November 18, 2019 • 26 mins
Just over 25 years after her family was destroyed by her father, Tiffani Horn shares some haunting memories for the first time and how she’s found beauty in the ashes.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
A woman recently asked how I could hear good conscious
when an instruction book or murder. Some of this you
can figure it out without a book, and you couldn't.
Some of it is bordering on you know what, do
we really want to tell people this because it's I
feel no responsibility. I have no ethical responsibility for the
misuse of information. You know, how do you go after
(00:29):
a book? I don't care what it says. This ship
cannot be protected by the First Amendment. There will be
always someone who is agreed by the content of someone's speech.
The books published are very unlikely to be the cause
of criminal conduct, murder, mayhem. When have you? She was saying,
(00:58):
if something ever happened is to me, it's Lawrence Horne.
And we laughed about it. We're like Millie, he's crazy,
but he's not that crazy. He was with Halic. She
was in Montgomery County Police and the FBI, and he
called Lawrence right in front of you. At the time
that you married Willie Murray, did you love her? No?
(01:27):
After several years or or decades, the families that deal
with this type of horndous trauma are constantly dealing with
the fallout. It never goes away. I first thought this
was a podcast about a book, a murder manual for
(01:49):
want to be Hitman. I mean it is, But the
very first phone call I made when I started reporting
was to Tiffany Horn, Lawrence and Millie's oldest daughter. Over
the last fifteen years of making radio, I find most
people want to be heard, They want to know their
story matters, and they just like to know they'll be remembered.
(02:09):
But when I first spoke with Tiffany, she was immediately hesitant.
Actually hesitant doesn't do her reaction justice. When I started
to explain that I'd want the experience to be meaningful
for her, she just thought I was being patronizing. This
was a woman who's been through hell and some days
is still there. She had to want to do this,
and she had to know I wasn't going to burn
(02:30):
her like other journalists had. She told me she was
once on a talk show and they surprised her by
inviting a hit man on stage. Can you imagine. So
in our last episode, I want to talk about a
dynamic that's right at the core of many true crime podcasts,
the one between the journalist and a survivor. It's a
(02:52):
relationship filled with all these unexamined obligations and limitations and expectations.
It's a balancing act. Over of course of the last
two years getting to know Tiffany and learning how to
speak to her, how best to listen. This process informed
every step along the way, and We've come a very
long way from where we started. I'm Jasmine Morris from
(03:32):
My Heart Radio and hit Home Media. This is hit Man.
(03:53):
Tiffany and I had months of phone conversations before we
first met in two thousand eighteen. We'd try to meet,
but plans would fall through, and when we finally nailed
down a date, I immediately booked a flight to d C,
got a hotel room near Tiffany's home, and waited for
her there. I was excited to finally meet her, to
be able to sit down across from her, look her
in the eye, and have a conversation. After all the
(04:15):
recording equipment was set up, the furniture rearranged, she called
to say she wasn't going to make it. She was
having car troubles. I could tell she was unsure, wondering
if this was all even worth it, But she did
eventually show up, so Tiffy and let's just start with
you saying your name and like who you are in
relation to this story? Like who are you? I mean,
(04:40):
I don't know. I just feel like I'm myself. So
that's hard. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, totally.
I'd just like to know how people see themselves within. Yeah,
that's the thing. I have different facets and yeah, it's
kind of the perfect example of how our relationship evolved.
I'd ask a question, she'd question it, but we'd eventually
find our way. Why are you sitting here with me today?
(05:06):
I did do this podcast because I felt like there
were some things that I've never had a chance to
talk about, and I can't have these conversations really with anyone.
One of the things she's told me over and over
is how lonely it is to be her. I think
that's why Tiffany ultimately did talk to me. She hadn't
had anyone listened before, really listen. Pushed through her apprehension.
(05:28):
Anxiety and grief sometimes disguised as anger. You become almost
like a pariah, and and it's too painful for people
to want to deal with. So even if you were
the victim, you kind of become ostracized and on the
outside of just society in some ways. But even after
Tiffany agreed to talk to me, she let me in
(05:48):
a little and then pull away. At one point, after
one of our interviews, I was walking her to her
car and she seemed nervous. She then stopped me in
the parking garage, turned to me and said, I have
to ask you something, point blank, so direct, and then
she asked me if I was related to the author
of hit Man. I was taken it back. It sounds
(06:10):
far fetched until you think about the manipulation she's experienced
in her life, mostly at the hands of her own father,
Lawrence Horn, the man behind so many of Motown's greatest hits,
who also engineered a hit on his own family. My
kids have a joke and they say, I think everyone's
a psychopath, and that has to do with your experiences
(06:31):
with your dad. Yeah, the gift that keeps giving. Try
to remember everything that happened around the murders, like when
detectives believe Lawrence was trying to scout his ex wife's
house he wasn't allowed in, and he was asking which
room Trevor slept in, which one of right up there.
(07:02):
Even the night before the murders, he called Tiffany trying
to get information on where her mom and sister would be.
He put this on his own daughter, and it's a
lot to carry. I had been so terrified of that
man that he would come after me, even in ways
like maybe hiring someone to pretend to be a boyfriend.
I mean, I had fantasies like this, So it was
(07:24):
really hard for me to trust a lot of people.
And if I felt that they did anything weird around
my family, I was I was done with them because
I just I didn't know how far he would go.
In the years after the murders, Tiffany really struggled. There's
(07:45):
times that I've been just at the end of my robe.
I wouldn't say suicidal, but there were times when I
was really close to it, especially like two years ago,
like it was bad. Having my kids saved me. They
were my angels. They made my life so fulfilling even
with all the pain. Tiffany tries every day to rise
(08:07):
above what's happened to her. But despite all the trauma
she's endured, this did not break her, and this next
story proves that in the spring of two thousand twelve,
sixteen years after Lawrence Horn had been convicted, Tiffany discovered
that her dad had been transferred to a maximum security
prison five minutes away from her house in Maryland. She'd
(08:29):
driven by this prison so many times and wondered if
he was there. One day, a family friend who ministered
at the prison confirmed her hunch. Tiffany doesn't trust people,
but she does seem to trust the universe. She looks
for cues and acts on them. So I felt like
that was a sign. I was like, Okay, I'm gonna
have to go up there. After stalling for two years,
(08:52):
she finally made that five minute drive. I sat in
the parking lot and just like, can I do this?
Do I really have the strength to do this? And
I felt like, you know what, you're here, It's not
an accident that this is so close to your home.
She sat there for what she says felt like an eternity.
Then she pulled herself out of her seat, walked into
the facility and tried to find her dad. There were
(09:17):
so many demons and so many things that I had
been battling, so much rage that had been building inside me.
It was important for me to to let that go
and to face him. I wanted to really settle with
him and look him in his eye and also just
see my dad again, like I wanted to be that
little girl that I used to be and just look
at him that way instead of as this monster. Tiffany
(09:41):
speaks so highly of her father. Back then, he told
her how to listen to music, they'd go to movies
together and take ski trips. And She's not the only
one who remembers Lawrence this way. Everyone I spoke with
who worked with him at Motown describe him as this charismatic, funny,
quiet and kind man. It's hard to see him as
the same person. So as Tiffany was telling me this story,
(10:02):
I was at first in awe of her. I mean,
the amount of courage it must have taken it is
just astounding. Second, I was hoping the story would end
with some sense of closure for her. She'd worked with
a restorative justice and reconciliation program in Maryland, also known
as Victim of Fender Dialogue, and had the support of
a therapist, but when she visited him this time, she
(10:23):
was going to be alone with him. There were no therapists,
no counselors. It was just the two of them, like
the old days. He was still in a wheelchair. He
looked even worse. His glasses were askewed. I think he
had like tape on his glasses. I mean, it just
it broke my heart. Lawrence was sick, he'd been battling cancer.
(10:45):
A flood of empathy washed over me, and I just
I felt bad for him. I did. I felt instantaneously.
It's like, wow, this is awful, you know, and this
is really what it comes down to. This is this
is what happened to you because of the choices you
made and you didn't have to go down that road.
(11:05):
But instead of feeling like satisfaction, I felt horrible. I
really wanted to talk to him in a kind and
gentle way, like I wasn't coming at him aggressively or angry.
That wasn't what I was there for. I just said,
you know, I want you to know I forgive you.
You told him that you forgave him. Yeah, did he like?
(11:26):
He teared up a little bit. He did. We had
some moments. One of the first things he said was
that he owed me a debt, and a lot of
it seemed like rambling, but I think that was kind
of his way of admitting that he had taken something
from me and my sister. There was hope for a
(11:47):
few minutes in the Hollywood version of this story. Maybe
Lawrence gets emotional, Maybe he finally owns up to the
pain he's caused. Maybe the unconditional love of a daughter
proves overwhelming even for him. But this is in Hollywood.
It's a prison in Maryland. He went into the manipulations
and the denials, and he said things that he knew
(12:10):
would be hurtful. I think he made a dig at
my mother to like everyone thought she was so beautiful,
but I didn't think that it was awful, and I
just I was like, this is just a sick man.
And he maintained his innocence until he died, right, And
he really couldn't believe that I believe that he did it.
And he even said to me, how could you think
I'd do that to your brother. While Lawrence didn't give
(12:34):
Tiffany what I hoped he'd give her, she did come
away with something. I also had to be honest with
myself about who this man was, and that the man
of my childhood, the father of my childhood. You know,
this larger than life character. This superhero maybe never even existed.
(12:55):
It must be so complicated also loving someone who could
do something like that. But it's taught me a lot
about love, that you can love people even if they've
hurt you. It actually makes you the better person because
you're loving unconditionally. Lawrence Horn died a few years later
(13:18):
in two thousand seventeen while serving his sentence in just
a prison. But even with her father's death, despite her
many attempts to connect with him beforehand, this is just
one part of Tiffany's story that will never be resolved.
It's just not that easy. We'll be right back resolution.
(13:56):
That's what this is all about, right In a lot
of true crime story endings are satisfying, almost to a fault.
The investigation wraps up, the bad guys caught, justice has served,
the end things are resolved. Over the last two years,
Tiffany has shared so much and been so vulnerable with me,
So I found myself wanting to sort of honor her
(14:18):
with this podcast. I interviewed and got back in touch
with lots of people from her past, those who had
a hand in the murder investigations, her dad's former motown colleagues,
lawyers who fought alongside her family. I even answered this
unanswerable question of who wrote the book that started all
of this, And at the same time, I was constantly
hoping for resolution in a situation that just can't be resolved.
(14:41):
Tiffany's stories, her traumas, there's no end to them. Tiffany's
grief is still so present in her life, and certain
months are really hard for her. March is always tough,
the month her brother and mother were killed. November brings
her mom's birthday. In our first phone call, I told
(15:03):
Tiffany that I didn't want this podcast to be about
Lawrence Horn. I wanted it to be about the people
he heard. Tiffany was eighteen years old at the time
of the murders. When we started talking, she was forty three,
the same age her mom was when she was killed.
I'm actually forty four, and the fact that I'm this
age is because I outlived my mom. On my birthday,
(15:26):
I kind of had a moment where I felt like, Wow,
I'm here. I'm literally like older than my mother ever was.
Tiffany and I talked a lot about her mom. I
really wanted to get to know Millie through Tiffany and
her stories and to bring her to life a little
bit in this podcast. And one of the things I
learned along the way was that Tiffany's relationship with her
(15:48):
mom wasn't simple either. Tiffany says she has a strong
personality like her mom Millie did, so they'd often butt
heads when she was a teenager. We were starting to
understand each other more as I got old her. You know,
I had gone to college. She was proud of her daughter,
her firstborn. They'd just begun to get close again right
around the time Milly was murdered, which makes this next
(16:10):
story even more heartbreaking. I was a college student, so
we would be up really late at night. I think
it was probably one in the morning. The boy that
I was dating at the time, we were on the
phone and we got into a huge fight, so he
hung up on me. Everybody would be on a speed
dial that you talked to all the time. This was
(16:30):
the big thing in but I mistakenly touched the number
that would speed down my mother because it was dark.
I was crying. I was upset. This was March second,
the night Millie was killed. So I called my mom
accidentally and I don't realize until she answers the phone
in a like a really groggy, sleepy voice, but also
(16:52):
with concern. And so I told her, I'm sorry, like,
I didn't mean to call you. I got in a
fight with the guy was dating. And she's like, oh,
I'm sorry, you know, but it will be okay. And
I'm like, well, go back to bed. I know you
have to get up for work in a few hours.
I'm sorry. I feel bad for calling you, and she
was really nice about it, um and hung up the phone.
(17:14):
Tiffany was the last person to speak with her mom
because this phone call happened within an hour or so
of the murders. I sometimes used to wonder was he
already in the house, Like when I called, was he
in the house already? I mean, it's it's just it's
awful and it's nightmare inducing. And I used to think, God,
(17:36):
I wish I could have done something, But what could
I have done? This was really hard for Tiffany to
talk about. It didn't even come up until our final interview,
and it was the only time during many of our
interviews where she got emotional. It was clear this memory
still haunts her. There's also something else that kind of
(17:58):
eats away at her. It's been to a five years
and my sister and I have not been able to
organize scattering her ashes. I've actually carried my ashes with
me to every place I've lived in the last twenty
five years. In the summer of after the Children's hospital settlement,
Milly decided to take a trip to St. Martin and
(18:18):
she brought her family with her, and so it was
kind of like a girl's trip for her sisters and
their daughters, only it was all women. You know. We
had a great time. It was like three or four
days on this island. They would shop and my mom
treated herself to tennis bracelet, and she felt kind of
guilty about it, and I remember saying, no, you deserve
it because she had gone through all those years of
(18:39):
you know, the court case, which is you children's hospital,
just caring for my brother. I felt like she deserved it.
Tiffany still has that tennis bracelet. And while it didn't
seem like it at first, this trip ended up being
far more important than Tiffany or her aunt's even realized
there was. At one point we were there and I
think she just felt really at peace and she said,
(19:02):
if I was to ever die, I want you to
bring my ashes back here because I love this place.
She was very intentional about that, that's what she wanted,
and my sister was really young at the time, as
she even remembers her saying that. Last year, Tiffany told
me she'd like to go back to St. Martin and
fulfill her mother's wishes. It had been twenty five years
(19:25):
since her mother's death and it just felt right. A
few months later, she called me and said she happened
to be looking up plane tickets and found one that
was pretty cheap. She wanted to recreate that girl's trip
her mother planned and booked two tickets, one for herself
and one for her daughter, Maria. I was excited for
Tiffany well, I knew it would be better sweet. This
(19:47):
felt like a moment where maybe she could find some resolution,
something could come to an end, And so we sent
them with a microphone to document the trip, and then
the night they were scheduled to fly out my phone
rang I could tell him immediately something was wrong. Tiffany
had tried to open her mother's urn and realized it
was sealed shut. There was no way she could get
(20:08):
it open. She had been kind of ambivalent about doing
this all along, wondering if she wanted to or even
could do it, so she took this as another sign
she wasn't ready, but I told her she should still
go show Maria the island sco about a spot for
when the time is right. So they went and they
retraced Tiffany's steps with her mom or she bought that
(20:30):
tennis bracelet. They went to the beach and Maria got
to learn some new things about her grandmother. And then
on their last day there, this is pretty I think
this might be a nice place for us to do it. Yeah,
I think this is a good spot. Tiffany and Maria
(20:54):
also recorded on the car ride home from the airport,
and when I listened to this after she sent me
the recordings, it sounded almost like a eulogy for her mom,
a memorial. Twenty five years later, I realized life is fleeting,
and it's important to do what makes you happy, what
really makes your family happy. Just being a single mother
(21:17):
of three kids, it is hard, but having a special
needs sin and then she was able to take some
time to enjoy herself. She didn't care what people thought
and That's what I kind of lived my life by, like,
I don't care what people think, because you can't get
that time back and nough. Tiffany never got to know
(21:37):
her mother as an adult. There's so much that she
absorbed as a kid. She's applying to her life now.
She's a person who really enjoys life, traveling, spending time
with her family, and building her career. Most of our
phone conversations involve a lot of laughter. One of my
favorite scriptures is Isaiah sixty one three and they Sickly.
(22:00):
It says God gives us beauty for ashes, and I
honestly feel like the ashes of my family being ruined
that my dad created. My sister and I were able
to take those ashes and create something beautiful. And we're
still creating something beautiful to honor our brother and our mom.
(22:20):
In one of our earlier episodes, I told you I'd
called Tiffany to let her know we were focusing on
her brother, Trevor, and she told 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. I mean,
a hit man broke into their quiet home in the
middle of the night, and smothered an eight year old child.
(22:41):
It's really the unthinkable. I could never quite capture the
full horror of what happened to him. But this was
Tiffany's reality, this was her family, and even though it's
so hard for her, she insisted, he deserves to be seen.
He deserves to be remembered. I do tell people that
have losses, and it doesn't really matter how the loss happened.
(23:02):
The loss is. The loss is. You're going to always
grieve the these people that you love. It's a process.
I grieve sometimes really hard some days, even all these
years later, years later. I just want people to know
that's okay, Like there's not a time limit. There isn't.
I don't think I'll ever stop grieving my mom and
my brother never, but you can remember the love that
(23:28):
they gave you and just try to maybe turn that
around to you pouring love into the ones that are
with you right there. You hope you'll see them again,
but you also have their presence, Like my mom comes
to me in dreams. I have dreams also about my brother.
You know. I see things and my kids that remind
me of both of them, and those are great things.
(23:53):
One of the things Tiffany told me while making this
podcast was that she wanted to inspire other women, especially
Black women, who have gone through horrific trauma and are struggling.
She said, there's a light at the end of the
tunnel and God has more in store for us. Tiffany
wants to give hope to people, something she didn't have
twenty six years ago. Maybe that's the opposite of hit Man,
(24:17):
a book that taught people how to hurt people, And
maybe that is a kind of resolution. After all, she's
shared her story, all of it with you, millions of people.
Maybe that means she doesn't have to hold it all
by herself anymore. At least that's my hope. All of
this stuff that's lived in her head for so long
(24:38):
can now live here in this podcast, allowing her to
set it down for just a minute. Yeah. Hitman is
(25:20):
a production of I Heart Radio and hit Home Media
that's produced and reported by me Jasmine Morris. Our supervising
producer is Michelle Lance. Mark Lotto is our story consultant.
Executive producers, our main guest at Tikor and me. Mixing
by Michelle Lance and Josh Ferguson. Our fact checker is
now sumi Ajisaka. Special thanks to Tristan McNeil, Andrew Goldberg,
(25:41):
Michael Garofolo, Kendall Waldman and Nathan Morris, and to Michael Blend,
Will Pearson, Jerry Rowland, connal Byrne and Chuck Bryant Her
Believing in the show 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 to time
A woman recently asked how I could hear good conscious
when an instruction book or murder. Some of this you
can figure it out without a book, and you couldn't.
Some of it is bordering on you know what, do
we really want to tell people this because it's I
feel no responsibility. I have no ethical responsibility for the
misuse of information. You know, how do you go after
(00:29):
a book? I don't care what it says. This ship
cannot be protected by the First Amendment. There will be
always someone who is agreed by the content of someone's speech.
The books published are very unlikely to be the cause
of criminal conduct, murder, mayhem. When have you? She was saying,
(00:58):
if something ever happened is to me, it's Lawrence Horne.
And we laughed about it. We're like Millie, he's crazy,
but he's not that crazy. He was with Halic. She
was in Montgomery County Police and the FBI, and he
called Lawrence right in front of you. At the time
that you married Willie Murray, did you love her? No?
(01:27):
After several years or or decades, the families that deal
with this type of horndous trauma are constantly dealing with
the fallout. It never goes away. I first thought this
was a podcast about a book, a murder manual for
(01:49):
want to be Hitman. I mean it is, But the
very first phone call I made when I started reporting
was to Tiffany Horn, Lawrence and Millie's oldest daughter. Over
the last fifteen years of making radio, I find most
people want to be heard, They want to know their
story matters, and they just like to know they'll be remembered.
(02:09):
But when I first spoke with Tiffany, she was immediately hesitant.
Actually hesitant doesn't do her reaction justice. When I started
to explain that I'd want the experience to be meaningful
for her, she just thought I was being patronizing. This
was a woman who's been through hell and some days
is still there. She had to want to do this,
and she had to know I wasn't going to burn
(02:30):
her like other journalists had. She told me she was
once on a talk show and they surprised her by
inviting a hit man on stage. Can you imagine. So
in our last episode, I want to talk about a
dynamic that's right at the core of many true crime podcasts,
the one between the journalist and a survivor. It's a
(02:52):
relationship filled with all these unexamined obligations and limitations and expectations.
It's a balancing act. Over of course of the last
two years getting to know Tiffany and learning how to
speak to her, how best to listen. This process informed
every step along the way, and We've come a very
long way from where we started. I'm Jasmine Morris from
(03:32):
My Heart Radio and hit Home Media. This is hit Man.
(03:53):
Tiffany and I had months of phone conversations before we
first met in two thousand eighteen. We'd try to meet,
but plans would fall through, and when we finally nailed
down a date, I immediately booked a flight to d C,
got a hotel room near Tiffany's home, and waited for
her there. I was excited to finally meet her, to
be able to sit down across from her, look her
in the eye, and have a conversation. After all the
(04:15):
recording equipment was set up, the furniture rearranged, she called
to say she wasn't going to make it. She was
having car troubles. I could tell she was unsure, wondering
if this was all even worth it, But she did
eventually show up, so Tiffy and let's just start with
you saying your name and like who you are in
relation to this story? Like who are you? I mean,
(04:40):
I don't know. I just feel like I'm myself. So
that's hard. Do you see what I'm saying? Yeah, totally.
I'd just like to know how people see themselves within. Yeah,
that's the thing. I have different facets and yeah, it's
kind of the perfect example of how our relationship evolved.
I'd ask a question, she'd question it, but we'd eventually
find our way. Why are you sitting here with me today?
(05:06):
I did do this podcast because I felt like there
were some things that I've never had a chance to
talk about, and I can't have these conversations really with anyone.
One of the things she's told me over and over
is how lonely it is to be her. I think
that's why Tiffany ultimately did talk to me. She hadn't
had anyone listened before, really listen. Pushed through her apprehension.
(05:28):
Anxiety and grief sometimes disguised as anger. You become almost
like a pariah, and and it's too painful for people
to want to deal with. So even if you were
the victim, you kind of become ostracized and on the
outside of just society in some ways. But even after
Tiffany agreed to talk to me, she let me in
(05:48):
a little and then pull away. At one point, after
one of our interviews, I was walking her to her
car and she seemed nervous. She then stopped me in
the parking garage, turned to me and said, I have
to ask you something, point blank, so direct, and then
she asked me if I was related to the author
of hit Man. I was taken it back. It sounds
(06:10):
far fetched until you think about the manipulation she's experienced
in her life, mostly at the hands of her own father,
Lawrence Horn, the man behind so many of Motown's greatest hits,
who also engineered a hit on his own family. My
kids have a joke and they say, I think everyone's
a psychopath, and that has to do with your experiences
(06:31):
with your dad. Yeah, the gift that keeps giving. Try
to remember everything that happened around the murders, like when
detectives believe Lawrence was trying to scout his ex wife's
house he wasn't allowed in, and he was asking which
room Trevor slept in, which one of right up there.
(07:02):
Even the night before the murders, he called Tiffany trying
to get information on where her mom and sister would be.
He put this on his own daughter, and it's a
lot to carry. I had been so terrified of that
man that he would come after me, even in ways
like maybe hiring someone to pretend to be a boyfriend.
I mean, I had fantasies like this, So it was
(07:24):
really hard for me to trust a lot of people.
And if I felt that they did anything weird around
my family, I was I was done with them because
I just I didn't know how far he would go.
In the years after the murders, Tiffany really struggled. There's
(07:45):
times that I've been just at the end of my robe.
I wouldn't say suicidal, but there were times when I
was really close to it, especially like two years ago,
like it was bad. Having my kids saved me. They
were my angels. They made my life so fulfilling even
with all the pain. Tiffany tries every day to rise
(08:07):
above what's happened to her. But despite all the trauma
she's endured, this did not break her, and this next
story proves that in the spring of two thousand twelve,
sixteen years after Lawrence Horn had been convicted, Tiffany discovered
that her dad had been transferred to a maximum security
prison five minutes away from her house in Maryland. She'd
(08:29):
driven by this prison so many times and wondered if
he was there. One day, a family friend who ministered
at the prison confirmed her hunch. Tiffany doesn't trust people,
but she does seem to trust the universe. She looks
for cues and acts on them. So I felt like
that was a sign. I was like, Okay, I'm gonna
have to go up there. After stalling for two years,
(08:52):
she finally made that five minute drive. I sat in
the parking lot and just like, can I do this?
Do I really have the strength to do this? And
I felt like, you know what, you're here, It's not
an accident that this is so close to your home.
She sat there for what she says felt like an eternity.
Then she pulled herself out of her seat, walked into
the facility and tried to find her dad. There were
(09:17):
so many demons and so many things that I had
been battling, so much rage that had been building inside me.
It was important for me to to let that go
and to face him. I wanted to really settle with
him and look him in his eye and also just
see my dad again, like I wanted to be that
little girl that I used to be and just look
at him that way instead of as this monster. Tiffany
(09:41):
speaks so highly of her father. Back then, he told
her how to listen to music, they'd go to movies
together and take ski trips. And She's not the only
one who remembers Lawrence this way. Everyone I spoke with
who worked with him at Motown describe him as this charismatic, funny,
quiet and kind man. It's hard to see him as
the same person. So as Tiffany was telling me this story,
(10:02):
I was at first in awe of her. I mean,
the amount of courage it must have taken it is
just astounding. Second, I was hoping the story would end
with some sense of closure for her. She'd worked with
a restorative justice and reconciliation program in Maryland, also known
as Victim of Fender Dialogue, and had the support of
a therapist, but when she visited him this time, she
(10:23):
was going to be alone with him. There were no therapists,
no counselors. It was just the two of them, like
the old days. He was still in a wheelchair. He
looked even worse. His glasses were askewed. I think he
had like tape on his glasses. I mean, it just
it broke my heart. Lawrence was sick, he'd been battling cancer.
(10:45):
A flood of empathy washed over me, and I just
I felt bad for him. I did. I felt instantaneously.
It's like, wow, this is awful, you know, and this
is really what it comes down to. This is this
is what happened to you because of the choices you
made and you didn't have to go down that road.
(11:05):
But instead of feeling like satisfaction, I felt horrible. I
really wanted to talk to him in a kind and
gentle way, like I wasn't coming at him aggressively or angry.
That wasn't what I was there for. I just said,
you know, I want you to know I forgive you.
You told him that you forgave him. Yeah, did he like?
(11:26):
He teared up a little bit. He did. We had
some moments. One of the first things he said was
that he owed me a debt, and a lot of
it seemed like rambling, but I think that was kind
of his way of admitting that he had taken something
from me and my sister. There was hope for a
(11:47):
few minutes in the Hollywood version of this story. Maybe
Lawrence gets emotional, Maybe he finally owns up to the
pain he's caused. Maybe the unconditional love of a daughter
proves overwhelming even for him. But this is in Hollywood.
It's a prison in Maryland. He went into the manipulations
and the denials, and he said things that he knew
(12:10):
would be hurtful. I think he made a dig at
my mother to like everyone thought she was so beautiful,
but I didn't think that it was awful, and I
just I was like, this is just a sick man.
And he maintained his innocence until he died, right, And
he really couldn't believe that I believe that he did it.
And he even said to me, how could you think
I'd do that to your brother. While Lawrence didn't give
(12:34):
Tiffany what I hoped he'd give her, she did come
away with something. I also had to be honest with
myself about who this man was, and that the man
of my childhood, the father of my childhood. You know,
this larger than life character. This superhero maybe never even existed.
(12:55):
It must be so complicated also loving someone who could
do something like that. But it's taught me a lot
about love, that you can love people even if they've
hurt you. It actually makes you the better person because
you're loving unconditionally. Lawrence Horn died a few years later
(13:18):
in two thousand seventeen while serving his sentence in just
a prison. But even with her father's death, despite her
many attempts to connect with him beforehand, this is just
one part of Tiffany's story that will never be resolved.
It's just not that easy. We'll be right back resolution.
(13:56):
That's what this is all about, right In a lot
of true crime story endings are satisfying, almost to a fault.
The investigation wraps up, the bad guys caught, justice has served,
the end things are resolved. Over the last two years,
Tiffany has shared so much and been so vulnerable with me,
So I found myself wanting to sort of honor her
(14:18):
with this podcast. I interviewed and got back in touch
with lots of people from her past, those who had
a hand in the murder investigations, her dad's former motown colleagues,
lawyers who fought alongside her family. I even answered this
unanswerable question of who wrote the book that started all
of this, And at the same time, I was constantly
hoping for resolution in a situation that just can't be resolved.
(14:41):
Tiffany's stories, her traumas, there's no end to them. Tiffany's
grief is still so present in her life, and certain
months are really hard for her. March is always tough,
the month her brother and mother were killed. November brings
her mom's birthday. In our first phone call, I told
(15:03):
Tiffany that I didn't want this podcast to be about
Lawrence Horn. I wanted it to be about the people
he heard. Tiffany was eighteen years old at the time
of the murders. When we started talking, she was forty three,
the same age her mom was when she was killed.
I'm actually forty four, and the fact that I'm this
age is because I outlived my mom. On my birthday,
(15:26):
I kind of had a moment where I felt like, Wow,
I'm here. I'm literally like older than my mother ever was.
Tiffany and I talked a lot about her mom. I
really wanted to get to know Millie through Tiffany and
her stories and to bring her to life a little
bit in this podcast. And one of the things I
learned along the way was that Tiffany's relationship with her
(15:48):
mom wasn't simple either. Tiffany says she has a strong
personality like her mom Millie did, so they'd often butt
heads when she was a teenager. We were starting to
understand each other more as I got old her. You know,
I had gone to college. She was proud of her daughter,
her firstborn. They'd just begun to get close again right
around the time Milly was murdered, which makes this next
(16:10):
story even more heartbreaking. I was a college student, so
we would be up really late at night. I think
it was probably one in the morning. The boy that
I was dating at the time, we were on the
phone and we got into a huge fight, so he
hung up on me. Everybody would be on a speed
dial that you talked to all the time. This was
(16:30):
the big thing in but I mistakenly touched the number
that would speed down my mother because it was dark.
I was crying. I was upset. This was March second,
the night Millie was killed. So I called my mom
accidentally and I don't realize until she answers the phone
in a like a really groggy, sleepy voice, but also
(16:52):
with concern. And so I told her, I'm sorry, like,
I didn't mean to call you. I got in a
fight with the guy was dating. And she's like, oh,
I'm sorry, you know, but it will be okay. And
I'm like, well, go back to bed. I know you
have to get up for work in a few hours.
I'm sorry. I feel bad for calling you, and she
was really nice about it, um and hung up the phone.
(17:14):
Tiffany was the last person to speak with her mom
because this phone call happened within an hour or so
of the murders. I sometimes used to wonder was he
already in the house, Like when I called, was he
in the house already? I mean, it's it's just it's
awful and it's nightmare inducing. And I used to think, God,
(17:36):
I wish I could have done something, But what could
I have done? This was really hard for Tiffany to
talk about. It didn't even come up until our final interview,
and it was the only time during many of our
interviews where she got emotional. It was clear this memory
still haunts her. There's also something else that kind of
(17:58):
eats away at her. It's been to a five years
and my sister and I have not been able to
organize scattering her ashes. I've actually carried my ashes with
me to every place I've lived in the last twenty
five years. In the summer of after the Children's hospital settlement,
Milly decided to take a trip to St. Martin and
(18:18):
she brought her family with her, and so it was
kind of like a girl's trip for her sisters and
their daughters, only it was all women. You know. We
had a great time. It was like three or four
days on this island. They would shop and my mom
treated herself to tennis bracelet, and she felt kind of
guilty about it, and I remember saying, no, you deserve
it because she had gone through all those years of
(18:39):
you know, the court case, which is you children's hospital,
just caring for my brother. I felt like she deserved it.
Tiffany still has that tennis bracelet. And while it didn't
seem like it at first, this trip ended up being
far more important than Tiffany or her aunt's even realized
there was. At one point we were there and I
think she just felt really at peace and she said,
(19:02):
if I was to ever die, I want you to
bring my ashes back here because I love this place.
She was very intentional about that, that's what she wanted,
and my sister was really young at the time, as
she even remembers her saying that. Last year, Tiffany told
me she'd like to go back to St. Martin and
fulfill her mother's wishes. It had been twenty five years
(19:25):
since her mother's death and it just felt right. A
few months later, she called me and said she happened
to be looking up plane tickets and found one that
was pretty cheap. She wanted to recreate that girl's trip
her mother planned and booked two tickets, one for herself
and one for her daughter, Maria. I was excited for
Tiffany well, I knew it would be better sweet. This
(19:47):
felt like a moment where maybe she could find some resolution,
something could come to an end, And so we sent
them with a microphone to document the trip, and then
the night they were scheduled to fly out my phone
rang I could tell him immediately something was wrong. Tiffany
had tried to open her mother's urn and realized it
was sealed shut. There was no way she could get
(20:08):
it open. She had been kind of ambivalent about doing
this all along, wondering if she wanted to or even
could do it, so she took this as another sign
she wasn't ready, but I told her she should still
go show Maria the island sco about a spot for
when the time is right. So they went and they
retraced Tiffany's steps with her mom or she bought that
(20:30):
tennis bracelet. They went to the beach and Maria got
to learn some new things about her grandmother. And then
on their last day there, this is pretty I think
this might be a nice place for us to do it. Yeah,
I think this is a good spot. Tiffany and Maria
(20:54):
also recorded on the car ride home from the airport,
and when I listened to this after she sent me
the recordings, it sounded almost like a eulogy for her mom,
a memorial. Twenty five years later, I realized life is fleeting,
and it's important to do what makes you happy, what
really makes your family happy. Just being a single mother
(21:17):
of three kids, it is hard, but having a special
needs sin and then she was able to take some
time to enjoy herself. She didn't care what people thought
and That's what I kind of lived my life by, like,
I don't care what people think, because you can't get
that time back and nough. Tiffany never got to know
(21:37):
her mother as an adult. There's so much that she
absorbed as a kid. She's applying to her life now.
She's a person who really enjoys life, traveling, spending time
with her family, and building her career. Most of our
phone conversations involve a lot of laughter. One of my
favorite scriptures is Isaiah sixty one three and they Sickly.
(22:00):
It says God gives us beauty for ashes, and I
honestly feel like the ashes of my family being ruined
that my dad created. My sister and I were able
to take those ashes and create something beautiful. And we're
still creating something beautiful to honor our brother and our mom.
(22:20):
In one of our earlier episodes, I told you I'd
called Tiffany to let her know we were focusing on
her brother, Trevor, and she told 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. I mean,
a hit man broke into their quiet home in the
middle of the night, and smothered an eight year old child.
(22:41):
It's really the unthinkable. I could never quite capture the
full horror of what happened to him. But this was
Tiffany's reality, this was her family, and even though it's
so hard for her, she insisted, he deserves to be seen.
He deserves to be remembered. I do tell people that
have losses, and it doesn't really matter how the loss happened.
(23:02):
The loss is. The loss is. You're going to always
grieve the these people that you love. It's a process.
I grieve sometimes really hard some days, even all these
years later, years later. I just want people to know
that's okay, Like there's not a time limit. There isn't.
I don't think I'll ever stop grieving my mom and
my brother never, but you can remember the love that
(23:28):
they gave you and just try to maybe turn that
around to you pouring love into the ones that are
with you right there. You hope you'll see them again,
but you also have their presence, Like my mom comes
to me in dreams. I have dreams also about my brother.
You know. I see things and my kids that remind
me of both of them, and those are great things.
(23:53):
One of the things Tiffany told me while making this
podcast was that she wanted to inspire other women, especially
Black women, who have gone through horrific trauma and are struggling.
She said, there's a light at the end of the
tunnel and God has more in store for us. Tiffany
wants to give hope to people, something she didn't have
twenty six years ago. Maybe that's the opposite of hit Man,
(24:17):
a book that taught people how to hurt people, And
maybe that is a kind of resolution. After all, she's
shared her story, all of it with you, millions of people.
Maybe that means she doesn't have to hold it all
by herself anymore. At least that's my hope. All of
this stuff that's lived in her head for so long
(24:38):
can now live here in this podcast, allowing her to
set it down for just a minute. Yeah. Hitman is
(25:20):
a production of I Heart Radio and hit Home Media
that's produced and reported by me Jasmine Morris. Our supervising
producer is Michelle Lance. Mark Lotto is our story consultant.
Executive producers, our main guest at Tikor and me. Mixing
by Michelle Lance and Josh Ferguson. Our fact checker is
now sumi Ajisaka. Special thanks to Tristan McNeil, Andrew Goldberg,
(25:41):
Michael Garofolo, Kendall Waldman and Nathan Morris, and to Michael Blend,
Will Pearson, Jerry Rowland, connal Byrne and Chuck Bryant Her
Believing in the show 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 to time
Hit Man News
Host
Jasmyn Morris
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