0:00

Before we get started, I want to let you know

0:02

that Hitman contains graphic scenes of violence.

0:04

Listener, discretion is advised. I'm

0:08

going to tell you about this book I found. If

0:12

you saw it on a shelf, you might think it was a comic

0:15

book or a silly polp novel. The

0:17

cover's purple, with a James Bond

0:20

Dick Tracy looking guy on the front, wearing

0:22

a bright yellow suit and a fedora.

0:26

He's holding up a gun with a silencer attached,

0:28

and behind him there's this red outline

0:30

of a body. And on the back cover is

0:33

a crew drawing of handcuffs,

0:35

a bottle of poison, a knife, some red

0:37

gloves, and that same gun. The

0:40

book's title even sounds kind of ridiculous.

0:43

It's called hit Man, a Technical

0:46

Manual for Independent Contractors. It

0:48

was published in nineteen three by a Colorado

0:51

publisher called Paladin Press. Here's

0:54

how the author, Rex Ferrell begins.

0:58

A woman recently asked how I

1:00

could, in good conscience

1:03

write an instruction book on murder. Oh,

1:05

and we got an actor to read his lines. How

1:08

can you live with yourself if someone

1:10

uses what you right to go out and take a

1:12

human life? Wind Rex

1:15

Ferrell has very specific tips for the

1:17

aspiring contract killer. He

1:20

writes, step by step, you

1:22

will learn where to find employment, how much

1:24

to charge, and what you can and cannot

1:26

do with the money you earn. And

1:28

beyond all his logistical secrets,

1:31

because of this book is full of those, he

1:33

takes it a step further. He walks

1:35

you as if you're his apprentice through

1:38

the mental preparation it takes for

1:40

a person to commit murder, like

1:42

how to handle the emotions. He says, you won't

1:44

feel after your first job. You

1:48

had wondered if you would feel compassion

1:51

for the victim, im mediate guilt, or even

1:53

experienced direct intervention by the hand of God,

1:56

but you weren't even feeling sick and by

1:59

the side of the body. It's

2:06

hard to get your hands on an actual copy

2:09

of hit Man, and it's been out

2:11

of print since I

2:13

first discovered it. When I was researching a story

2:15

for another radio show. They wanted

2:18

pitches about amateurs, stories

2:20

of ineptitude and failure, but

2:22

also people who had stumbled into success

2:24

despite dubious qualifications. That

2:28

was five years ago. I thought it would

2:30

be this little eight minute peace, but

2:32

it turned into this eight episode podcast

2:37

on the back of the book, it says Ferrell

2:39

is a hit man. He is the last

2:41

recourse in these times when laws are so

2:44

twisted that justice goes unserved.

2:47

He is a man who controls his destiny

2:49

through his private code of ethics,

2:51

who feels no twinch of guilt at

2:53

doing his job. He is a

2:55

professional killer. Rex

2:59

Ferrell talks a out about how to stay anonymous,

3:01

and he recommends using a fake name, especially

3:04

when running a car or checking into a hotel.

3:06

It's obvious he did this when he wrote his book.

3:09

The name Rex Ferrell is too perfect. Farrell

3:12

literally means wild. He

3:14

wants you to think he's dangerous. So

3:17

of all the mysteries around this book, the

3:19

biggest one is Ferrell's true identity.

3:23

The publisher has always protected the author.

3:25

Their real name can't be found in court documents,

3:28

and it's never come out in public, which

3:30

is fitting because in his book he

3:32

promises that he'll always remain elusive,

3:35

that he'll never be caught. If

3:41

my advice and the proven

3:44

methods in this book are followed, certainly

3:47

no one will ever know. But

3:51

I wanted to know who would write an instruction

3:53

manual for murder? And why so?

3:56

I initially set out to find this Rex

3:59

Ferrell, but the truth behind

4:01

this book was so much bigger. He

4:08

followed it a step by step to come

4:11

in and murder my family. Some

4:13

of this you can figure it out without a book, so you

4:16

couldn't. Some of it is bordering on

4:18

any Do we really want to tell people this because it's

4:20

kind of evil? You know? How do you go after

4:22

a book? I don't care what it says.

4:25

This ship cannot be protected by

4:27

the First Amendment. Motile legacy is motile

4:29

a legacy, and everyone who was there, whatever they

4:32

did, good, bad, what they say and ugly,

4:34

you know, it's all part of the legacy. I got woke

4:37

up in the wee hours of the morning. There

4:39

had been an explosion and they had located

4:41

a dead body. He was obviously

4:44

good at concealing his identity. He literally

4:46

just kind of fell off the face of the earth. I'm

4:49

Jasmine Morris from My Heart Radio and

4:51

Hit Home Media. This is

4:53

hit Man. I

5:00

learned very quickly that no one

5:03

wants to talk about this book, certainly

5:05

not the publisher. Back in two

5:07

thousand fifteen, I made a phone call to Paladin

5:10

Press and I asked if I could speak

5:12

with someone about hit Man. There

5:14

was a long pause from the person on the other end,

5:16

and the call lasted about ten seconds.

5:19

I still haven't been able to get anyone from Paladin

5:21

on the phone or to answer my emails.

5:24

In later episodes, we're going to explore the

5:26

whole bizarre story of Paladin, but

5:28

for now, here's what you need to know. The

5:33

publisher began in Colorado in nineteen

5:35

seventy, founded by two Vietnam veterans

5:38

named Paidar Lund and Robert Cape Brown.

5:41

In earlier photos, they're often posing

5:43

with guns, wearing military fatigues bandanas

5:46

across their foreheads. Lande looks just

5:48

like Martin Sheen from Apocalypse Now. At

5:51

one point, the company website said they named

5:53

their press Paladin after the knights

5:56

who served in Charlemagne's court in eighth century

5:58

France, knights who were quote

6:00

dispatched by the king to redress

6:02

wrongs in the land. Brown

6:05

would eventually start the Mercenary magazine

6:07

Soldier of Fortune, while Lund

6:09

soldiered on at Paladin, publishing

6:11

books with titles like be Your Own

6:13

Undertaker, how to Dispose of a dead

6:15

Body, and Sneak It through Smuggling

6:18

made easier in

6:20

the eighties, they got into the video business,

6:23

putting out instructional tapes like the lock

6:25

Picking Guide b An E A t

6:27

Z. How to get in anywhere anytime,

6:29

getting into everything from padlocks

6:31

to bank a vaults. You're going to see

6:33

a steal of Mercedes, Corvette

6:36

Ferrari, we are going to blow

6:38

up a safe and was burning bars. We're

6:40

gonna use everything can be done

6:43

to get in someplace. As

6:45

the company website said, quote Paladin,

6:48

readers seek knowledge and information that

6:50

some people think should remain secret or

6:53

unpublished. Remember

6:55

when they started, it was long before the internet.

6:57

Lund was a First Amendment fundamentalist.

7:00

He wanted to set this information free.

7:02

There was just nothing that

7:04

these guys one cell. That's

7:06

Attorney Howard Siegel. I can

7:09

hear Howard if he could be a little louder,

7:11

Jasmine, you were absolutely the first person

7:13

in the history of Western civilization

7:16

who has ever asked me to be louder. My

7:18

wife would be astounded that somebody asked me

7:20

to be a louder. Yeah, Goad Howard has

7:22

been an attorney for forty five years, often

7:24

taking on cases no one else will. He's

7:27

bombastic and unfiltered and not

7:29

afraid to make his opinions known, which

7:31

made him a worthy opponent of paid our loans,

7:34

But we'll get into that later. I remember one description

7:37

of how to build a baby bottle bomb

7:39

in one of his books. That was a

7:41

bomb that was literally in a baby

7:43

bottle, and you would wield the baby

7:46

into a crowded marketplace. That's

7:48

how you would kill innocent people. And didn't

7:50

bother Lund in the slightest. I mean,

7:53

here's Lund himself back in the nineties

7:55

being interviewed by Mike Wallace on sixty

7:57

minutes. Terrorists would certainly be

8:00

interested in what you publish.

8:03

They might be absolutely

8:05

and this doesn't worry the fact that, no,

8:07

it does not. And later, when asked about

8:09

a book tied to the Oklahoma City bombing, the

8:11

domestic terrorist attack that

8:14

killed one d sixty eight people, Lunda

8:17

says this, I feel no responsibility.

8:20

I have no ethical responsibility for

8:23

the misuse of information. That's

8:25

what this whole issue is about, the

8:28

misuse, the illegal use

8:30

of information. Lund

8:33

died in two thousand seventeen and Paladin

8:35

shut down shortly afterward. But I

8:37

did speak with Tom Kelly, the press lawyer

8:39

who defended Paladin in a landmark first Amendment

8:41

case that we're going to talk a whole lot about.

8:44

Not surprisingly, his take on Paladin's

8:46

catalog was a little different than Howard's.

8:49

Paladin has a niche market,

8:52

a very eclectic mixture of non

8:54

fiction. They focus on libertarian

8:57

values, self help strategies,

9:00

survivalism, knowledge of weapons

9:02

and explosives, but they also include

9:04

esoteric topics like quite a range

9:07

of odd hobbies, or the spiritual life

9:09

of the Lakota Sue Indians and

9:11

that sort of thing. One of

9:13

the best selling series of

9:15

Paladin was the Revenge series,

9:18

including Screw onto Others,

9:21

revenge tactics for all occasions.

9:23

I've also seen Paladin be described

9:26

as the most dangerous publisher

9:28

in America or something like that. Well, I you

9:30

know, I think that's preposterous. The

9:33

books published are very unlikely

9:36

to be the cause of

9:39

criminal conduct, murder, mayhem,

9:41

what have you. This conversation

9:43

is so relevant right now. What

9:45

do we do with this kind of speech and information?

9:48

Every few days, it seems there's another

9:50

mass shooting tied to some kind of radicalized

9:53

viral online hate. So

9:55

we have to ask, can horrendous

9:57

ideas cause horrendous acts of violence?

10:00

And are the platforms that perpetuate those

10:02

ideas responsible. Paladin's

10:05

publisher paid our Land once said, I've

10:08

never seen a man killed by a book

10:11

which brings us to murders

10:14

of Millie and Trevor Horn and Janice

10:17

Saunders. We're

10:20

like, what a book

10:23

that's published? It tells you how to kill? And

10:25

really we could not believe this, something like

10:27

this was published. We

10:29

had three people who were dead, had

10:31

been murdered, and this book

10:33

was used. It

10:36

made me angry. I was already angry

10:38

when I understood the book, and I became even

10:40

more angry. That's Maryland

10:42

Farmer. She's telling me about her sister,

10:45

Millie Horne, a forty three year old

10:47

single mom with three kids, an older

10:49

daughter, Tiffany, and twins Tammielle

10:51

and Trevor. We all remember

10:54

her, her beautiful smile,

10:56

her red lips she loved red lipstick,

10:59

and her infectious laughter

11:02

and just happy, loving

11:05

life. We used to teaser because

11:07

Millie had blonde hair, and she

11:09

had green eyes, and

11:12

she was fair skinned, and she

11:14

had a presence about her. That

11:17

presence it comes through in stories

11:19

and photographs of Millie. I've heard

11:21

people use words like magnetic when

11:23

describing her. I've also heard determined,

11:26

prideful, fearless, and regal.

11:29

She's also been described as a really

11:31

good mom. Here's her daughter, Tiffany.

11:33

I can honestly say she invested her

11:36

heart and soul in raising me. She also

11:39

was that cool mom, you know,

11:41

and she definitely was more carefree.

11:43

Like she took me to see Flash Name. It's like

11:45

I will never forget that, Like what mother takes

11:48

their daughter to see a movie about strippers?

11:52

It was like eight years old. She

11:55

didn't know was that kind of dancy mill.

12:00

He was fiercely protective of her children, which

12:02

became especially clear to everyone when she

12:04

gave birth to her twins. They

12:06

were born three months premature. Tammiel

12:09

had no major health complications, but Trevor's

12:11

lungs were underdeveloped and he was in critical

12:14

condition when he

12:16

finally came home from the hospital. He had

12:18

a tracheostomy tube in his throat and

12:20

he was hooked up to an abneum monitor, which

12:22

would sound an alarm if he stopped breathing.

12:25

He required twenty four hour nursing care.

12:27

Trevor was profoundly

12:30

disabled. That's Howard Siegel again.

12:32

He was what many people would consider

12:34

to be the ultimate burden, and

12:37

these people treated him

12:40

like he was the ultimate gift. He was our

12:42

miracle child. I

12:44

would have a bad day at work and I would come

12:47

in and walk in the room and who's

12:49

they're chuckling away at me. Tiffany

12:52

was nine when the twins were born, and she

12:54

remembers that close bond. Million Trevor

12:56

shared, My mom was his

12:59

everything, like a

13:01

mother's son love you could not imagine.

13:04

And it was almost like she was the love of

13:06

his life. And I think my mom had been looking for

13:09

that connection for a long time. Say,

13:13

Fifine,

13:16

I have Tammy you. What

13:19

do you do in Trevor? Wait,

13:23

this is footage from a home video Maryland

13:25

shared with me. That's her voice you're

13:27

hearing. Trevor, now

13:29

four years old, is laying on a Smurf's

13:31

blanket on the floor in his bedroom,

13:33

which was the heart of Milly's house. They

13:36

actually called it the family room.

13:38

His cousins and siblings are playing with him,

13:40

tickling him. His mouth is wide

13:42

open with the biggest smile. He

13:44

just radiates joy. You can see

13:46

it on everyone's faces. And

13:48

then his mother, Millie, gets down on the floor

13:51

with him.

13:53

What are you talking about, Trevor? STU.

13:59

Look at recommend Mama,

14:02

where are you going? Oh it's

14:04

Trevor turned over?

14:09

Look at your laving? Just

14:14

like every other night. Around seven

14:16

seven pm on March second,

14:20

Trevor gets a bath and is rocked to sleep

14:22

in a rocking chair in his room. If

14:24

it wasn't Milly doing this, it would be one of the nurses

14:27

she recruited to help care for Trevor. Janis

14:30

Saunders, arrives around eight pm to work

14:32

the night shift. Janie isn't supposed

14:34

to be there that night, but she agreed to fill

14:36

in for another nurse who couldn't make it.

14:39

As was routine, she flashes her headlights,

14:42

letting the day nurse know she's in the driveway.

14:45

The garage door opens for her. She pulls

14:47

in and closes the garage door behind her.

14:50

The nurse, being relieved, debriefs Janice,

14:52

telling her Trevor was doing very well clinically.

14:55

She says he was enjoyable and very happy

14:58

that they'd had a very pleasant a.

15:01

Milliehorn, a flight attendant with American Airlines,

15:04

is scheduled to fly out around eight am.

15:06

Tammiell's sleeping over at her aunt's. Janice

15:09

settles in for the night. Just

15:13

before midnight, a man parks his

15:15

rental car and silver Spring, Maryland.

15:18

He carries a hand drawn map as he walks

15:20

to Millie's big brick house nearby. This

15:23

is the ax on his map. Millie

15:25

is asleep upstairs. Trevor

15:28

is asleep in his room. Jannis

15:30

sits by his side, cross stitching and

15:32

watching over the boy. At

15:35

around two am, she logs his vitals

15:37

continued to sleep quietly, respiratory

15:40

status, stable, lungs clear,

15:43

diaper dry. Her

15:45

notes show that she started to write more

15:48

and then. No one knows exactly

15:50

what happened next, but here's

15:52

what investigators piece together. The

15:55

man approaches the back of the house carrying

15:58

an a R seven rifle, low it with twenty

16:00

two caliber ammunition and a homemade silencer

16:03

affixed the barrel. He prizes

16:05

open a basement window or possibly the sliding

16:07

back door. He walks

16:09

through the first floor of the house towards Trevor's

16:12

bedroom, finds Janice Saunders

16:15

and shoots her through the eye. He

16:18

then approaches Trevor's crib and

16:21

smothers the boy. Trevor

16:23

stops breathing, which sets off the piercing

16:26

alarm of zapnea monitor, just

16:29

as she had done many times in the past.

16:31

Millie hears the alarm and heads downstairs

16:33

to check on Trevor. That's

16:35

when she comes face to face with a man at the foot

16:37

of the stairs. He shoots her in the

16:39

head three times, again

16:42

through the eye. Before

16:45

the man leaves, he tosses furniture

16:47

and takes Millie's credit cards. He

16:49

takes his gun, disassembles it, and runs

16:51

a rattail file down the inside of his

16:53

A R seven. He grabs Millie's keys,

16:56

and he takes off in her van, tossing her

16:58

credit cards and the gun parts into the brush

17:00

along the highway. He

17:03

abandons her van and he gets back into his rental

17:05

car, making one last stop to

17:07

a pay phone at a Denny's nearby.

17:14

All Right, it's cryptic,

17:16

but investigators believe this was a hitman

17:18

calling his employer to report he had

17:20

completed his job. We'll

17:28

be right back after a quick break. When

17:49

I first reached out to Tiffany Horn, it's

17:52

been twenty five years since her family

17:54

was completely torn apart. After

17:57

several years or decades,

17:59

the family leaves that deal with this type of horrendous

18:02

trauma are constantly dealing

18:04

with the fallout. It

18:07

never goes away, and

18:09

it's a lonely existence sometimes to

18:11

be part of that, because you

18:13

become almost like a pariah,

18:16

and it's too painful for people to want to deal

18:18

with. I keep coming back to this moment in

18:20

the home video that Marilynn shared with me, when

18:22

Tiffany turns the camera on her mom, Mom,

18:26

I go to church today. What

18:29

did you do that? I tried to listen

18:31

to? What else did you do? Tiffany

18:36

was just a teenager when she lost her mom.

18:38

She's now outlived Milly by a year.

18:41

She's a forty four year old single mother of two.

18:44

She travels as much as she can. She loves

18:47

music and God, and she's tough.

18:49

By that, I mean she doesn't let anyone walk all

18:51

over her. She'll put you in your place.

18:54

She first answered my call in March

18:57

of two thousand eighteen. We had many

18:59

more phone calls before she agreed to meet with

19:01

me, and even then she was reluctant.

19:04

She still is. She doesn't trust easily

19:06

for good reason. Why

19:08

are you sitting here with me today? I

19:11

feel it's important to tell

19:13

some details and some parts

19:16

of my story that I don't think I've ever really

19:18

talked about before, even just talking

19:20

to you today. I can't have these

19:22

conversations really with anyone

19:25

now. My kids have grown up and they're moving

19:28

on to live their adult lives,

19:30

and I guess I'm left now with, oh, wow,

19:32

there's all these things I'm still

19:34

having to kind of sort through about

19:36

my dad, about my mom,

19:39

about my family. The

19:46

morning of March three, Tiffany

19:49

got a phone call to her dorm room at Howard

19:51

University in Washington, d C. I'll

19:54

never forget. They called me from the lobby and

19:57

they said that the police were there for me, and

20:00

my heart stopped. They

20:02

just said, can you come with us? So

20:05

that was like a minute

20:07

tribe, and I just remember

20:09

being back at the cruiser just

20:11

crying and crying and crying because

20:15

I didn't know what

20:17

had happened, but I knew it must be something awful.

20:21

So I had almost a whole hour to go through

20:23

all these different scenarios, and

20:26

I just remember thinking immediately

20:29

maybe my mom's plane had crashed or

20:31

something like. I used to have

20:33

those fears as a child, so that was the

20:35

first thing that came to my mind. I'm

20:38

at that point inconsolable, so

20:40

I run into the house and I just

20:43

collapsed into my Auntie Lane's

20:45

arms, screaming and crying. And that's when

20:48

my grandmother was in the background, wailing

20:51

that he killed my daughter, this

20:53

primal whale of pain.

20:56

And then that's when my my aunt

20:58

told me that my

21:00

mother, my brother, and his

21:03

nurse Janis had been murdered. Tiffany's

21:10

aunt, Millie sister, Vivian Elaine

21:13

Rice lived next door to Millie. She

21:15

was the first one to discover the scene around

21:17

seven fifteen am.

21:19

At first, everyone pointed their fingers

21:22

and Millie's ex husband and father her three

21:24

children, Lawrence Horn, but

21:26

he was three thousand miles away at the time,

21:29

and as we'll learn, he had an airtight

21:31

alibi. I was responsible

21:34

for the investigation and prosecution

21:37

of what we call the triple murder for

21:39

hire of Trevor and

21:42

Mildred and Janice Saunders.

21:44

Robert Dean is a career prosecutor based

21:47

in Montgomery County, Maryland. After

21:49

I reached out, he responded immediately. He

21:51

was working in me and mar at the time when we

21:53

met up just days after he returned to the States.

21:56

Police didn't always ask me to come out to the crime

21:59

scene, but they thought this was the type of case

22:01

where it was appropriate, so

22:03

I did. It was a very

22:06

somber and and

22:08

and solemn site. There

22:10

was the body of Mildred

22:13

Horn at the bottom of the stairs. There was

22:15

the body of a child with

22:18

clearly life support type

22:20

of apparatus oxygen tanks

22:22

and and and wires and so forth.

22:25

By his side was Jonnas Saunders, one

22:27

of his care nurses. Bob

22:33

Dean still calls this the biggest case

22:35

he's ever had. It was one of

22:37

the most exhaustive investigations in Montgomery

22:40

County history. Whoever

22:42

had committed this crime had managed to leave

22:44

no fingerprints behind. They

22:46

didn't have much to go on, so the police

22:48

set off on foot, canvassing the area

22:50

for clues, and they told us they had

22:53

found someone from Detroit who was signed

22:55

into a hotel, stayed like six

22:57

hours, and then left. This man from

22:59

Detroit had checked into a nearby days

23:01

in around midnight and had checked out by

23:03

six am the morning of the murders. There

23:06

could have been plenty of innocent explanations,

23:08

but it still seemed weird. This was clearly

23:11

an interstate matter, and by

23:13

this time we had asked the FBI for

23:15

assistance, and investigators from the

23:17

Detroit FBI office decided

23:19

to pay the man a visitance. Units.

23:21

We should be on that house in a few minutes. We're

23:23

gonna have the handheld with us. This is

23:25

the actual tape from that day. They're outside

23:28

the man's small brick house in East Detroit.

23:31

Hey, so, Bob case FBI, Well,

23:34

see how we covered as quickly here I got from

23:36

a Baltimore office. Okay, what

23:38

they're looking at is, um they

23:40

checked some hotels I guess on days

23:42

in Gethersburg area,

23:45

Rockville, Maryland, and they

23:47

had information that you stayed there. I know it's

23:49

going back a long time, but

23:52

March second third of this year.

23:54

Okay, Well, first of all March.

23:57

Okay. First of all, they want

23:59

to confirm there was in fact you or somebody

24:01

still your I D did you lose your ID or something like

24:03

that. Uh No, I

24:05

was there in

24:08

that area, okay, And so I can can

24:10

you tell us why you were there? Well?

24:13

Well, can I ask you why you're

24:15

asking this question? And eventually

24:17

he answers the FBI agents your

24:20

own business business, church related

24:22

business. The man being questioned

24:24

is James Edward Perry. He was around

24:27

forty five years old. At the time. He had a criminal

24:29

record. He'd been in prison for armed robbery,

24:32

but he'd served his time and

24:34

now worked for himself as a radio minister

24:36

and spiritual advisor. I

24:38

traveled across this country. I've got probably

24:40

maybe four or five thousand people that I counsel

24:43

and in minister too. We are

24:45

into basically now trying to help people,

24:48

uh, what the problems that they possibly

24:50

have. I found the surveillance

24:53

photo of him. He's wearing a trench coat

24:55

in a prayer cap. He's got aviator

24:57

sunglasses hanging around his neck. He's

24:59

very stylish. Perry called

25:02

himself a case buster. He helped

25:04

with things like choosing lottery numbers

25:06

and counseling people on their marriages. There

25:09

are people that because those

25:11

certain things happening in their lives there

25:13

they have witchcraft.

25:16

They held painting that body.

25:19

Uh. We pray for him

25:21

and we are tempted to give them a positive

25:25

attitude with My belief is that whatever

25:27

it is, if you think that you're

25:29

healthy, when you'll be healthy, it doesn't make no difference

25:31

what you have, you have cancer or what have you

25:35

that can be absolved. I'm going to take

25:37

you through all the twists and turns of this investigation,

25:40

But just know that eventually investigators

25:42

executed a search warrant on Perry's house,

25:45

and he had kind of a storefront.

25:48

I don't want to call it a church, but I guess that's what we

25:50

will call it, and we'll call it a church. Handle

25:53

a little calling card, and there

25:55

was a soldier of Fortune magazine, and

25:58

then there was a catalog for Paler and Press.

26:02

Sure enough we learned that James Perry

26:04

had in fact ordered these two books, how

26:07

to Be a Hitman by Rex Ferrell,

26:10

and this book on how to make disposable

26:12

silencers. We ordered, of course

26:14

these books as well. Do you remember the first time you

26:16

saw that book? Yeah, I know I. I looked

26:19

at it and I couldn't believe it. I don't want to say

26:21

I was appalled. For

26:23

a minute. I thought it was a joke. It's

26:25

kind of just a gag gift. But

26:28

you've not got the thinking that maybe, you

26:30

know, some people take it seriously, and Perry

26:32

was interested in it. Investigators

26:35

found striking similarities between

26:37

the tips found in hit Man and the murders

26:40

of Millie, Trevor and Janice. The

26:42

first item on Farrell's basic equipment

26:45

checklist an a R seven rifle,

26:47

which investigators believe was used in these

26:49

murders. Shoot at close

26:52

range. Quote aim for the head,

26:54

preferably the eye sockets. If you

26:56

are a sharp shooter. Establish

26:59

a ace at a motel in close proximity

27:02

to the job site before committing the murders.

27:05

Farrell says, pay cash, which James

27:07

Perry did, and to check in using

27:09

a fictitious name. But

27:11

this day's in had a rule if

27:14

paying with cash, he had to show

27:16

your I D. I guess the flaw

27:18

is that he used his correct identification.

27:21

If he hadn't done that, do you think you would have found him?

27:23

I don't know. If he used a phony name and had

27:25

phony idea, I don't know that we would

27:27

have. One

27:34

of the attorneys I spoke with early on in this story

27:37

said he didn't want hit Man in his house. He

27:39

compared it to a loaded pistol or a vial

27:42

of poison. I know what he

27:44

means. Hit Man sitting

27:46

next to me right now, and it does have

27:48

a certain cloud around it. I

27:50

generally keep it in one place, and

27:52

I don't like it to touch other things in my office,

27:55

almost like it's some kind of contaminant. This

27:58

book her lot of people, we

28:01

don't even really know how many. And

28:03

if this is a story about accountability,

28:05

about who is truly responsible when bad

28:07

things happen, about who carries the

28:09

burden of remorse, there's still

28:11

someone who's never spoken about their role

28:14

in all of it. One

28:22

day, buried in something like five pages

28:24

of court documents that a lawyer emailed me, I

28:27

finally came across some correspondence between

28:29

Paladin and Professional Killer. Rex

28:32

Ferrell, the editorial

28:34

director of Paladin, was writing, with good

28:36

news enclosed, you will

28:38

find two copies of the contract for hit

28:40

Man, a technical manual for independent

28:42

contractors. Signed two copies

28:44

with a witness, and returned both to us.

28:48

I was about to get my first glimpse of the person

28:51

behind the book. Here's

28:53

what he wrote back to Paladin. My

28:56

main concern in offering this type of material

28:58

for publication is the possibility

29:01

of litigation from people who might

29:03

misuse the materials in my books.

29:06

So the real Rex Ferrell might have

29:08

had a conscience. After all, it's

29:11

easy to speculate what Ferrell's intentions

29:14

were in writing hit Man. To

29:16

some, it's not a question. I mean he wrote

29:18

a murder manual to others.

29:20

It reads his entertainment or a joke, a

29:23

joke that James Perry might have used to murder

29:25

three people. But after reading through

29:27

this exchange, at least one thing becomes

29:29

clear about Ferrell Again, he

29:32

writes, by the way,

29:34

an answer to your question and that of Mr

29:36

Land. I get my materials from

29:39

books, television, movies, newspapers,

29:41

police officers, my karate instructor,

29:44

and a good friend who is an attorney. No,

29:47

I am not a hit man. I don't

29:49

even own a gun, but don't

29:51

tell anybody.

30:00

Yeah, next on hit

30:02

Man, my dad stole everything. I

30:04

knew in my heart of hearts that he was

30:06

involved. He destroyed my life

30:09

like my family was gone. It's never been

30:12

the same for me. We all knew, did

30:14

it? So we knew it was Lawrence Horn. I

30:16

mean, I knew who else who

30:19

would have benefited from Trevor Due Who

30:21

would walk in the house and kill an

30:23

innocent child. At

30:26

the time that you married Billie

30:28

Murray, did

30:30

you love her? H

30:35

No. Hit

30:49

Man is a production of My Heart Radio and Hit Home

30:51

Media. It's produced and reported by me Jasmine

30:54

Morris, our supervising producer is

30:56

Michelle Lance. Mark Luto is our story

30:58

consultant. Executive producers are

31:00

Mangesh Hattikador and Me. Mixing

31:02

by Josh Roguson and Jacopo Penzo.

31:05

Our fact checker is Austin Thompson. Our

31:08

theme song is written and produced by DIME,

31:11

powered by the Detroit Institute of Music

31:13

Education. In special thanks

31:15

to Andrew Goldberg, Tor Piquette, Michael

31:17

Garoclo, Nikki Etre, Tristan McNeil,

31:20

and Taylor Chocoin