no evidence James Perry read
it either. Investigators never found an actual copy, but they
found the Paladin Press catalog in his apartment with the
book's title circled, and they got a copy of the
check he made out to Paladin for two books, including Hitman,
though that checked it bounce. Paladin even shared the order
(23:19):
form with investigators, so they believed he ordered it. And
the similarities between rex Ferrell's manual and the murders of
Millie Horn, her son, Trevor, and Janice Saunders are difficult
to ignore. I'm going to walk you through some of those.
Now we've already told you about a few Hitman instructs,
An explicit detail with photographs how to build a homemade
(23:42):
silencer from material available in any hardware store. The silencer
is one of the most important tools a professional will
ever have. Again, we got that same actor to read
these lines. The silenced weapon, when fired will not draw attention.
Lack of adenda means more time. More time means getting
a job done right. According to the Deputy Chief Medical
(24:04):
Examiner for Maryland, Donald writes testimony, one of Janis Saunder's
gunshot wounds indicated Perry likely used a silencer. A hitman
without a gun is like a carpenter without a Hammer's
not very effective. The first weapon listed in the basic
Equipment Checklist for Beginners on page twenty one of Hitman
is an a R seven rifle, exactly what was used.
(24:27):
Hitman goes on to instruct its readers on where to
find the rifles serial number here's Bob Dean. It suggested
that you drill out the serial numbers to the weapon,
which James Perry did. But beyond obscuring the serial number,
Hitman also explains that the gun barrel needs to be
altered with a rattail file as well. Each one of
(24:48):
these items leaves its own definite mark and impression on
the shell casing, which if any shell has happened to
be left behind, can be matched to the gun under
a microscope. In the police laboratory, we found the file
in the BA back yard, the file that was used
to go into the barrel of the gun. We had
that file tested. That file had elements of ammunition on
(25:12):
the file. It's clearly consistent with rubbing through and defacing
the interior of a rifle. Hitman suggests shooting at close
range to ensure quote the desired result has been achieved.
It's best to shoot from a distance of three to
six ft. You'll not want to be at point blank
range to avoid having the victim's blood splatter you or
(25:34):
your clothing. Ballistics showed Millie and Jennie were shot from
about a foot and a half to three ft away,
aimed for the head, preferably the eye sockets. If you
are a sharp shooter. Lawrence Horns defense attorney again Jeff O'Toole,
the book suggested shooting the victims in the eye because
that was going to be the most assured way to
(25:57):
to make sure they're dead. That's an image from the
book that you just can't. You just can't let go.
And the reason Rex Ferrell recommends the a R seven
in his book, it's a gun that's easily disassembled. The
book suggested that you dismantle the gun in the silence
room and throw it along the way as you're escaping.
So they did a drag net search of these woods
(26:18):
and they found a small piece of a gun, but
it was the trigger mechanism only, which is an odd thing.
They were instructed to break the gun into many pieces
and distribute them wherever, you know, felt like it. We
had an analysis done on the pieces of the gun
(26:40):
and according to the FBI expert did he did a
rust development analysis. He felt that based upon the weather
conditions of March of that year that they had been
outside for you know, the side of the road for
for several weeks, a matter of weeks, it was clear
that this was the weapon, the weapon that was used.
(27:02):
If the hit was supposed to look like a burglary.
Messed the place up a bit, take anything of value
that you can carry concealed. There was some disheveling and
disturbance of pieces of furniture. There's a bookshelf that was overturned,
but it didn't appear that much was stolen. There were
some items that were taken from um, the purse of Mildred.
(27:23):
Of course, you can't keep anything. These items have to
be ditched, along with your work clothes and the weapon. Actually,
the day of the murder, there was a jogger who
found Mildred Horns credit cards and identification cards that had
been taken from her purse hours before. He had done
exactly what the book said to do. I've been thinking
(27:53):
a lot about accountability as I report this story. Was
the book an accomplice of sorts? The courts would later
say just that the story is a whole tangled knot
of accountability. It's like that saying it's turtles all the
way down. Lawrence was clearly the mastermind. And sometimes I'm
tempted to just look through Perry to see Lawrence the
(28:14):
hitman becomes a tool or a pawn or an instrument
to just get the job done. But it was James
Perry's hands that killed Trevor. It was his hands that
left that blade of grass. Lawrence recorded so many things
as part of his plan. The surveillance tapes, the LBI tape,
(28:34):
the one where he's standing in front of his TV,
clearly displaying the time and date, which was pretty much
the exact time of the murders. But there was one
other recording the investigators found in the search of Lawrence's apartment,
and it took everyone by surprise. You heard an excerpt
from this in our first episode. Remember this call was
made from a payphone not far from Millie's house, and
(28:56):
investigators believed it was made just hours after the murders.
It's a little hard to understand, but basically you hear
Lawrence answer the phone, and then another man we now
know to be James Perry, presumably calling to say the
job was done, all right? Then you him right right.
(29:23):
It was cryptic, but investigators believed this meant he was
going to take a photograph of Trevor to prove he'd
done his job, but the noise of Trevor's alarm was distracting.
I didn't want to go. Was this on an answering
machine machine? Remember those answering machines, And sometimes if you
(29:45):
picked up too late, it would record exactly So is
that what happened? Horn didn't mean to record it. I
don't think he did. It cuts off because actually it
comes at the very end of this answering machine tape.
It literally ran out of tape. The fact that this
tape even exists is kind of hard to believe. Lawrence's
own defense attorney Jeff O'Toole. So Lawrence was this person
(30:07):
who taped everything. He made a career of taping Stevie
Wonder and all the different people and the songs that
the Holland Brothers wrote. He knew how to tape things well. Unfortunately,
he was taping his telephone conversation when Perry called him.
That was a tape recording that was accidentally either taped
(30:28):
or certainly accidentally kept by Lawrence Horn. What did he
have to say about that tape? You know, I think
he shook his head Jasmine and said sort of. I'm
not sure we had the expression back then, but I
think he said it is what it is. I think
he he wasn't able to say that wasn't his tape.
He wasn't able to say that was not James Perry.
The tape was was really something to hold up and
(30:50):
go here it is, ladies and gentlemen. Was there a
smoking gun? Probably The second phone call that Perry made
to Horn was was a crucial one, of course, that
was made you know, an hour or so after the murders.
The plan almost worked, They almost got away with it.
Perry left no identifying evidence behind. Lawrence had his alibi,
(31:13):
and if Perry hadn't checked into the hotel under his
own name, who knows what would have happened. Here's what
we're going to talk about next week. Even as investigators
telled the Hitman and the mastermind, why are tapping their phones?
Building their case, Lawrence was trying to pull off the
last piece of his plan, getting the one point seven
(31:36):
million dollars and his son's trust fund. Just one thing
stood in his way, well, a couple of things. Millie's sisters,
my aunts were really strategic, especially my aunty Lane. She
made sure to file a civil suit like immediately to
block my dad from receiving my brother's estate, which is
(31:58):
essentially the reason why he had them murdered in the
first place. And that became like a primary goal, even
without him being arrested, because we knew that was always
about power and control, of course, but the money he
wanted that money. Hitman is a production of I Heart
(32:26):
Radio and hit Home Media. It's produced and reported by
me Jasmine Morris. Our supervising producer is Michelle Lance. Mark
Latto is our story consultant. Executive producers are Main gesh Ha,
Tiktor and Me. Mixing by Josh Rogison, Michelle Lance and
Jacopo Penzo. Our fact checkers are Austin Thompson and Natsumi Ajisaka.
Special thanks to Andrew Goldberg, the Montgomery County States Attorney's
(32:50):
Office and the Criminal Department in Central Files at the
Montgomery County Courthouse. Our theme song by Alice McCoy in.
Additional music written and produced by the students at DIME,
powered by the Detroit Institute of Music Education,
Hit Man News
Host
Jasmyn Morris
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