September 7, 2019 • 31 mins
Lawrence Horn is poised to inherit his son's $1.7 million estate, but Millie's surviving family makes moves to block him, using Maryland's Slayer's Rule. Meanwhile, the concurrent criminal investigation tickles the wires.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Would you raise your right handswer do you soundly declaring
a firm and the families of Burdery that the testimony
you should give should be the truth, though truths about
the truth? I do. You've heard short excerpts from this
deposition in previous episodes, and I told you i'd explain
it later. Well, that's what we're gonna do now. And
(00:23):
that term deposition is going to come up a lot,
So for those who aren't sure what it means, just
know that it's testimony taken under oath to be used
as evidence in a court case. How could you say
you name? Please, Sir Lawrence Thomas Horn. I'm going to
be asking you a series of questions during this deposition.
(00:44):
Lawrence Horne sat down for this deposition at one am
on July six at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Maryland.
Do you have any questions about that Millie Horne's two
sisters and her daughter Tiffany had filed the civil suit
to keep him from inheriting his son's one point seven
million dollar estate. Did you ever have any discussions or
(01:07):
were you present at any discussions about what would happen
to Trevor's estate if Millie died. If Millie Millie died, Yes,
if Millie and Trevor died, Okay, say that again. Now,
any discussions of what would happen to Trevor's estate if
(01:27):
Millian Trevor died. Did I have any discussions? Yes? This
deposition is stunning to listen to his tone, the way
he takes his time in answering certain questions, the way
he dodges others. Lawrence would sit through two days of
this in pursuit of Trevor's estate. We thought we had
(01:49):
done well for this family. That's Attorney John Marshall. He
helped win that settlement money, and yet we created the
monster by doing well. I don't think any of us
regret what we did. It's just you don't know what
people are capable of. Marshall referred Millie's family to Attorney
(02:11):
Glenn Cooper, whose voice you here questioning Lawrence on the tape,
and his co council Trish Weaver. Within the week that
the murders had occurred, Millie's sisters Elaine and Maryland came
to the firm and they basically said, you know, they
firmly believed that Lawrence Horn was responsible for the murder
(02:32):
of their sister and their nephew, as well as Janie Saunders.
The family started this process ten days after the murders
because there was a sense of urgency here. It was
the family's concern that he would try to himself get
control of the estate, distribute the money to himself, and
you know, by the time something happened down the road,
(02:54):
it would be too late and the money would be gone.
It was a case that would run parallel l to
the police investigation and provide law enforcement with a number
of insights and leads. Here's Lawrence's defense attorney from the
criminal trial, Jeff O'Toole, who remembers the deposition. Well, he
was torn between keeping very careful and trying to keep
(03:14):
his eye on the prize with the money, while at
the same time trying not to implicate himself in the
murder case. And I think Lawrence Horn thought he was
smart enough to do both. I'm Jasmine Morris from My
(03:42):
Heart Radio and Hit Home Media. This is Hitman. At
the time Lawrence sat down for this deposition almost a
year and a half into the criminal investigation looking into
(04:03):
who murdered Milly and Trevor Horn and Janice Saunders. Detectives
had compiled a ton of circumstantial evidence. There were surveillance
tapes of Millie's house found in Lawrence's apartment, a map
of Millie's neighborhood, and even an accidental recording on his
answering machine that seemed to be him in the contract killer,
confirming the hit. As we've noted, everyone thought Lawrence was
(04:25):
behind this, but he had an airtight alibi. He'd recorded
himself sitting in his apartment in l A at the
time of the murders, and the alleged hit man, James Perry,
had left behind no fingerprints, no DNA footprints, or physical evidence.
The police had discovered that Perry bought the How To
Book hit Man, a technical manual for independent contractors, and
(04:48):
it laid out what investigators called a blueprint for the crimes.
In fact, he seemed to have followed something like two
dozen of its recommendations for a successful hit. But again
that was all circumstantial, and what investigators were really struggling
with was that there was no actual connection between Lawrence
Horn and James Perry, so that whole time Lawrence was free,
(05:14):
just going about his life trying to pull off the
final stages of his plan. What was that year like
where your dad was just out there? It was terrifying
for me. I mean, I was an emotional wreck. This
is from one of the many interviews I did with
his daughter Tiffany, who was eighteen at the time of
the murders. I was afraid that my dad would actually
(05:35):
come after me because I had information, and I was
one of the people that, you know, gave the police
so much of his background to kind of show them
that my dad could do that. In Just two months
after the murders, Lawrence came back to Maryland. Supposedly he
was consulting with attorneys on custody issues. Millie's sister, Elaine
(05:58):
had been awarded temporary already in ship of Trevor's twin sister, Tamielle,
which wouldn't be surprising given how cautious he was about
making sure his daughters wouldn't be home the night of
the murders. I think he set it up the way
he did because I think he really did not want
me and my sister to be murdered. That's why he
was calling to find out where my sister was and
(06:19):
making sure I was at school because I really do
believe that he thought that was salvaging at least some
of his family, and that I would take ownership of
my sister because I was eighteen, and move her out
to California with him and his family. Remember Lawrence's nickname
back in his navy days was your man with the plan.
And maybe he thought his plan was really working. He'd
(06:41):
evade justice, he'd get the one point seven million dollars,
and not just the money, but his daughters too. But
Millie's sisters were a lot like she was, tough, determined, willful,
like these steel magnolias who looked out for one another,
and they were never going to let him near Tammielle,
Tiffany or the estate. So in Maryland there is something
(07:05):
called the slayer's role again, Trish Weaver. It stands for
the very basic proposition that if you are responsible for
killing someone, you don't get to inherit from them, Okay,
So the slayer's rule. It's important that we understand this
in order to understand what's happening in Lawrence's deposition. Crime
shouldn't pay. It's a principle that goes all the way
(07:26):
back to the beginnings of common law. The Romans had
a maxim our engineer Jacopo Penzo actually speaks Latin. I'll
let him tell you. It translates to no one can
derive an advantage from his own wrong. Along the way,
you see, it gets implemented in different societies. In the
(07:46):
Middle Ages, kings made sure that anyone found to have
committed a felony really paid they had to give up
their property rights. The US actually didn't have a similar
rule until six This case is a little tricky, but
the version is a guy took a life insurance policy
out on his friend, then killed him. When the insurance
company refused to pay, he sued them for the money.
(08:08):
It went all the way to the Supreme Court, who
said it would be a reproach to the jurisprudence of
the country if one could recover insurance money payable on
the death of a party whose life he had feloniously taken. Morally,
it makes perfect sense. However, it can be tough to apply,
Like what if it's a car crash, so you're guilty
(08:29):
of involuntary manslaughter. What if you're found not guilty by
reason of insanity, do you still get the inheritance? Then?
It can get murky. And here's the other thing. The
slayer's rule gets applied in civil court, not criminal court,
and the burden of proof is totally different. In other words,
you can be acquitted of murder in a criminal trial
(08:50):
and still lose your inheritance in a lawsuit like this one.
So in pursuit of Trevor's inheritance, Lawrence sat down for
this deposition. It was not ruffled. He didn't appear to
break a sweat, you know, And he answered questions for
two days. And I think he truly believed that he
(09:11):
was going to be out smarting everybody, that he was
going to get away with it. There was one big
problem for Lawrence, though. Prosecutors from the criminal case had
decided to use his deposition as a kind of trojan horse.
They were racing. They had to prove Lawrence Horn hired
someone to murder his family for money. Before he could
get his hands on the money, Glenn Cooper was representing
(09:35):
a family. Glenn would call from time to time, what's
going on? I said, I can't tell you a lot.
We are where we are on this. But he said,
but if if I chance during your deposition of him,
you asked him about a calling card. It might be
helpful to all of us, so he questioned, he had
no idea what I was talking about, and go back
(09:57):
to this calling card in some other name. So he
asked that in the deposition for you essentially kind of yeah, yeah,
I just want to say, there are so many important
calls in this investigation, forty three to be exact, so
it's okay if you lose tracks sometimes. Investigators spent months
(10:18):
now combing through the phone records of Lawrence Horn and
James Perry, and eventually they figured out that the two men,
one living in l a and the other in Detroit,
had been using the same calling card, registered under a
fake name, for a full year before the murders. Just
for the record, Lawrence claims he was using this card
to call other women so his living girlfriend didn't find out.
(10:41):
And even though they were both using the calling card,
neither was calling each other's house. They used pay phones
a lot so they wouldn't be caught talking to each other,
and investigators had no way of knowing what was actually
being said on these calls. We've still needed to somehow
find out how in the world do we connect Lawrence
Horn and James Perry. We've got phone records, you know,
(11:02):
We've got okay Detroit, and we put up a surveillance.
They started telling Perry, honestly, if there wasn't already so
much to cover in the series, we could have done
a whole episode on the surveillance alone. And we basically
wound up setting wire taps up on James Perry's house.
We had I guess four separate wire taps going. They
(11:25):
keep on Perry for months, unable to catch him in
conversation with Lawrence Horn. But then they noticed he's been
hanging out with this one guy a lot, Thomas Turner.
So we followed him and got his tag number and
found that Thomas Turner. Who the heck is Thomas Turner, Well,
he's Lawrence Horn's cousin. It wasn't until they got a
warrant to tap Turner's phone when they realized just how
(11:48):
Perry and Horn had been communicating. They later learned Turner
also rented the cars Perry used to go to Maryland.
There was a series of calls that were generated Horn
to Turner just because trying to set up a call
with Perry and vice versa. Perry would use turner to
(12:10):
set up calls. Horn, so we're catching all this on
wire interseps. The following has been edited for time and clarity. Yellow.
Hey man, that's your couse. Hey, I've been trying to
catch up to you. Uh, take a contact of all yeah,
(12:30):
set it up to call so I know you know
when to go. All right, okay, thank you, alright, Okay,
I need to talk to you. That nobody still the
same over at your older brothers, I think so it
would it be possible for you to think collective? You
call over there? You know what I'm saying, Just in case,
(12:50):
uh we're not cool? Here? Can we look it up anytime? Later,
investigators believed this older brother was actually James Perry. They
were talking about money. Lawrence was keeping Perry posted on
the progress of the estate litigation. Perry was demanding payment. Hello, yeah, Thomas,
(13:11):
hold on the camp. Hell yeah, what's up? Yeah? Well,
I just wanted to have a conversation with you, and
I just want you know, if if you feel that, uh,
you know, everything is cool on your end and you know, well,
uh discussed too much, you know, Okay, all right, you
(13:32):
know the problem I'm having. Yeah, So I just wanted
to get into position where, you know, I felt that
you were comfortable talking, you know, so that we could
talk freely. I mentioned, you know, going over to uh,
you know, your older brother. Yeah, because it's probably you know, clean,
you know, there's no problem there. Yeah, about ten you know. Okay,
(13:55):
I'm telling I expect to come all right, all right, okay.
Care They knew Turner was the broker. Prosecutor Bob Dean
went out to Detroit to pull him in. Yeah, is
the FBI office. We brought him to and sat down
and had a heart to heart with him. He didn't
want to say anything. He called up Lawrence Horn, and
Lawrence Horne told him, I'm going to get you a lawyer.
(14:18):
Don't say anything. Were you still I was with him?
I was with him when he made the call. Yeah,
he was with him. He was with the police. He
was the Montgomery County Police and the FBI, and he
called Lawrence right in front of you. Yes. Does that
say something? Yes, of course it does. That same day,
wire taps caught this call between Lawrence and Turner's wife, Cynthia. Cynthia, Yes,
(14:46):
Laurence again, did Thomas call you? Okay? Okay? Now from
what he's telling me. It's like they're trying to force
him into making some statements or something. Right, that's what
he's trying to tell me. But hold on't I say,
take your time and listen and then ask you the question.
You know, Well, the point is is he does not
(15:06):
have to see anything. Okay, this isn't the same quiet
Lawrence Horn from the other recordings or even the deposition.
He sounds rattled. They investigated everybody out here, and then
they said they were going back to Detroit, and then
Cynthia shares even worse news. They said they already been
to James. That's James Perry. Yeah, so anyway, Uh, Lawrence's
(15:36):
plot starting to unravel. So investigators had wire taps proving
this web of communication, and still Lawrence denied it all
in his deposition. Do you know how Mr Turner knows
Mr Perry? And if Mr Turner and Mr Perry conspired
(15:57):
to murder your former wife and your son and your
son's nurse, they did so completely on their own, without
any involvement of you by you as that correct, check
the form with you answer. Yes, We'll be right back.
(16:29):
If you want to understand just how much trouble this
deposition would end up being for Lawrence. Just listen to
this statement from prosecution during Lawrence's trial. Quote during that deposition,
despite all these phone calls, in these contacts between the two,
and despite what you're going to hear about Thomas Turner
setting up the phone calls for them to continue talking,
(16:51):
Lawrence Horne denies knowing James Perry over and over again.
Not only denies knowing him, but says I never called him.
I don't know what you're talking about. There are a
few moments in this deposition that I had to listen
to a couple of times. The following has been edited down,
(17:13):
but I promise you this is real. When you were
in the navy, there was apparently an incident where a
sailor was lost at sea. If you understand the question,
you can answer yes. What you repeat the question? You
were in the navy, there was apparently an incident where
a sailor was lost a seal on your ship you
were falling any such incident, Oh, I didn't. During the
(17:36):
period when you were in the navy, what ships were
you shipped on? I served aboard the USS Lake Champlain CBS,
and during that period of time. There was never anyone
lost the seal on the way Champlain co action. He
guess him first on understanding or whether there was ever
(17:59):
anyone lost to see that he may or may not
know about. But he doesn't know about it, obviously, you
can't tell us about right, So amazing to his knowledge,
because anyone ever lost to seeing like jam playing while
you served, I'm not aware of any This part of
the deposition jumps out because it seems so strange. Why
would they ask about a man being thrown overboard decades before? Well,
(18:22):
Tiffany has an answer. She said that Lawrence used to
brag to her about killing a man at sea. It
was one of the first red flags she told investigators
after her family was murdered. I mean, we'll never know
if this actually happened. And from what attorneys have told me,
this was never investigated. He was never accused or prosecuted.
But that's the rumor they're getting at in this deposition here.
(18:51):
I really can never predict where this story will go.
Like Tiffany once told me, this isn't one story, it's fifty.
And the thing is, Lawrence didn't have to answer any
of these questions again, here's Trish Weaver. He hadn't been
indicted yet, nobody had been indicted, but he clearly had
(19:12):
to know that he was under investigation, and so he
could have come to that deposition and asserted his Fifth
Amendment privilege and not answered any of the questions. Instead,
he answered questions for two days about his motives, about
his desire to get the money, about what he knew,
(19:33):
about a variety of different things. Because in a Maryland
civil case, if a person asserts their Fifth Amendment and
refuses to answer questions, it doesn't look good. In the
civil case, the fact finder could say, oh, okay, well
you didn't answer that because the answer that would have
been bad for you. And so, since the motive for
the murders was to get Trevor's money, he apparently was
(19:57):
not willing to risk lose see that money, and the
lawyers knew it. But clearly his whole plan hinges on
acting like he's completely ignorant of the money. Again, the
following has been edited for time and clarity. That is,
up until March three. I'm looking for your understanding of
(20:18):
what would happen to the one point one million dollar
future thing. Trever Doe I didn't spent a lot of
time thinking about that. As I recall, I understood basically
that if Trevor died after the settlement that million, I
(20:39):
would inherit his estate equally, that include the one point
one million dollar future plan. Do you understand, yes, any
discussions of what would happen to Trevor's estate if million
Trevor died? Did I have any discussions? Yes? No? Right? Uh?
(21:02):
Have you up until March three? My understanding for your
testimony is you've never discussed with anyone what happens to
Trevor's estate if Millie and Trevor both that there are
times when it seems like he's trying not to incriminate himself,
and then there are times when he tells the truth.
(21:25):
In the deposition, they asked him if he called Millie
on March two, just hours before she was killed. He says, yes,
that it was the last time he talked to her.
I'm not certain. Was it half an hour? Was? No? No,
it was it was. It was short, but it was nice.
(21:48):
You've heard excerpts already where he talks about his relationship
with Millie, but I'm going to let it play now.
Describe for us. Now, your relationship with Millie from seven
until her death? YEA, well, pretty much the same as
it was as far as the roller coaster up and down, unpredictable,
(22:12):
hot and cold. When you say it was hot and cold,
and I assume when you say it was cold at
times there was some kind of distance between you, or
when you say it was hot at times from until
her death, what do you mean? Uh, Milly was very moody.
(22:37):
And it's like I would call her at times and
she wouldn't speak to me. At other times she would,
So it was it got to be how lucky I
(22:59):
was as far as when I was able to you know,
it's a contact her. And remember this moment at the
time that you married Millie Murray. Did you love her?
(23:22):
M hm No. So when Lawrence is giving this deposition,
he knows Thomas Turner is talking, he knows James Perry's
house has been searched, he knows the FBI is monitoring
(23:43):
his phones, and still this is his answer to the
question did you love her? It's chilling. It's almost like
he couldn't help himself but to admit something so cold
when he was under investigation for her murderer. Do you
re in my ber the way that he talked about
his relationship with Millie. Yeah, he struck me. I mean,
(24:05):
I'm not going to try to play, you know, armchair psychologist,
but I mean he struck me very much as a narcissist.
I mean it seemed as if he was the center
of his universe and everybody else was an orbit around that.
On July, just a week or so after Lawrence gave
(24:26):
this deposition, he was arrested by federal agents in Hollywood.
Perry was taken into custody that same day by the
FBI in Detroit. So the deposition had helped unravel their plan.
So he was so confident that he wouldn't be indicted
that he was willing to say things that could potentially
perjur himself. He did perjur himself absolutely. The attorneys that
(24:51):
represented him are very competent attorneys. So I have every
reason to believe that he was fully advised about the
risk that he was taking. I'm sure he really knowingly
made that determination that he could kind of maneuver the
whole thing and try to come out on top. We
videotaped the deposition. It was two days and what we
(25:14):
just took the video tapes over to the state's attorney's office.
He lied about many things, and I think that was
very instrumental, and that ultimately was what led to his indictment.
Oh another thing, investigators had been trying to figure out
(25:36):
how or how much or even if Lawrence had paid
James Perry. As always, this case came back to money, money.
Where did the money come from? Well, Dan New Perry
used Western Union from when they searched his apartment, So
we went through hundreds of transactions from Western Union. Of course,
Lawrence's name was nowhere to be found, but there were
(25:59):
several transaction from Los Angeles. In the five months leading
up to the murders. James Perry and his girlfriend received
money transfers and amounts totaling six thousand dollars, which is
around the same amount of upfront payment. The Hitman book
suggests in these payments from Los Angeles came from a
man named George Shaw. And George Shaw whoever he was,
(26:23):
and our theory was it was Laurence Horn. Of course.
One of the addresses he used was the old address
of Motown in Los Angeles. He used a phone number
of Motown and that wasn't all. It was a feeling
that I had that you know, there there had to
be at the code to break. I can remember going
over to the University of Maryland library one night, and
(26:46):
I really don't know why I did this other than
just out of curiosity, but I started looking for back
copies of Los Angeles Times on micro fish and in
the July eight edition, Dean found the obituary from a
man named George Shaw. And on that same page there
(27:08):
was a very large article about Mary Wells. Mary Wells
was a famous Motown singer known for the song my
Guy I was fell off my chair so oh my,
that works. It's remarkable that Dean found this in His
theory was that while Lawrence Horne was reading the obituary
(27:28):
for an old Motown friend, he saw this name George
Shaw and found his alias, then used former Motown contact
information for this George Shaw. So even when the stakes
were high, even when he was engineering a hit on
his own family, Lawrence held onto that legacy, that reminder
(27:51):
of his greatness. During one of our interviews, I asked
Prosecutor Bob Dean to read some of his closing statements
and who are we sentencing well, not the Lawrence Horn
of the nineteen fifties or the nineteen sixties, who was
a sound engineer for so many of those songs that
so many of us like and snap our fingers too,
(28:13):
too happy days. No, we're dealing with the Lawrence Horn
of the late eighties and early nineties. We're dealing with
someone totally different. Basically spent his time in crafting a
coast to coast conspiracy of death. That's what he did.
That's how this man decided to use his talents. We're
(28:34):
sentencing a man who buried his past of the fifties
and sixties and seventies in Detroit. He had a secret life,
he had secret hopes, and in the nineties he developed
a secret plan. Three years after Millie Hoorn, her son Trevor,
(29:00):
and his nurse Janis Saunders were killed, James Perry was
convicted and sentenced to death three times, which was later
overturned in an appeal, and a new trial sentenced him
to three life terms. Lawrence Horn was found guilty on
three counts of first degree murder and one murder of
conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison. The civil case
(29:21):
was put on hold while the criminal case went forward.
It was reopened after Lawrence was convicted. Part of the
summary judgment was asking the court to determine that Lawrence Horn,
you know, because of the Slayer's rule, could not share
in the distribution of Trevor's estate. The court ruled, And
so he was there and he heard it, and I
(29:43):
think he knew that at that point the gig was up.
It was over, you know, I mean, obviously the plan
had failed. He was going to live the rest of
his life behind bars. This actually isn't the last time
you'll hear about the Horn family in this podcast. There's
a lot more, including a battle with hit Man's publisher,
Paladin Press, and the first amendment that went all the
(30:05):
way up to the Supreme Court. But we're going to
be back with you in two weeks when I'm going
to first tell you the story behind Paladin, and I'll
start unearthing the truth behind the book hit Man, including
the other time I know someone used it. This book
says Rex Ferrell is a professional hit man and he's
going to give you all of his secrets. So was
(30:28):
Rex hit Man. Now I don't think we'll ever know,
but I'd say that there's good probability. Of course, if
every department had a cold case squad, they could go
back and look at the things in those books and
then compare them with what they have. I think they
may be able to find some things like that, but
you know, that's that's the luxury most departments don't have. Yeah.
(31:04):
Pitman is a production of I Heart Radio and Hit
Home Media. It's produced and reported by me Jasmine Morris.
Our supervising producer is Michelle Lance. Marc Latto is our
story consultant. Executive producers are Main gesh Had Ticket Door
and Me. Mixing by Michelle Lance and Jacobo Penzo are
fact checkers are Austin Thompson and Natsumi Aji Saka. Special
(31:26):
thanks to Andrew Goldberg, Lucas Riley, Gabe Bluisier in the
Montgomery County States Attorney's Office as well as the Montgomery
County Courthouse. Our theme song by Alice McCoy and additional
music written and produced by the students at DIME, powered
by the Detroit Institute of Music Education,
Would you raise your right handswer do you soundly declaring
a firm and the families of Burdery that the testimony
you should give should be the truth, though truths about
the truth? I do. You've heard short excerpts from this
deposition in previous episodes, and I told you i'd explain
it later. Well, that's what we're gonna do now. And
(00:23):
that term deposition is going to come up a lot,
So for those who aren't sure what it means, just
know that it's testimony taken under oath to be used
as evidence in a court case. How could you say
you name? Please, Sir Lawrence Thomas Horn. I'm going to
be asking you a series of questions during this deposition.
(00:44):
Lawrence Horne sat down for this deposition at one am
on July six at the Montgomery County Courthouse in Maryland.
Do you have any questions about that Millie Horne's two
sisters and her daughter Tiffany had filed the civil suit
to keep him from inheriting his son's one point seven
million dollar estate. Did you ever have any discussions or
(01:07):
were you present at any discussions about what would happen
to Trevor's estate if Millie died. If Millie Millie died, Yes,
if Millie and Trevor died, Okay, say that again. Now,
any discussions of what would happen to Trevor's estate if
(01:27):
Millian Trevor died. Did I have any discussions? Yes? This
deposition is stunning to listen to his tone, the way
he takes his time in answering certain questions, the way
he dodges others. Lawrence would sit through two days of
this in pursuit of Trevor's estate. We thought we had
(01:49):
done well for this family. That's Attorney John Marshall. He
helped win that settlement money, and yet we created the
monster by doing well. I don't think any of us
regret what we did. It's just you don't know what
people are capable of. Marshall referred Millie's family to Attorney
(02:11):
Glenn Cooper, whose voice you here questioning Lawrence on the tape,
and his co council Trish Weaver. Within the week that
the murders had occurred, Millie's sisters Elaine and Maryland came
to the firm and they basically said, you know, they
firmly believed that Lawrence Horn was responsible for the murder
(02:32):
of their sister and their nephew, as well as Janie Saunders.
The family started this process ten days after the murders
because there was a sense of urgency here. It was
the family's concern that he would try to himself get
control of the estate, distribute the money to himself, and
you know, by the time something happened down the road,
(02:54):
it would be too late and the money would be gone.
It was a case that would run parallel l to
the police investigation and provide law enforcement with a number
of insights and leads. Here's Lawrence's defense attorney from the
criminal trial, Jeff O'Toole, who remembers the deposition. Well, he
was torn between keeping very careful and trying to keep
(03:14):
his eye on the prize with the money, while at
the same time trying not to implicate himself in the
murder case. And I think Lawrence Horn thought he was
smart enough to do both. I'm Jasmine Morris from My
(03:42):
Heart Radio and Hit Home Media. This is Hitman. At
the time Lawrence sat down for this deposition almost a
year and a half into the criminal investigation looking into
(04:03):
who murdered Milly and Trevor Horn and Janice Saunders. Detectives
had compiled a ton of circumstantial evidence. There were surveillance
tapes of Millie's house found in Lawrence's apartment, a map
of Millie's neighborhood, and even an accidental recording on his
answering machine that seemed to be him in the contract killer,
confirming the hit. As we've noted, everyone thought Lawrence was
(04:25):
behind this, but he had an airtight alibi. He'd recorded
himself sitting in his apartment in l A at the
time of the murders, and the alleged hit man, James Perry,
had left behind no fingerprints, no DNA footprints, or physical evidence.
The police had discovered that Perry bought the How To
Book hit Man, a technical manual for independent contractors, and
(04:48):
it laid out what investigators called a blueprint for the crimes.
In fact, he seemed to have followed something like two
dozen of its recommendations for a successful hit. But again
that was all circumstantial, and what investigators were really struggling
with was that there was no actual connection between Lawrence
Horn and James Perry, so that whole time Lawrence was free,
(05:14):
just going about his life trying to pull off the
final stages of his plan. What was that year like
where your dad was just out there? It was terrifying
for me. I mean, I was an emotional wreck. This
is from one of the many interviews I did with
his daughter Tiffany, who was eighteen at the time of
the murders. I was afraid that my dad would actually
(05:35):
come after me because I had information, and I was
one of the people that, you know, gave the police
so much of his background to kind of show them
that my dad could do that. In Just two months
after the murders, Lawrence came back to Maryland. Supposedly he
was consulting with attorneys on custody issues. Millie's sister, Elaine
(05:58):
had been awarded temporary already in ship of Trevor's twin sister, Tamielle,
which wouldn't be surprising given how cautious he was about
making sure his daughters wouldn't be home the night of
the murders. I think he set it up the way
he did because I think he really did not want
me and my sister to be murdered. That's why he
was calling to find out where my sister was and
(06:19):
making sure I was at school because I really do
believe that he thought that was salvaging at least some
of his family, and that I would take ownership of
my sister because I was eighteen, and move her out
to California with him and his family. Remember Lawrence's nickname
back in his navy days was your man with the plan.
And maybe he thought his plan was really working. He'd
(06:41):
evade justice, he'd get the one point seven million dollars,
and not just the money, but his daughters too. But
Millie's sisters were a lot like she was, tough, determined, willful,
like these steel magnolias who looked out for one another,
and they were never going to let him near Tammielle,
Tiffany or the estate. So in Maryland there is something
(07:05):
called the slayer's role again, Trish Weaver. It stands for
the very basic proposition that if you are responsible for
killing someone, you don't get to inherit from them, Okay,
So the slayer's rule. It's important that we understand this
in order to understand what's happening in Lawrence's deposition. Crime
shouldn't pay. It's a principle that goes all the way
(07:26):
back to the beginnings of common law. The Romans had
a maxim our engineer Jacopo Penzo actually speaks Latin. I'll
let him tell you. It translates to no one can
derive an advantage from his own wrong. Along the way,
you see, it gets implemented in different societies. In the
(07:46):
Middle Ages, kings made sure that anyone found to have
committed a felony really paid they had to give up
their property rights. The US actually didn't have a similar
rule until six This case is a little tricky, but
the version is a guy took a life insurance policy
out on his friend, then killed him. When the insurance
company refused to pay, he sued them for the money.
(08:08):
It went all the way to the Supreme Court, who
said it would be a reproach to the jurisprudence of
the country if one could recover insurance money payable on
the death of a party whose life he had feloniously taken. Morally,
it makes perfect sense. However, it can be tough to apply,
Like what if it's a car crash, so you're guilty
(08:29):
of involuntary manslaughter. What if you're found not guilty by
reason of insanity, do you still get the inheritance? Then?
It can get murky. And here's the other thing. The
slayer's rule gets applied in civil court, not criminal court,
and the burden of proof is totally different. In other words,
you can be acquitted of murder in a criminal trial
(08:50):
and still lose your inheritance in a lawsuit like this one.
So in pursuit of Trevor's inheritance, Lawrence sat down for
this deposition. It was not ruffled. He didn't appear to
break a sweat, you know, And he answered questions for
two days. And I think he truly believed that he
(09:11):
was going to be out smarting everybody, that he was
going to get away with it. There was one big
problem for Lawrence, though. Prosecutors from the criminal case had
decided to use his deposition as a kind of trojan horse.
They were racing. They had to prove Lawrence Horn hired
someone to murder his family for money. Before he could
get his hands on the money, Glenn Cooper was representing
(09:35):
a family. Glenn would call from time to time, what's
going on? I said, I can't tell you a lot.
We are where we are on this. But he said,
but if if I chance during your deposition of him,
you asked him about a calling card. It might be
helpful to all of us, so he questioned, he had
no idea what I was talking about, and go back
(09:57):
to this calling card in some other name. So he
asked that in the deposition for you essentially kind of yeah, yeah,
I just want to say, there are so many important
calls in this investigation, forty three to be exact, so
it's okay if you lose tracks sometimes. Investigators spent months
(10:18):
now combing through the phone records of Lawrence Horn and
James Perry, and eventually they figured out that the two men,
one living in l a and the other in Detroit,
had been using the same calling card, registered under a
fake name, for a full year before the murders. Just
for the record, Lawrence claims he was using this card
to call other women so his living girlfriend didn't find out.
(10:41):
And even though they were both using the calling card,
neither was calling each other's house. They used pay phones
a lot so they wouldn't be caught talking to each other,
and investigators had no way of knowing what was actually
being said on these calls. We've still needed to somehow
find out how in the world do we connect Lawrence
Horn and James Perry. We've got phone records, you know,
(11:02):
We've got okay Detroit, and we put up a surveillance.
They started telling Perry, honestly, if there wasn't already so
much to cover in the series, we could have done
a whole episode on the surveillance alone. And we basically
wound up setting wire taps up on James Perry's house.
We had I guess four separate wire taps going. They
(11:25):
keep on Perry for months, unable to catch him in
conversation with Lawrence Horn. But then they noticed he's been
hanging out with this one guy a lot, Thomas Turner.
So we followed him and got his tag number and
found that Thomas Turner. Who the heck is Thomas Turner, Well,
he's Lawrence Horn's cousin. It wasn't until they got a
warrant to tap Turner's phone when they realized just how
(11:48):
Perry and Horn had been communicating. They later learned Turner
also rented the cars Perry used to go to Maryland.
There was a series of calls that were generated Horn
to Turner just because trying to set up a call
with Perry and vice versa. Perry would use turner to
(12:10):
set up calls. Horn, so we're catching all this on
wire interseps. The following has been edited for time and clarity. Yellow.
Hey man, that's your couse. Hey, I've been trying to
catch up to you. Uh, take a contact of all yeah,
(12:30):
set it up to call so I know you know
when to go. All right, okay, thank you, alright, Okay,
I need to talk to you. That nobody still the
same over at your older brothers, I think so it
would it be possible for you to think collective? You
call over there? You know what I'm saying, Just in case,
(12:50):
uh we're not cool? Here? Can we look it up anytime? Later,
investigators believed this older brother was actually James Perry. They
were talking about money. Lawrence was keeping Perry posted on
the progress of the estate litigation. Perry was demanding payment. Hello, yeah, Thomas,
(13:11):
hold on the camp. Hell yeah, what's up? Yeah? Well,
I just wanted to have a conversation with you, and
I just want you know, if if you feel that, uh,
you know, everything is cool on your end and you know, well,
uh discussed too much, you know, Okay, all right, you
(13:32):
know the problem I'm having. Yeah, So I just wanted
to get into position where, you know, I felt that
you were comfortable talking, you know, so that we could
talk freely. I mentioned, you know, going over to uh,
you know, your older brother. Yeah, because it's probably you know, clean,
you know, there's no problem there. Yeah, about ten you know. Okay,
(13:55):
I'm telling I expect to come all right, all right, okay.
Care They knew Turner was the broker. Prosecutor Bob Dean
went out to Detroit to pull him in. Yeah, is
the FBI office. We brought him to and sat down
and had a heart to heart with him. He didn't
want to say anything. He called up Lawrence Horn, and
Lawrence Horne told him, I'm going to get you a lawyer.
(14:18):
Don't say anything. Were you still I was with him?
I was with him when he made the call. Yeah,
he was with him. He was with the police. He
was the Montgomery County Police and the FBI, and he
called Lawrence right in front of you. Yes. Does that
say something? Yes, of course it does. That same day,
wire taps caught this call between Lawrence and Turner's wife, Cynthia. Cynthia, Yes,
(14:46):
Laurence again, did Thomas call you? Okay? Okay? Now from
what he's telling me. It's like they're trying to force
him into making some statements or something. Right, that's what
he's trying to tell me. But hold on't I say,
take your time and listen and then ask you the question.
You know, Well, the point is is he does not
(15:06):
have to see anything. Okay, this isn't the same quiet
Lawrence Horn from the other recordings or even the deposition.
He sounds rattled. They investigated everybody out here, and then
they said they were going back to Detroit, and then
Cynthia shares even worse news. They said they already been
to James. That's James Perry. Yeah, so anyway, Uh, Lawrence's
(15:36):
plot starting to unravel. So investigators had wire taps proving
this web of communication, and still Lawrence denied it all
in his deposition. Do you know how Mr Turner knows
Mr Perry? And if Mr Turner and Mr Perry conspired
(15:57):
to murder your former wife and your son and your
son's nurse, they did so completely on their own, without
any involvement of you by you as that correct, check
the form with you answer. Yes, We'll be right back.
(16:29):
If you want to understand just how much trouble this
deposition would end up being for Lawrence. Just listen to
this statement from prosecution during Lawrence's trial. Quote during that deposition,
despite all these phone calls, in these contacts between the two,
and despite what you're going to hear about Thomas Turner
setting up the phone calls for them to continue talking,
(16:51):
Lawrence Horne denies knowing James Perry over and over again.
Not only denies knowing him, but says I never called him.
I don't know what you're talking about. There are a
few moments in this deposition that I had to listen
to a couple of times. The following has been edited down,
(17:13):
but I promise you this is real. When you were
in the navy, there was apparently an incident where a
sailor was lost at sea. If you understand the question,
you can answer yes. What you repeat the question? You
were in the navy, there was apparently an incident where
a sailor was lost a seal on your ship you
were falling any such incident, Oh, I didn't. During the
(17:36):
period when you were in the navy, what ships were
you shipped on? I served aboard the USS Lake Champlain CBS,
and during that period of time. There was never anyone
lost the seal on the way Champlain co action. He
guess him first on understanding or whether there was ever
(17:59):
anyone lost to see that he may or may not
know about. But he doesn't know about it, obviously, you
can't tell us about right, So amazing to his knowledge,
because anyone ever lost to seeing like jam playing while
you served, I'm not aware of any This part of
the deposition jumps out because it seems so strange. Why
would they ask about a man being thrown overboard decades before? Well,
(18:22):
Tiffany has an answer. She said that Lawrence used to
brag to her about killing a man at sea. It
was one of the first red flags she told investigators
after her family was murdered. I mean, we'll never know
if this actually happened. And from what attorneys have told me,
this was never investigated. He was never accused or prosecuted.
But that's the rumor they're getting at in this deposition here.
(18:51):
I really can never predict where this story will go.
Like Tiffany once told me, this isn't one story, it's fifty.
And the thing is, Lawrence didn't have to answer any
of these questions again, here's Trish Weaver. He hadn't been
indicted yet, nobody had been indicted, but he clearly had
(19:12):
to know that he was under investigation, and so he
could have come to that deposition and asserted his Fifth
Amendment privilege and not answered any of the questions. Instead,
he answered questions for two days about his motives, about
his desire to get the money, about what he knew,
(19:33):
about a variety of different things. Because in a Maryland
civil case, if a person asserts their Fifth Amendment and
refuses to answer questions, it doesn't look good. In the
civil case, the fact finder could say, oh, okay, well
you didn't answer that because the answer that would have
been bad for you. And so, since the motive for
the murders was to get Trevor's money, he apparently was
(19:57):
not willing to risk lose see that money, and the
lawyers knew it. But clearly his whole plan hinges on
acting like he's completely ignorant of the money. Again, the
following has been edited for time and clarity. That is,
up until March three. I'm looking for your understanding of
(20:18):
what would happen to the one point one million dollar
future thing. Trever Doe I didn't spent a lot of
time thinking about that. As I recall, I understood basically
that if Trevor died after the settlement that million, I
(20:39):
would inherit his estate equally, that include the one point
one million dollar future plan. Do you understand, yes, any
discussions of what would happen to Trevor's estate if million
Trevor died? Did I have any discussions? Yes? No? Right? Uh?
(21:02):
Have you up until March three? My understanding for your
testimony is you've never discussed with anyone what happens to
Trevor's estate if Millie and Trevor both that there are
times when it seems like he's trying not to incriminate himself,
and then there are times when he tells the truth.
(21:25):
In the deposition, they asked him if he called Millie
on March two, just hours before she was killed. He says, yes,
that it was the last time he talked to her.
I'm not certain. Was it half an hour? Was? No? No,
it was it was. It was short, but it was nice.
(21:48):
You've heard excerpts already where he talks about his relationship
with Millie, but I'm going to let it play now.
Describe for us. Now, your relationship with Millie from seven
until her death? YEA, well, pretty much the same as
it was as far as the roller coaster up and down, unpredictable,
(22:12):
hot and cold. When you say it was hot and cold,
and I assume when you say it was cold at
times there was some kind of distance between you, or
when you say it was hot at times from until
her death, what do you mean? Uh, Milly was very moody.
(22:37):
And it's like I would call her at times and
she wouldn't speak to me. At other times she would,
So it was it got to be how lucky I
(22:59):
was as far as when I was able to you know,
it's a contact her. And remember this moment at the
time that you married Millie Murray. Did you love her?
(23:22):
M hm No. So when Lawrence is giving this deposition,
he knows Thomas Turner is talking, he knows James Perry's
house has been searched, he knows the FBI is monitoring
(23:43):
his phones, and still this is his answer to the
question did you love her? It's chilling. It's almost like
he couldn't help himself but to admit something so cold
when he was under investigation for her murderer. Do you
re in my ber the way that he talked about
his relationship with Millie. Yeah, he struck me. I mean,
(24:05):
I'm not going to try to play, you know, armchair psychologist,
but I mean he struck me very much as a narcissist.
I mean it seemed as if he was the center
of his universe and everybody else was an orbit around that.
On July, just a week or so after Lawrence gave
(24:26):
this deposition, he was arrested by federal agents in Hollywood.
Perry was taken into custody that same day by the
FBI in Detroit. So the deposition had helped unravel their plan.
So he was so confident that he wouldn't be indicted
that he was willing to say things that could potentially
perjur himself. He did perjur himself absolutely. The attorneys that
(24:51):
represented him are very competent attorneys. So I have every
reason to believe that he was fully advised about the
risk that he was taking. I'm sure he really knowingly
made that determination that he could kind of maneuver the
whole thing and try to come out on top. We
videotaped the deposition. It was two days and what we
(25:14):
just took the video tapes over to the state's attorney's office.
He lied about many things, and I think that was
very instrumental, and that ultimately was what led to his indictment.
Oh another thing, investigators had been trying to figure out
(25:36):
how or how much or even if Lawrence had paid
James Perry. As always, this case came back to money, money.
Where did the money come from? Well, Dan New Perry
used Western Union from when they searched his apartment, So
we went through hundreds of transactions from Western Union. Of course,
Lawrence's name was nowhere to be found, but there were
(25:59):
several transaction from Los Angeles. In the five months leading
up to the murders. James Perry and his girlfriend received
money transfers and amounts totaling six thousand dollars, which is
around the same amount of upfront payment. The Hitman book
suggests in these payments from Los Angeles came from a
man named George Shaw. And George Shaw whoever he was,
(26:23):
and our theory was it was Laurence Horn. Of course.
One of the addresses he used was the old address
of Motown in Los Angeles. He used a phone number
of Motown and that wasn't all. It was a feeling
that I had that you know, there there had to
be at the code to break. I can remember going
over to the University of Maryland library one night, and
(26:46):
I really don't know why I did this other than
just out of curiosity, but I started looking for back
copies of Los Angeles Times on micro fish and in
the July eight edition, Dean found the obituary from a
man named George Shaw. And on that same page there
(27:08):
was a very large article about Mary Wells. Mary Wells
was a famous Motown singer known for the song my
Guy I was fell off my chair so oh my,
that works. It's remarkable that Dean found this in His
theory was that while Lawrence Horne was reading the obituary
(27:28):
for an old Motown friend, he saw this name George
Shaw and found his alias, then used former Motown contact
information for this George Shaw. So even when the stakes
were high, even when he was engineering a hit on
his own family, Lawrence held onto that legacy, that reminder
(27:51):
of his greatness. During one of our interviews, I asked
Prosecutor Bob Dean to read some of his closing statements
and who are we sentencing well, not the Lawrence Horn
of the nineteen fifties or the nineteen sixties, who was
a sound engineer for so many of those songs that
so many of us like and snap our fingers too,
(28:13):
too happy days. No, we're dealing with the Lawrence Horn
of the late eighties and early nineties. We're dealing with
someone totally different. Basically spent his time in crafting a
coast to coast conspiracy of death. That's what he did.
That's how this man decided to use his talents. We're
(28:34):
sentencing a man who buried his past of the fifties
and sixties and seventies in Detroit. He had a secret life,
he had secret hopes, and in the nineties he developed
a secret plan. Three years after Millie Hoorn, her son Trevor,
(29:00):
and his nurse Janis Saunders were killed, James Perry was
convicted and sentenced to death three times, which was later
overturned in an appeal, and a new trial sentenced him
to three life terms. Lawrence Horn was found guilty on
three counts of first degree murder and one murder of
conspiracy and sentenced to life in prison. The civil case
(29:21):
was put on hold while the criminal case went forward.
It was reopened after Lawrence was convicted. Part of the
summary judgment was asking the court to determine that Lawrence Horn,
you know, because of the Slayer's rule, could not share
in the distribution of Trevor's estate. The court ruled, And
so he was there and he heard it, and I
(29:43):
think he knew that at that point the gig was up.
It was over, you know, I mean, obviously the plan
had failed. He was going to live the rest of
his life behind bars. This actually isn't the last time
you'll hear about the Horn family in this podcast. There's
a lot more, including a battle with hit Man's publisher,
Paladin Press, and the first amendment that went all the
(30:05):
way up to the Supreme Court. But we're going to
be back with you in two weeks when I'm going
to first tell you the story behind Paladin, and I'll
start unearthing the truth behind the book hit Man, including
the other time I know someone used it. This book
says Rex Ferrell is a professional hit man and he's
going to give you all of his secrets. So was
(30:28):
Rex hit Man. Now I don't think we'll ever know,
but I'd say that there's good probability. Of course, if
every department had a cold case squad, they could go
back and look at the things in those books and
then compare them with what they have. I think they
may be able to find some things like that, but
you know, that's that's the luxury most departments don't have. Yeah.
(31:04):
Pitman is a production of I Heart Radio and Hit
Home Media. It's produced and reported by me Jasmine Morris.
Our supervising producer is Michelle Lance. Marc Latto is our
story consultant. Executive producers are Main gesh Had Ticket Door
and Me. Mixing by Michelle Lance and Jacobo Penzo are
fact checkers are Austin Thompson and Natsumi Aji Saka. Special
(31:26):
thanks to Andrew Goldberg, Lucas Riley, Gabe Bluisier in the
Montgomery County States Attorney's Office as well as the Montgomery
County Courthouse. Our theme song by Alice McCoy and 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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