A brutal triple murder occurred in a Silver Spring, Maryland, home, thirty-five miles southwest of Baltimore, in the early morning hours of March 3, 1993. Forty-three-year-old Mildred “Millie” Horn and her eight-year-old disabled son Trevor had been slain in a contract killing committed for financial reasons. Thirty-eight-year-old Janice Saunders was killed simply because she was in the home at the time. Dogged detective work eventually connected the dots and brought the perpetrators to justice.
The murders of Millie and Trevor Horn and Janice Saunders also resulted in a landmark legal ruling, the legality of which is still debated among constitutional scholars.
Trevor Millie Janice
Horn Horn Saunders
The man Millie’s family suspected of the murders was her former husband, Larry Horn.
During the 1960s, Horn had been one of the top recording engineers and producers for Detroit-based Motown Records. Among his many credits was chief technician for The Temptations and Junior Walker and the All-Stars. Horn had even helped produce the latter’s hit song “Shotgun.”
Horn moved with the booming Motown when the company relocated its headquarters to Los Angeles in 1972.
Larry Horn
On his flight to Tinseltown, Horn met American Airlines stewardess Millie Maree. They began dating and married in Las Vegas the following year.
Horn And Millie Meet And Marry
A year later, daughter Tiffani was born.
Over the following five years, Larry and Millie’s affections for one another soured. They separated in 1979 and filed for divorce in 1981, although they continued a relationship.
Tiffani Is Born . . .
After a failed attempt at reconciliation, twins Tamielle and Trevor were born twelve weeks prematurely in 1984.
Tamielle was healthy, but Trevor’s underdeveloped lungs caused him to frequently be hospitalized.
. . . And Then The Twins
While Trevor was being treated at Washington, D.C.’s Children’s Hospital in September 1985, a tube carrying oxygen to his lungs accidentally dislodged. The damage was devastating, leaving him blind, paralyzed, and retarded.
At just over one-year-old, Trevor was rendered an invalid, requiring an expensive respirator and twenty-four-hour medical care to live.
Trevor’s Traumas
Their son’s tragedy did not being Larry and Millie closer as their affections for one another further deteriorated.
In 1987, after eight years of on-again off-again divorce proceedings, they finally made it official.
The Couple Finally Splits
Millie, without much of a fight from Larry, gained custody of their three children following the divorce. They moved across the country to Silver Spring, Maryland, to be closer to family. Her former husband had little contact with them and rarely visited.
Millie And Her Kids Relocate
Mille, as Trevor’s sole legal guardian, sued Children’s Hospital. In 1990, the two sides negotiated an out-of-court settlement of $2 million for Trever’s lifelong care. The money was put into a trust fund in his name.
Settlement Reached
Prior to the lawsuit, Larry Horn had shown little interest in his disabled son. He was awarded $125,000 of the settlement.
A judge also ruled that if Millie and Trevor preceded him in death, he would receive the remaining $1,875,000.
Horn Receives Part Of The Settlement . . .
That same year, Horn was laid off as Motown’s fortunes were waning. At the time, he was over $16,000 in debt in overdue child support. Without work, his hole was about to grow deeper, and the money he received from his son’s settlement was rapidly evaporating.
As his career and marriage had disintegrated and his debts had accumulated, Larry Horn became desperate. The means by which he attempted to alleviate his troubles showed a devil was residing in the City of Angels.
The deadbeat dad saw the death of his disabled son as his way out of debt.
. . . But Is In Arrears
On the evening of March 2, 1993, Tiffani was at her dorm room at Howard University in Washington, D.C., while Tamielle was spending the night at a friend’s house. Millie and Trevor were home, along with the nurse on duty, Janice Saunders.
Before going to work the following morning, Vivian Rice stopped at her sister’s home. She was surprised both garage doors were open and became concerned after finding the door leading from the garage into the home was also ajar. She called out Millie’s name but received no response.
Millie’s Home
As Vivian and one of Millie’s neighbors entered the home, they found eight-year-old Trevor lying lifeless in his crib and Millie and Janice lying on the floor.
The last entry in Janice’s log found near her body was made at 2:00 a.m. Autopsies showed all three victims were killed shortly thereafter.
A Triple Murder
The home’s alarm had been deactivated. Police believe after breaking inside, the culprit first murdered Janice, firing two shots into her head, as she sat knitting a quilt.
The killer then disconnected the tracheostomy tube Trevor needed to breathe and placed his hand over the child’s nose and mouth, smothering him to death. The cutting of the oxygen tube likely set off the medical alarm which woke Millie from her upstairs bedroom. After racing downstairs only half-clothed, she was shot three times in her head.
Crime Scene Photos
After committing the murders, the killer attempted to make them appear to be a robbery gone wrong.
The Home Is Ransacked
No fingerprints, shell casings, or other physical evidence was found inside the home. A rat tail file found in the backyard was believed to have been used to pry open the home’s French doors.
Ballistics tests determined the women were shot with an AR-7 rifle, a relatively obscure weapon. It, along with a silencer, were found disposed of a few miles away. Both had been wiped of fingerprints.
The Rat Tail File
Larry Horn was painting the town on the evening and morning of March 2 and 3, 1993; the town around which he was gallivanting was Los Angeles, not Silver Spring, Maryland. He made sure every person he came in contact with remembered seeing him. Many felt he was going out of his way to make his presence known.
Although Horn was not in Maryland at the time of the murders, Millie’s friends and family still believed he was behind them.
Investigators soon concurred. They believed the former Motown hitmaker had hired a hitman to mow down his former family.
Larry Was In Los Angeles
After learning of Trevor’s trust fund, police were granted a warrant to search Larry Horn’s Hollywood apartment. They found a hand drawn map of Millie’s Silver Spring neighborhood with her address written down as well as several home videos, one of which showed Horn driving the route from her house to a Days Inn in Rockville, ten miles north of Silver Spring.
In examining Horn’s telephone records, police were struck by frequent calls made from his Los Angeles home to several Maryland hotels on the evening of March 2 as well as a call made from a Maryland pay phone near the Rockville Days Inn to his home in the early morning hours of March 3.
Police obtained a list of all the guests who stayed at the motel on the night of the murders. One man stood out because he had recently been released from prison after serving time for several crimes, including armed robbery. In addition, he was from Detroit, the city from which Larry Horn hailed.
James Perry had checked into the Day’s Inn at approximately midnight on March 3 and had checked out only six hours later. As suspected, he was associated with Larry Horn from the music man’s Motown days.
James Perry
Both Horn and Perry were placed under surveillance. Over the course of several months after the murders, they communicated upwards of thirty times through various public phone booths across Los Angeles and the Silver Spring area.
In one conversation, Horn mentioned a money order made through Western Union. The company eventually found money orders totaling $6,000 made from Larry Horn to James Perry.
Links Are Established Between Horn And Perry
In June 1994, while he was under surveillance, Horn attempted to collect the remaining $1.75 million of Trevor’s settlement. Millie’s sisters filed a civil suit to block his claim and Horn was forced to testify in a deposition, during which he repeatedly lied when he said he had no relationship with James Perry.
Larry The Liar
Perry had been careful not to leave a trail, but he made one seemingly fundamental mistake. He believed by paying for his motel room in cash he would not be asked to show identification, but the Silver Spring Days Inn required identification from all guests no matter the method of payment. The motel still had a copy of Perry’s license, proving he was in Silver Spring at the time of the murders.
When questioned by police, Perry claimed he was in Maryland on a business trip but did not elaborate on the nature of his business: that of a contract killer.
A Xerox Of Perry’s Driver’s License
On July 2, 1994, Larry Horn and James Perry were arrested and charged with three counts of murder. Perry was convicted in October 1995 and sentenced to death by lethal injection. Horn was convicted the following year and given three life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Perry’s conviction was overturned on appeal after the court determined several of the recorded conversations were illegally taped. He was found guilty in a second trial but was spared death, instead also being sentenced to three life terms. He died in 2009.
Horn died in 2017.
Perry And Horn Are Arrested And Convicted
Horn’s motive for wanting his ex-wife and disabled son dead was simple: the former Motown millionaire wanted money again, and eliminating Millie and Trevor provided the means to it.
The Trust Fund Made Millie and Trevor The Targets
Janice Saunders had been a last-minute substitute as Trevor’s regular overnight nurse was unable to work that evening/morning.
She was killed only because she was the nurse on duty.
In The Way
In searching James Perry’s Detroit home, police found a mail order catalog for Paladin Press, a book-publishing company based in Boulder, Colorado. In 1992, the year before the murders, Perry had ordered a book entitled Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors. The book, published in 1983, is, essentially, a blueprint on how to commit murder.
Perry was found to have followed virtually all of the book’s recommendations in his killing of Millie and Trevor Horn and Janice Saunders.
The Book Cover
Of particular note, Perry used a silencer and the unique AR-7. 22-caliber rifle because, as Hit Man notes, it is a small and light weapon that can be disassembled with the pieces placed in the gun’s stock. The “Murder Manual” also instructs ‘contractors’ to use a drill to obscure the serial number before disposing of the weapon to make it harder to trace.
Several days after the murders, police found a piece of an AR-7 on a road a few miles from Millie’s house with the serial number drilled out.
The Gun and Silencer Used By Perry
As Recommended In Hit Man
The finding that James Perry had followed the information in Hit Man nearly to a tee when committing the Horn and Saunders murders led family members to sue Paladin Press in 1996.
In “Rice v. Paladin Enterprises,” (Rice being the last name of Millie’s sister, Vivian), the families argued that Paladin had “aided and abetted” in the murders by marketing the book as a “How-To” manual that could be used for reference by would-be killers in the solicitation, planning, and commission of murder for hire. They argued while Paladin had a right to publish the book, they should be held responsible for any criminal actions resulting from the publication.
Paladin argued it was protected by the First Amendment. Lawyers noted the 1969 case of Brandenburg v. Ohio in which the Supreme Court ruled the state of Ohio could not sue a Ku Klux Klan leader for making a speech advocating the murder of minorities. The high court ruled the Klan was protected because the speech did not impose an immediate threat to anyone specifically.
The case became hotly debated amongst constitutional scholars.
Lawsuit Launched
The District Court ruled Paladin was protected by the First Amendment and that the case could not proceed to trial. The majority of legal scholars applauded the ruling.
District Court Dismisses The Claim . . .
In November 1997, however, a three-judge Appeals Court overturned the District Court ruling, saying the book was not protected by the First Amendment’s Free Speech/Free Press Clause, that Paladin could be held liable for a crime committed by one of its readers, and that the case could proceed to trial. While some scholars praised the ruling, more criticized it as economic censorship.
Now it was Paladin’s turn to appeal, but the Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
. . . But The Appellate Court Overturns The Ruling
Most legal experts believed Paladin would prevail in the trial and were surprised by the company’s agreeing to a settlement with the families.
Shortly before the trial was to begin in May 1999, Paladin’s insurance company, against the wishes of Paladin Press itself, agreed to pay $2.5 million dollars to both the Horn and Saunders families. In addition, Paladin agreed to destroy the remaining seven-hundred copies of the Hit Man book in its possession and surrender any rights it had to publish and reproduce the work.
Paladin Settles
It is believed nearly 13,000 copies of Hit Man were sold, although Reason Magazine estimates there are 20,000 copies of the book in existence. The book is allowed to be purchased from independent sellers. I also found it available for sale on both Amazon and eBay.
Rex Feral, a Latin term meaning “king of the beasts,” is the pseudonym used by the Hit Man author. Documents subpoenaed from Paladin showed the real author was a Florida housewife. Because the woman had feared her writing could be used against her if a reader committed a crime, Paladin agreed to indemnify her, i.e. to pay for lawyers if a lawsuit was brought.
The real identity of the Hit Man author is, as far as I could find, still unknown.
The “Blueprint For Murder” Book
Is No Longer Banned
Paladin Press was founded by Peder Lund in 1970. Most of the company’s books were How-To manuals on terrorism, smuggling, and political assassination.
Lund said the Hit Man book began as a crime novel, but that the format was changed to appeal to Paladin’s reader base accustomed to the publisher’s non-fiction books on military, survivalist, weapons, and similar topics, such as how to commit murder.
Lund became known as “The Most Dangerous Publisher in the World.” He died in 2017.
Paladin Press Founder Peder Lund
Paladin endured additional under scrutiny after another of its publications, Deadly Brew: Advanced Improved Explosives, was found in the home of Timothy McVeigh following his bombing of Oklahoma City’s Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in April 1995.
Another Paladin Publication
Comes Under Fire
The aftermath of the Horne/Saunders murders led to Paladin Press being sued on multiple occasions over more murders and other crimes believed committed with the aid of its publications.
The company ceased operations in January 2018.
The Controversial Publishing Company Folds
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/119904353/mildred_elizabeth-horn#
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/119904129/trevor_antony_horn
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/23245454/janice-yvonne-saunders#
Sources:
- American Justice
- The FBI Files
- Los Angeles Times
- Murderpedia
- Washington Post
He was fired from motown due to drug abuse.
One of the reasons for the first time Millie filed for divorce.
He liked nose candy a bit too much
He should have gotten more punishment.
I knew the daughters in my youth.
Devastated.