Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Jasmine Morris here. It's been six years since I
released this podcast, So before I tell you why I'm
back in your feed, let's recap a little. In nineteen
eighty three, Palatin Press, a fringe publisher, released a book
called hit Man, a technical manual for independent contractors. The author,
who went by the pen name Rex Farrell, offered very
(00:23):
specific tips for the aspiring contract killer, where to find employment,
how much to charge, how to get away with murder,
and how to feel okay about it. Ten years later,
Tiffany Horn's mother, eight year old brother, and a close
family friend were killed. The exhaustive investigation involved multi state
(00:44):
surveillance and wire taps, but it wasn't until detectives stumbled
upon the book Hitman, that they suddenly had what they
called a blueprint for the murders. Over the last nine
episodes of this podcast, we dug into all of that,
plus the wild, untold story behind the book and it's
elusive author, which brings me to why I'm back with
(01:04):
an update. I recently got a phone call. It was
Tiffany Horn.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Hi, a Kathleen.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
She was calling to let me know she'd just heard
from a reporter.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
There is a journalist doing an article for Vanity Fair
regarding the woman that wrote the book hit Man. I
know she wrote it under a pseudonym, but she's coming
out now revealing her identity.
Speaker 1 (01:36):
My first thought was, I've been waiting for a call
like this. If you listened to this podcast, you know
I kept Rex Ferrell's identity hidden for multiple reasons. One,
I was ninety nine point nine percent sure I had
the correct name, but she never confirmed it. I also
knew this day would come when she'd be ready to talk,
and that maybe if we're on her terms, it'd be
(01:57):
worth it. My second thought was, who's the reporter? It
was nearly impossible to find the actual name of who
authored Hitman. I mean, I spent years digging, and I
got it kind of by accident. So who could possibly
have found her?
Speaker 2 (02:12):
The journalist actually reached out to me for me to
give a statement, or you know, if one of my
family members wanted to give her a statement.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
So I did.
Speaker 2 (02:22):
I had a conversation with her. Her name is Abbot,
and she told me that she had a personal relationship
with this woman.
Speaker 1 (02:30):
I was relieved, actually, because this is the only other
person who's ever been able to find the real Rex Ferrell.
Abbot was the very first person I talked to about
all of this, literally a decade ago, years before I
even made this podcast. Back in twenty fifteen, I went
to Abbot's apartment in New York City, walking to Abbots,
(02:51):
here we are, and we spent an hour or so
talking about her friend, the author of Hitman. Abbot told
me about how smart and kind the author was, how
she'd been in an abusive relationship, even how this woman's
father was a deacon. So many details, except for Rex
Ferrell's actual name, or really any identifying information. I actually
(03:15):
mentioned Abbot briefly in episode seven, claimed to be a
friend of Rex Ferrell's, an author herself, Karen Abbott. She
once quoted an email from Rex publicly, I don't want
to be a hero, tragic or otherwise, Rex supposedly wrote,
I just want to sit in my rocker on my
front porch and tell my grandson's stories. There certain are
(03:38):
fantastic lies. Ultimately, Abbot didn't want to talk to me
without Rex's permission, which she never got as far as
I know, so she declined to participate in this podcast. Well,
I guess she finally got permission. So here we are
six years later. It's time to reveal the true identity
(04:00):
of Rex Ferrell from iHeartRadio and Hit Home Media. I'm
Jasmine Morris and this is hit Man. After this podcast
(04:39):
came out in twenty nineteen, we heard from so many
of you who thought you figured it out. One listener
sent me a Facebook profile for some woman named Patsy
in Kansas. Some said it was Nancy Gelber, a crime
writer who put a hit on her estranged husband. Many
of you thought it was a romance novelist who wrote
about how to murder a husband and then did just that.
(05:00):
When listener actually commented, Nancy Crampton Brophy is the woman
supposedly behind the book. A simple Internet searched can find
her real identity in mugshots. If it had been that easy,
well this would be a very different podcast. I'm going
to play a few more clips. This one is from
the very first episode, when I hadn't yet revealed that
Rex Ferrell was actually a woman. One day, buried in
(05:22):
something like five hundred pages of court documents that a
lawyer emailed me, I finally came across some correspondence between
Paladin and professional killer Rex Ferrell, the editorial director of Paladin,
was writing with good news. Enclosed, you will find two
copies of the contract for Hitman, a technical manual for
independent contractors. Signed two copies with a witness, and return
(05:46):
both to us. I was about to get my first
glimpse of the person behind the book. Here's what he
wrote back to Paladin. My main concern in offering this
type of material for publication is the possibility of litigation
from people who might misuse the materials in my books.
(06:06):
So the real res Ferrell might have had a conscience.
After all, it's easy to speculate what Ferrell's intentions were
in writing Hitman. To some it's not a question. I
mean he wrote a murder manual. To others it reads
his entertainment or a joke, a joke that James Perry
might have used to murder three people. But after reading
(06:27):
through this exchange, at least one thing becomes clear about Ferrell. Again,
he writes, by the way, an answer to your question
and that of mister Lunde, I get my materials from books, television, movies, newspapers,
police officers, my karate instructor, and a good friend who
is an attorney. No I am not a hit man.
(06:49):
I don't even own a gun, but don't tell anybody. So, yeah,
we knew the author was not a hit man. We
knew she was a woman. But that's about it. Here's
another clip from episode seven. How do you find someone
who wrote under a pen name, someone who might not
want to be found? I scoured message boards, Amazon reviews,
(07:11):
comments sections, hoping for some kind of breadcrumb that would
lead me to this person. Nothing. I asked the same
question over and over. Yeah, I was gonna ask you
about this author? What do you know about the anonymous author?
You just mentioned the author? What did you know about
the author of the book? So who was the actual author?
Do you ever know anything about the author of the book?
(07:31):
But finally you'll remember, I had a breakthrough. I got
her name again. Another clip. Rex Ferrell won't confirm her identity.
Paladin's closed now and their press lawyer won't confirm it.
But my best available information tells me I'm right, And
as far as I can tell, the real Rex Ferrell
is now a grandmother in her seventies. She has a
(07:53):
social media presence and some of her posts are public.
I shouldn't be surprised by anything anymore. But she's not
at all what I pictured, not from what you'd imagine
from everything we've heard about the typical Paladin writer. She's
shared liberal memes about immigration, privilege in women's rights, and
she's really funny. I came across a few videos of her.
(08:16):
Her hair is white for the most part, she has
green eyes, and she's beautiful. In one of these videos,
she's singing, laughing, and wearing a sweater that says Grandma
on it. She has a slight Southern accent, and yet
it's hard to imagine this is the same person who
told their readers.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
The kill is the easiest part of the job. People
kill one another every day. It takes no great effort
to pull a trigger or plunge a knife. It is
being able to do so in a manner that will
not link yourself or your employer to the crime that
makes you a professional, and the acceptance of the valuelessness
(08:57):
of life has given your own life value.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
I didn't divulge any of this in the podcast, initially
because I didn't want to leave a trail. But after
I'd found her name, I discovered the details of her
life through newspaper clippings and interviews I did with law enforcement.
I'll never forget sitting at my computer at one am,
pouring over old newspapers. When I found the clipping about
the crooked cop boyfriend. It was like I unlocked a
(09:21):
door and stepped into an entire new world. After I
got all the case files, his arrest records, copies of Warren's,
his personnel files from the police department where he resigned
in disgrace, her name comes up over and over. She's
listed as this emergency contact. Both of their names come
up together in news articles and arrest records tied to
armed robbery. Then I went back to my conversation with
(09:44):
Abbot all those years ago, at the time she went
by Karen Abbot and I cross referenced everything I'd found
with some of the stories she told me. I just
plugged the real names in. It all lined up that
and Abbot had gone on to write a few books
of her own. I flipped through the pages of one,
and there it was, in the acknowledgment section, plain as day.
(10:06):
She thanked the author of Hitman. Abbott wrote an article
for Vanity Fair published this morning. At the same time
I'm publishing this episode. It confirms it all everything I
spent years piecing together, I was right. So I figured
it's time to share with you listeners, with the lawyers
and prosecutors from the criminal and civil cases tied to
(10:26):
this story, law enforcement, everyone I talked to in my
several years of reporting on this, even Tiffany the author
of hit Man, a technical manual for independent contractors. The
real Rex Ferrell is a woman in her late seventies
named Gail McCool. In the article published today, her story
(10:53):
unfolds exactly as I told it in this podcast. It's
all confirmed. The boyfriend, the drug buss, the explode, everything
I've talked to Abbott, I've asked for an interview with
her and the author. But again, as I've done through
this entire podcast, I go back to Tiffany Horn. Because
(11:14):
of her family, her loved ones hadn't been brutally murdered
by a hitman who followed all the tips in this manual,
no one would know or care about this book or
this author.
Speaker 2 (11:25):
I mean, that's just always going to be the story.
Like this wasn't fiction, This was how to manual to
actually murder people. This is you know, and I know
even with True crime, which honestly I do watch, and
I told you that there's something about it that I
like to watch because I like to see people caught
for what they did. I like to see people go
(11:47):
down for what they did. And she, to me, is
like an accessory but never really felt the consequences of
that and could kind of pass that off as like, oh,
this is something I did to make money. I was
an abusive relationship. Whatever the reasons were, it doesn't matter.
You still did something that hurt people, and you should
still be held accountable.
Speaker 1 (12:08):
When it comes to accountability in this story, there has
been justice. Tiffany's father, Lawrence Horn, and the hit man
he hired, James Perry, went to prison. Palettein pressed, the
publisher of Hitman, settled a lawsuit requiring them to pull
the book from shelves, but the author of Hitman, Gail,
has remained in the shadows, something Tiffany wasn't afforded.
Speaker 2 (12:29):
I don't even go by my married name, just because
I don't want people to just be able to google.
Speaker 1 (12:35):
Me like someone you're dating, or someone a coworker even or.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Yes, you would not believe how people still figure it
out and they still find out.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
And meanwhile, this author has been able to live in
obscurity for the last forty years.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yes, I mean, I don't think she's probably run away
from it herself, and we'll probably hear about that, So
that may be interesting to care about how it's affected
her mentally. Yeah, because if you're a human being, I
can't see it not affecting you mentally if you've had
this type of catastrophic effect that you've had like that
rever brates.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
When Tiffany got the call from Abbott letting her know
about this article she was writing, this is how it went.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
She basically was like she you know, really wanted to
come out and that she was, you know, very sorry,
and you know, then I kind of said, you know,
well that's interesting because I've never heard from her. And
she said, well, you know, she just assumed that people
obviously wouldn't want to, you know, hear an apology, you know.
(13:38):
And I'm like, well, that's weird that she would make
that assumption without even trying. And I found that ridiculous.
And I thought that was kind of like a you know,
basically bs and there's you know a lot of people
including my sister Janis's son that have been hurt by
this woman, So that's a cop out. And I didn't
(14:01):
like that, and I basically said that she could take
all of that and shove it up her, you know what,
because she made the choice that she made and she
has to live with it. And yeah, I guess this
is her opportunity to tell her, you know, perspective. But
when it comes to my family and I did, you know,
(14:23):
talk to my aunts, and you know, they just really
were feeling the same way that I felt like for
her to act like an apology would have been too little,
too late is ridiculous and that just shows the type
of person that she is.
Speaker 1 (14:38):
Would you guys even be open to that at this
point if that's something that she did want.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
To do, I mean, if she really took it seriously.
But I feel like she would have done that if
she did. I mean, we all make choices, and she
made a choice to dance with the devil, because that's
what I feel like. This is, you know, no matter
what her situation was, for her to write something so
disgusting and that was used to murder people like I, Yeah,
(15:04):
I couldn't even imagine being that type of person. So
I don't really know what her mindset is like, but yeah,
I guess we'll see.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
Like Tiffany said, we'll see what happens next. If I've
learned anything from this story is that just when you
think it's over, it's not. This podcast is a production
(15:45):
of iHeartRadio and Hit Home Media. Our theme song is
by Alise McCoy. An additional music written and produced by
the students at DINE powered by the Detroit Institute of
Music Education. Special thanks to Michelle Lance. I'm Jasmine wiss
in This is hit Man.