Speaker 1: The word book is one of the most powerful words
Speaker 1: in all of the dialogue about First Amendment. There's nothing
Speaker 1: more sacred than a book. And we knew the defense
Speaker 1: was going to be, you can't go after a book.
Speaker 1: That's an atrocity. So that was what we had to overcome.
Speaker 1: I made a very calculated decision when we first started
Speaker 1: this case. I said, we're going to go on a
Speaker 1: media blitz. I remember I was a Larry King one
Speaker 1: night and Larry King kept calling it a book, and
Speaker 1: I stopped him dead. First of all, this is not
Speaker 1: a book. If you're going to call this a book,
Speaker 1: it is not a book. This is no this is
Speaker 1: not a pamphlet. This is a murder manual. This is
Speaker 1: a set of instructions to commit murder. A seven auctions
Speaker 1: to commit murder. This book manuol or how to Guide.
Speaker 1: We keep coming back to it. You can't find Hitman
Speaker 1: on the shelves anymore. And this week I'm going to
Speaker 1: tell you why. On the night of September four, a
Speaker 1: separated mother of two put her kids to bed just
Speaker 1: like every other night. Her nearly two year old son
Speaker 1: had just started sleeping in a toddler bed, and as
Speaker 1: many kids do. At one point during the night, he
Speaker 1: went to sleep with his mom, Bobby, and then Bobby
Speaker 1: was woken suddenly from a deep sleep. Someone was lifting
Speaker 1: up her head and dropping it. She didn't have her
Speaker 1: glasses on. Everything was blurry too dark. She couldn't see
Speaker 1: and she couldn't breathe. The man in her bedroom had
Speaker 1: his latex gloves tied around her neck. The kids, Why
Speaker 1: are you doing this to the kids, she kept trying
Speaker 1: to say, but he was choking her. Her son woke
Speaker 1: up and started screaming, and the hitman startled. Let go.
Speaker 1: So my name is Don Corson. I'm an attorney in
Speaker 1: Gina Wagon and back maybe eighteen years or so ago,
Speaker 1: i represented a woman named Bobby who was a survivor
Speaker 1: of an attempt to murder attack by a would be
Speaker 1: hitman who had bought a book about how to do that.
Speaker 1: Bobby declined an interview for this podcast, but gave her attorney,
Speaker 1: Don Courson, permission to speak about the case. And out
Speaker 1: of respect for her privacy, we're just going to refer
Speaker 1: to Bobby by her first name. And of course he
Speaker 1: didn't think there's gonna be witnesses after this, and so
Speaker 1: she engaged him in some conversation. They asked basically, hey,
Speaker 1: my husband put you up to this, and again, figuring
Speaker 1: there'd be no witnesses, he said yes. Studies show the
Speaker 1: most common motive in a hitman case is disillusion of
Speaker 1: a relationship, followed by money. Very few hits are performed
Speaker 1: by quote masters. Most hitman, it turns out, are actually
Speaker 1: first time amateurs who want to resolve some form of
Speaker 1: personal crisis, usually a lack of money, and most of
Speaker 1: them are in really found through acquaintances. That's true of
Speaker 1: Lawrence Horn, who hired a hitman to kill his ex
Speaker 1: wife and son for a one point seven million dollar estate,
Speaker 1: and it's true in this story too. At the time,
Speaker 1: Bobby was discussing divorce with her husband, Robert, who, according
Speaker 1: to court documents, had a history of abuse, and Bobby
Speaker 1: had a life insurance policy. He approached a coworker and
Speaker 1: broached the idea. The coworker had never done anything like
Speaker 1: this before in his life, but he was familiar with
Speaker 1: Palette and Publisher products and had bought books before from them,
Speaker 1: So he went and ordered from Paletta a book called Hitman,
Speaker 1: a Technical Manual for Independent Contractors, and learned the craft
Speaker 1: of becoming a contract killer, and there's just a laundry
Speaker 1: list of advice given the book. Constructions given the book
Speaker 1: that he followed sort of you know, verbatim, in trying
Speaker 1: to execute this would be murder. The court documents paint
Speaker 1: an unbelievable scene. Bobby had a full on conversation with hitman.
Speaker 1: She even asked how much Robert was paying him on dollars.
Speaker 1: The hitman replied, is that all his kids are worth
Speaker 1: to him, I'll pay twice the amount. She shouted back,
Speaker 1: remarkable uh and horrifying scene and sued in which this
Speaker 1: young would be killer man had a wire cerreted type
Speaker 1: wire that was used to slip throats, and he went
Speaker 1: after with that. Bobby actually got the wire between her
Speaker 1: teeth or she held it tight. He then pulled out
Speaker 1: a knife. She got away again. Then the hitman drew
Speaker 1: his handgun, held it to her head, and ordered her
Speaker 1: to remove her son from the room. After doing this,
Speaker 1: she ran, all the while hearing a clicking sound behind her.
Speaker 1: He goes to pull the trigger on the handgun, the
Speaker 1: specific kind of handgun recommended in the book, and the
Speaker 1: gun jammed. She fought him off in the night, and
Speaker 1: then the violence and then the confusion. Was able to
Speaker 1: get out of the house and she survived with scarves bleeding.
Speaker 1: The hitman then stole the family car as part of
Speaker 1: his plan to try and make the hit look like
Speaker 1: a bungled residential robbery, just like James Perry, the hitman
Speaker 1: who killed Millie, Trevor and Janice did. He raced to
Speaker 1: the outskirts of town to meet his accomplice was waiting
Speaker 1: in a getaway car. They had filled up the gas
Speaker 1: tank just prior to attacking Bobby, another tip from the
Speaker 1: hitman book. And then you tried to dispose of all
Speaker 1: the materials using the would be killing ditching them and
Speaker 1: ditches and bushes and rivers, and you know, he just
Speaker 1: falling in the game plan with the book. Bobby's husband
Speaker 1: and his coworker were arrested shortly after, and both were
Speaker 1: sentenced to seventeen and a half years in prison. Detectives
Speaker 1: had found the hitman manual in this would be Hitman's
Speaker 1: work locker. According to court documents, the hitman actually admitted
Speaker 1: to a detective that quote. Without the book, he would
Speaker 1: not have considered it at all. It gave him the
Speaker 1: confidence that he could do it. I'm Jasmine Morris from
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio and Hit Home Media. This is hit Man,
Speaker 1: I promised a Milli and Trevor. I will not rest
Speaker 1: until all the players that were involved in their death
Speaker 1: they are brought to justice. And there are people that said, oh,
Speaker 1: you you can't take on the First Amendment. First amendment
Speaker 1: is protected. Well, it is protected, but I mean you
Speaker 1: can't hurt people. Maryland Farmer. Millie's sister was a social
Speaker 1: studies teacher. I would have taught to my kids, let's
Speaker 1: look at the purpose of the book. The purpose of
Speaker 1: the book is to kill and to get away with it.
Speaker 1: Murder is a crime in this country, so this book
Speaker 1: is perpetuating a crime. So that's what I would have
Speaker 1: taught to my students, and I used it as an
Speaker 1: example if you don't have absolute power and rights, constitution
Speaker 1: doesn't get that. For two years, Million Trevor's family had struggled,
Speaker 1: knowing the pain and loss would never go away, but
Speaker 1: wondering what more they could do. If we can get
Speaker 1: this book off the market and we can do something
Speaker 1: to help another family not experience this. So we talked
Speaker 1: to the lawyers that had handled Trevor's case and asked
Speaker 1: him what we're our chances? We were feeling terrible about
Speaker 1: what had happened. John Marshall is a quiet, humble and
Speaker 1: kind man who let me record him on a sunny
Speaker 1: day at a small cottage that sits on a lake shore.
Speaker 1: Every so often a boat would pass by. We pause
Speaker 1: and wait for the boats and the birds to quiet down.
Speaker 1: I saw his patients firsthand. Remember, John and his co
Speaker 1: council Howard Siegel, helped the Horn family win a settlement
Speaker 1: against Children's Hospital, the money that ultimately cost Milly and
Speaker 1: Trevor their lives. John grew quite close to Milly. Her
Speaker 1: sister is in Tiffany, so revisiting all of this while
Speaker 1: on vacation probably was an ideal or easy. We're lawyers,
Speaker 1: were not doctors, were not psychologists, we're not therapists. So
Speaker 1: it was like, what can we do. We're not going
Speaker 1: to right this wrong, but what can we do to
Speaker 1: sort of get some kind of value out of this,
Speaker 1: not in a monetary way, but in a legal way,
Speaker 1: in a HAPs, in a moral way, if we could,
Speaker 1: how can we help this family? For Howard and John,
Speaker 1: along with Millie, Trevor and Janice families. It felt like
Speaker 1: someone or something was still at large. Another accomplice of sorts.
Speaker 1: We met in the Montgomery County Law Library in the courthouse.
Speaker 1: I said, what do you know about the First Amendment?
Speaker 1: And John said, I know that it comes first. And
Speaker 1: we had a good laugh about that one. We actually
Speaker 1: pulled out a copy of the Constitution and we read it.
Speaker 1: At this point in their careers, Howard Siegel and John
Speaker 1: Marshall were both civil litigation attorneys. There was really nothing
Speaker 1: on their resumes that would qualify them to go after
Speaker 1: a book publisher and argue about the limits of the
Speaker 1: First Amendment. Something is sacred and central to the American law,
Speaker 1: is anything in the Constitution. Nonetheless, I said, John, I
Speaker 1: don't care what it says. This ship cannot be detected
Speaker 1: by the First Amendment. Howard defined the ship. The ship
Speaker 1: is a murder manual. This was a recipe for murder.
Speaker 1: They were teaching people how to become hired killers. And
Speaker 1: I said, we gotta go after these guys, meaning Paletin Pressed.
Speaker 1: So Howard and John helped Millie's family file the civil
Speaker 1: suit Rice versus Palettin Press. Rice's Vivian Elaine Rice another
Speaker 1: one of Millie's sisters, and so we set off on
Speaker 1: this I think most people thought very quixotic endeavor, and
Speaker 1: we file the lawsuit against them and immediately got enormous publicity.
Speaker 1: This became a huge deal because we were attacking the press.
Speaker 1: Janice Saunders, husband Michael, and their seven year old son.
Speaker 1: We're all so listed as plaintiffs in the lawsuit. We
Speaker 1: haven't talked a lot about Janis in this podcast because
Speaker 1: no one in her family was up for talking. Understandably,
Speaker 1: but so often when this story is told, Janie is
Speaker 1: simply reduced to her occupation the nurse. But she was
Speaker 1: also the mother of a young boy. She was a sister,
Speaker 1: a daughter, a wife, and a friend of many. She
Speaker 1: loved horses, nature, cross stitching in life. She was thirty
Speaker 1: eight when she was killed. I have had a few
Speaker 1: phone calls with her husband, Michael. He didn't want to
Speaker 1: be recorded, saying I declined an interview only in a
Speaker 1: sense that I've tried to move on with my life.
Speaker 1: But he also said I would like to speak about
Speaker 1: some of these things you've told me, stuff that I
Speaker 1: did not know. I didn't know Peter was dead, and
Speaker 1: if you don't remember history, you'll repeat it. He said.
Speaker 1: There's way more to the story than what people perceived.
Speaker 1: And these stories expand as decades go by, not just
Speaker 1: after a jury decide what is and isn't going to happen.
Speaker 1: So I'll quote or paraphrase Michael Saunders from time to time.
Speaker 1: He had his own attorney, who also declined an interview,
Speaker 1: and he remembered eventually joining forces with Millie's sisters in
Speaker 1: the lawsuit against Paladin Press, mostly for his son Colin,
Speaker 1: who lost his mother at just four years old. He
Speaker 1: told me, Peter Lund saw the carnage of war in Vietnam.
Speaker 1: I was in Vietnam too, but I didn't come back
Speaker 1: and publish books about baby bottle bombs. We'll be right back.
Speaker 1: After the short break, I was obsessed again, Howard Siegel,
Speaker 1: It's just all I thought about for years. I put
Speaker 1: most of my practice on whole walk up in the
Speaker 1: morning thinking about this, and went to bed at night
Speaker 1: thinking about it. It was just all consuming. As Howard
Speaker 1: and John were preparing their suit, they weren't looking for advice.
Speaker 1: They eventually met Rod Smola, a law professor and first
Speaker 1: amendent scholar. He thought we were nuts. Everybody thought we
Speaker 1: were nuts. Brandenburg versus Ohio will kill you. Everyone warned
Speaker 1: them about this case and the precedent it set. It
Speaker 1: was a case involving a KKK rally in Ohio, and
Speaker 1: they arrested the speakers, and the court said that that
Speaker 1: was impermissible. They're entitled to their speech. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Speaker 1: talked about the Brandenburg case during her confirmation hearing, saying
Speaker 1: that the N nine ruling was one of the great
Speaker 1: milestones in Supreme Court history. Brandenburg against Ohio truly recognizes
Speaker 1: that free speech means not freedom of thought for those
Speaker 1: and speech for those with whom we agree, but freedom
Speaker 1: of expression for the expression we hate. And the only
Speaker 1: way you can arrest them is if that speech is
Speaker 1: likely to produce imminent danger. This is what John and
Speaker 1: Howard were grappling with. So that's the test. Is it
Speaker 1: likely to produce imminent danger? How could a book that's
Speaker 1: published in Colorado, that's sent to Detroit, that was purchased
Speaker 1: a year before that resulted in a murder be argued
Speaker 1: as likely to produce imminent danger? That was the big problem.
Speaker 1: I talked to Tom Kelly, the press lawyer who represented
Speaker 1: Paladin in this case. He spoke with me the week
Speaker 1: he retired from a very long and distinguished career defending
Speaker 1: media organizations in their First Amendment rights. You know, I
Speaker 1: struggled with opposing people who were trying to recover for
Speaker 1: the loss of love ones. Uh. I didn't enjoy that particularly,
Speaker 1: But if you're going to do First Amendment work, it
Speaker 1: comes with baggage like that, and one has to accept
Speaker 1: that and the soldier through it. As we know, Paladin
Speaker 1: publisher paider Lund genuinely believed it was his right to
Speaker 1: publish this information and as customers bore the full responsibility
Speaker 1: for what they did with it. David Dubro, the former
Speaker 1: Paladin employee we heard from in our last episode, told
Speaker 1: us when you attribute motivations to inanimate objects like books
Speaker 1: and videos and firearms and edge weapons, then at that
Speaker 1: point you're living in an animust universe where something can
Speaker 1: get up and start attacking you on its own, which
Speaker 1: is which is crazy. Paladin actually had a legal defense
Speaker 1: fund set up so readers could help them fight this
Speaker 1: legal battle. You have a right to know how to
Speaker 1: make a truck bomb, use it or lose it, because
Speaker 1: freedom is for everyone, or no one read one email blast.
Speaker 1: Your freedom to read is under attack. Okay, Setting aside
Speaker 1: the question of whether anyone has the right to make
Speaker 1: a truck bomb, the larger consequences here are real. I mean,
Speaker 1: the idea of limiting speech and a free press. That's scary.
Speaker 1: The whole business was, Hey, here's information you can't get
Speaker 1: anywhere else. This is where you can go get it.
Speaker 1: And it's wrong to say that you can't get it.
Speaker 1: It's wrong, like suppressing knowledge, suppressing information. It's stupid. You
Speaker 1: can't do it, especially now. But it was an objective wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm a journalist. That's the foundation of pretty much everything
Speaker 1: I do and believe in. All these years looking into
Speaker 1: the Hitman book have led to some seriously uncomfortable questions.
Speaker 1: I get the implications. I'm not alone in that. My
Speaker 1: name is Paul McMasters. I am retired now, but served
Speaker 1: as a national authority on First Amendment issues as a
Speaker 1: First Amendment on Budsman at the Freedom Forum. He was
Speaker 1: also a newspaper editor and testified before Congress on First
Speaker 1: Amendment issues. I talked to McMasters just last week. I
Speaker 1: read the book more than once. I felt nothing, but
Speaker 1: discussed it did not incite me at all to go
Speaker 1: out and kill somebody, or to share with somebody else that, Hey,
Speaker 1: if you want to kill somebody, here's here's the way
Speaker 1: to do it. It It is the easy way out when
Speaker 1: confronted with the sort of vile speech that this book represented.
Speaker 1: But I see absolutely no way over time how that
Speaker 1: could be separated from other kinds of speech that come
Speaker 1: close to that or go further than that. Even because
Speaker 1: of that exact concern, a lot of surprising allies rallied
Speaker 1: to Peladan's defense. When we filed this case. You know,
Speaker 1: we knew that the First Amendment community was gonna just
Speaker 1: pound us. I mean, they were going to come after
Speaker 1: us with guns blazing. The First Amendment community is probably
Speaker 1: the most powerful lobby in the world. You're talking about
Speaker 1: the publishing industry, the movie industry. Sixteen media organizations, including
Speaker 1: The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC, the National
Speaker 1: Association of Broadcasters all came out in support of Paladin's position.
Speaker 1: They jointly filed an amicust brief that said, quote allowing
Speaker 1: this lawsuit to survive will disturb decades of First Amendment
Speaker 1: jurisprudence and jeopardize free speech from the periphery to the core.
Speaker 1: No expression, music, video books, even newspaper articles would be
Speaker 1: safe from civil liability. You're talking about radio, you're talking
Speaker 1: about television. Walt Disney, Mini and Mickey Mouse were just
Speaker 1: all over my ass. There was just whostsale panic in
Speaker 1: the First Amendment community. They were worried about the proverbial
Speaker 1: slippery slope. If we let Sego go after this book,
Speaker 1: he's going to be going after the Bible next, and fiction,
Speaker 1: and you know, all kinds of things. Of course, I
Speaker 1: learned afterwards that the reason slopes are slippery is that
Speaker 1: lawyers gresome with bullshit. So on the one side you
Speaker 1: have paladins and the heaviest heavyweights in media, and on
Speaker 1: the other side you have Howard and John in the
Speaker 1: victims families. And I'll let John tell you what happened. Next.
Speaker 1: District court judge didn't even give us the time and day.
Speaker 1: He said, I agree, Brandenburgh wins off you go. It
Speaker 1: was like three minutes. So this case was closed. But
Speaker 1: as we know, Howard wasn't gonna let one decision stand
Speaker 1: in his way. And here's where I want to explain
Speaker 1: a really important part of Howard and John's theory. And
Speaker 1: to understand it, let's go back to something Tom Kelly,
Speaker 1: Paladin's lawyer, said to me. The books published are very
Speaker 1: unlikely to be the cause of criminal conduct, murder, mayhem,
Speaker 1: what have you. Howard and John's theory hinged on the
Speaker 1: word cause in terms of Brandenburg versus Ohio. They realized
Speaker 1: that if you're arguing that the books are the cause
Speaker 1: of the violence, you're gonna lose. But what if you
Speaker 1: can convince people that a book aided the killer and
Speaker 1: that the publisher intended it to be used that way.
Speaker 1: Our theory was this speech aided and embedded the murder.
Speaker 1: It was not just I hate you, or even go
Speaker 1: kill that son of a gun. This was I'm telling
Speaker 1: you how to kill somebody. This is people profiting off
Speaker 1: the death of innocent people. When I did the aiding
Speaker 1: and abetting research, I remember there were almost no cases.
Speaker 1: Nobody had ever used it before. I mean you have
Speaker 1: to go back to almost ancient England to find aiding
Speaker 1: in abanding cases. They were very, very rare. This is
Speaker 1: what qualifies as aiding and abetting under the law, which
Speaker 1: is more common in criminal cases as opposed to civil
Speaker 1: cases like this. But Howard said, anyone who counsels, commands, induces, cures,
Speaker 1: or provides substantial assistance to another to commit a crime
Speaker 1: or a civil wrong is jointly liable with the person
Speaker 1: who commits the crime or civil wrong. I mean, the
Speaker 1: most obvious example is the mafia boss who tells one
Speaker 1: of his hit men to go kill Joe Banana whack them.
Speaker 1: He's going to be eating at Alfonso's at eight o'clock,
Speaker 1: and the FBI happens to have a wire tap on
Speaker 1: the conversation with the hitman. Well, the day of trial,
Speaker 1: if the mafia boss's lawyer stands up and says, your honor,
Speaker 1: this is protected speech is protected by the First Amendment. Right.
Speaker 1: The court's response, in a dignified way would be, are
Speaker 1: you shooting me in order to commit murder? You're saying
Speaker 1: is protected by the First Amendment. It's simply a method
Speaker 1: that you're using to facilitate a criminal act. Tom Kelly, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: was busy preparing a defense that basically boiled down to
Speaker 1: this book is completely absurd. The book, in my view,
Speaker 1: was reasonably clearly intended for entertainment. You know you have
Speaker 1: a hitman by the name of Rex Ferrell, which literally
Speaker 1: means king of the wild animals. The book begins with
Speaker 1: a prologue that reads like a typical fictional account of
Speaker 1: an assassination, like something in Tom Clancy or Vince Flynn.
Speaker 1: This was gonna be their defense at the trial John Marshall,
Speaker 1: and nobody would really take this seriously. But the answer
Speaker 1: was James Perry did. What's weird about this argument is
Speaker 1: that it's disproven by the book itself. Right before you
Speaker 1: get to the table of contents in Hitman, there's a disclaimer.
Speaker 1: It says neither the author nor the publisher assumes responsibility
Speaker 1: for the use or misuse of information contained in this
Speaker 1: book for informational purposes only exclamation point. Informational purposes, not entertainment.
Speaker 1: Is nothing that says don't take this book seriously. And
Speaker 1: there's a warning that tells readers making an unlicensed pistol
Speaker 1: silencer is against the law, but it says nothing about
Speaker 1: laws against murder, conspiracy to murder, or assault. Howard told
Speaker 1: me these kinds of disclaimers never hold up in court.
Speaker 1: And beyond that, his argument was this wasn't a case
Speaker 1: of misuse, because he says the book was used exactly
Speaker 1: as Paladin intended it to be used. Based on the
Speaker 1: fact that it was written as a how to manual,
Speaker 1: Howard likens it to a cookie recipe. If you publish
Speaker 1: a recipe on cookies, you expect people to make cookies.
Speaker 1: It's not convincing at all. That's one of the things
Speaker 1: that always irritated me about me at coverage. It assumes
Speaker 1: there were those twenty two specific esoteric details he followed
Speaker 1: to the extent he followed any and, and the proof
Speaker 1: on that is weak. There are common knowledge in the
Speaker 1: criminal world and general knowledge to the general public through
Speaker 1: popular archer. Tom Kelly to this day doesn't believe James
Speaker 1: Perry learned much from the book, much less followed it
Speaker 1: any plane. If who wants to recover money has to
Speaker 1: prove causation. We'd anticipated in an argument that the book
Speaker 1: gave Perry the confidence he needed to pull this off.
Speaker 1: That's something certainly not credible in view of his long
Speaker 1: criminal history in which he actually shot and wounded a
Speaker 1: police officer. Clearly the murder would have occurred regardless of
Speaker 1: what was on Perry's night stand. And we know this
Speaker 1: because we dug into the facts and James Perry got caught,
Speaker 1: So that's the other part of the argument, it must
Speaker 1: not have been a very good book. Also, this book
Speaker 1: was sold, you know, not through channels calculated to reach
Speaker 1: Hitman only, but through national bookstore chains. I mean, I
Speaker 1: don't know what a Hitman only channel would even look like.
Speaker 1: But the point is not everybody who bought this book
Speaker 1: or read the book out to be or turned into
Speaker 1: a hit Man was available in lending libraries, and it
Speaker 1: actually sold thirteen thousand copies before this happened in the
Speaker 1: late nineties. It's unthinkable that thousand hitman bought this book.
Speaker 1: It's almost unthinkable that that did. It was sold to
Speaker 1: a general, undifferentiated audience, and with that kind of marketing,
Speaker 1: it's hard to see how either the publishers or the
Speaker 1: readers could consider this a serious technical manual for independent contractors. Now,
Speaker 1: this is really really important. Before this lawsuit progressed, all
Speaker 1: the parties agreed to a set of facts that would
Speaker 1: eventually come out in trial. Paladin Press stipulated that James
Speaker 1: Perry followed numerous instructions from Hitman in planning, executing, and
Speaker 1: attempting to cover up these murders that they knew and
Speaker 1: intended that this instructional manual would be used by criminals
Speaker 1: to come at criminal acts. They made this admission and
Speaker 1: what's been called quote almost taunting defiance, because they were
Speaker 1: confident they had First Amendment protections, and of course, the
Speaker 1: first time they sat before a judge, Paladin was right.
Speaker 1: But with their aiding and abetting theory in hand, Howard
Speaker 1: and John filed an appeal. We went up to the
Speaker 1: federal Fourth Circuit and we drew Judge Looting, who was
Speaker 1: pretty conservative guy, actually a very conservative guy. I think
Speaker 1: he's been considered for the Supreme Court by every Republican president.
Speaker 1: Judge Michael Ludig was appointed to the U. S. Court
Speaker 1: of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit in by former President
Speaker 1: George Bush. Before that, he was an assistant Attorney General
Speaker 1: at the U. S. Department of Justice. So we get
Speaker 1: to the argument and we're up first, and Looting comes
Speaker 1: in and he's got a notebook maybe three inches thick
Speaker 1: with i'd say two colored tabs. Had no idea what
Speaker 1: any of this meant other than we were pretty sure
Speaker 1: he was prepared. So that argument begins and my sense was,
Speaker 1: oh my god, we're getting creamed. This is how appellate
Speaker 1: arguments go. If the judges are engaged, they love to
Speaker 1: basically make you feel like you're a complete idiot. And
Speaker 1: then the other side got up and lootingg just let
Speaker 1: him have it. It was so clear that he was
Speaker 1: not ruling for them. It was thirty minutes of him
Speaker 1: tearing their case to shreds. His opinion was that the
Speaker 1: First Amendment did not protect this speech and that our
Speaker 1: theory of aiding and embedding was valid. So we we
Speaker 1: got our victory. Judge Looting reversed lower Court's decision, saying
Speaker 1: they misunderstood Brandenburg. He wrote a sixty page opinion that
Speaker 1: I distilled down to one sentence, and that one sentences,
Speaker 1: this ship isn't protected again. Paul McMasters well, I was,
Speaker 1: I have to tell you a little bit surprised, as
Speaker 1: others have noted. Also, j. Lending seemed personally offended by
Speaker 1: the existence of the Hitman Manual, and from my perspective,
Speaker 1: it led him to make a wrong decision. This opinion
Speaker 1: is really something. Judge Ludig lists passages from the book,
Speaker 1: saying these selections are quote but a small fraction of
Speaker 1: the total number of instructions that appear in the page manual,
Speaker 1: and the court has even felt it necessary to omit
Speaker 1: portions of these few illustrative passages in order to minimize
Speaker 1: the danger to the public from their repetition. Here in
Speaker 1: I thought a lot about that when making this podcast.
Speaker 1: You've heard us quote the book quite a bit, But
Speaker 1: what we've shared that's a fraction of the passages this
Speaker 1: judge even included. Anyway. He goes on to say, after
Speaker 1: carefully and repeatedly reading Hitman in its entirety, we are
Speaker 1: of the view that the book so overtly promotes murder
Speaker 1: and concrete, non abstract terms that we regard as disturbingly disingenuous.
Speaker 1: Both Paladin's cavalier suggestion that the book is essentially a
Speaker 1: comic book whose fantastical promotion of murder no one could
Speaker 1: take seriously. He's basically saying Howard and John's aiding in
Speaker 1: a betting theory applies in this specific case. Looting also
Speaker 1: outlines why and how this case is special. He says,
Speaker 1: Paladin's astonishing stipulations, coupled with the extraordinary comprehensiveness, detail, and
Speaker 1: clarity of Hitman's instructions for criminal activity in murder. In particular,
Speaker 1: the boldness of its palpable exhortation to murder, the alarming
Speaker 1: power and effectiveness of its peculiar form of instruction, the
Speaker 1: notable absence from its text of the kind of ideas
Speaker 1: for the protection of which the First Amendment exists, and
Speaker 1: the book's evident lack of any arguably legitimate purpose beyond
Speaker 1: the promotion and teaching of murder render this case unique
Speaker 1: in the law. We'll be right back. Judge Ludig's opinion
Speaker 1: was a big deal. This has never been done before.
Speaker 1: A federal judge said a publisher could be held liable
Speaker 1: for publishing this kind of content, meaning instruction manuals, allowing
Speaker 1: the case to move forward to trial. They took it
Speaker 1: to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court denied sure
Speaker 1: sure are, which means they let the decision stand. The
Speaker 1: legal precedent was set. Never before has such a lawsuit prevailed,
Speaker 1: as one Washington Post article put it, going on to say,
Speaker 1: quote never in the modern history of the First Amendment.
Speaker 1: As a court found the printed word capable of this
Speaker 1: kind of incitement to imminent lawlessness that would remove free
Speaker 1: speech protection. But again, all of this was just legal
Speaker 1: theory at this point. Establishing grounds for the Rice versus
Speaker 1: Paladin civil trial. That was the next and final step.
Speaker 1: So John and Howard began the discovery process. We decided
Speaker 1: we wanted to take the deposition of Pader Lund, and
Speaker 1: so we did that out in Boulder where his offices were.
Speaker 1: And that was Howard's deal. This was his baby all
Speaker 1: the way. For the first time Howard and Payder Lund
Speaker 1: came face to face. Howard called him an imposing looking
Speaker 1: guy who clearly looked uncomfortable and nervous as the anticipated
Speaker 1: the traps Howard was about to set for him. They
Speaker 1: sat across the table from each other in Paladin's conference room.
Speaker 1: Howard asked one question after another. He said, Lund sat
Speaker 1: with his arms folded and kept his answers very short.
Speaker 1: There was no hostility, just a quiet arrogance. This lasted
Speaker 1: eight or nine hours. It was an all day deposition,
Speaker 1: and Lund was a formidable foe. Didn't give in a bit.
Speaker 1: But Howard was very clever, and at one pot he
Speaker 1: was going through the catalog of all of their books
Speaker 1: and finally says to him, I see here, there's no
Speaker 1: there's no book here about how to blow up airplanes
Speaker 1: and London admitted that we simply don't do that. There
Speaker 1: is a line somewhere, There is a line. A Washington
Speaker 1: Post article from said Lund once wrote to the author
Speaker 1: of a then forthcoming book, revenge Ville, Sick Humor for
Speaker 1: the Deranged Mind, saying, quote, we're editing out some of
Speaker 1: the more heinous acts you propose, as they are not
Speaker 1: only illegal, but in bad taste. Illegality does not particularly
Speaker 1: trouble me. Bad taste always does. He wouldn't publish hate
Speaker 1: literature either, or books on poison too easy for children
Speaker 1: to fool with, though information on the latter did manage
Speaker 1: to make it into hit man. But in this context,
Speaker 1: lund standards didn't help his case. He was dead meat.
Speaker 1: After that, we walked out Rod and I said, you know,
Speaker 1: g he was tough, and Howard had it all in
Speaker 1: his head already. He had already had it pictured how
Speaker 1: he was going to play portions of the deposition to
Speaker 1: a jury to get to the point where there's a line.
Speaker 1: And he was right. All these years later, Howard is
Speaker 1: still unsettled by what he says he saw in that deposition.
Speaker 1: I said, Mr, Lund, you know that people are going
Speaker 1: to use your publications to commit murders and criminal acts,
Speaker 1: don't you And he said possibly? And I said do
Speaker 1: you care? And he said no. And that was the
Speaker 1: end of the deposition. Michael Saunders told me that he
Speaker 1: was brought in to watch this deposition at one point
Speaker 1: and remembered lund saying this. Saunders said they were there
Speaker 1: to make money and he didn't care that a four
Speaker 1: year old's mother was killed because of a book he
Speaker 1: didn't need to publish. Here's Howard, this was my experience
Speaker 1: touching evil. I touched it twice with Lawrence Horn and
Speaker 1: then paid lund. People who just don't care, people who
Speaker 1: have no compassion for the consequences of their acts. Once again,
Speaker 1: Paladin's lawyer, Tom Kelly has a different view. That is
Speaker 1: not the Peter Lundon. I knew he felt strongly about
Speaker 1: the First Amendment, but saying he didn't care, it's not
Speaker 1: something I remember I would want to say. I doubt
Speaker 1: that occurred unless someone can show me the deposition. I've
Speaker 1: been trying to get it, actually, but I haven't been successful.
Speaker 1: These twenty year old cases tend to disappear. It's just
Speaker 1: the way it is. At this point, John and Howard
Speaker 1: were confident they would win over a jury, but it
Speaker 1: would never actually make it that far, in part because
Speaker 1: this happened. Authorities in Littleton, Colorado were securing the scene
Speaker 1: of a deadly school shooting so they can make a
Speaker 1: final body count as the community. This is news footage
Speaker 1: after school shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado, about
Speaker 1: an hour south of Paladin's headquarters, searching for booby traffic
Speaker 1: explosive was left behind by the Choe suspects in the
Speaker 1: Colorado school shooting. The Columbine shooters didn't specifically was how
Speaker 1: to manuals from Paladin, but they did use the Anarchist
Speaker 1: Cookbook and other how to guides they found on the
Speaker 1: internet to make homemade explosives. I had the nation in shock.
Speaker 1: We were very concerned, and it was there was a
Speaker 1: terrible environment in which to try a case like this.
Speaker 1: It was clear that it was going to be hard
Speaker 1: to find a jury sympathetic to Paladin's arguments. So just
Speaker 1: days before trial, on Paladin Press's insurance company agreed to
Speaker 1: settle the case out of court. Well, I was delighted
Speaker 1: that I was not going to have to talk to
Speaker 1: a jury and tell them I can understand all the
Speaker 1: sympathy you feel for these people that have been through hell.
Speaker 1: But we're going to have to ask you to follow
Speaker 1: the oath you took and look at the facts of
Speaker 1: this case and decide what brought this crime about, what
Speaker 1: made it happen, how it happened, in whether this book
Speaker 1: had any significant role in it, or whether it wasn't
Speaker 1: early dwarfed by the greed, by the will and the
Speaker 1: stealth of Lawrence Horn, Paladin's insurance carrier was calling the shots.
Speaker 1: I went home with a combination of relief and regret.
Speaker 1: And the question was why did we settle the case?
Speaker 1: And the answer was simple. It was two pieces. One
Speaker 1: we had won the law already. It was never going
Speaker 1: to get better than what we had already done. And
Speaker 1: to Janice Saunders family, I mean, she was the big
Speaker 1: breadwinner and her family and she left a husband and
Speaker 1: a little boy. They needed the money. So we settled
Speaker 1: the case three days before trial. We said, you have
Speaker 1: to give us all of the books, take it off
Speaker 1: the market, and they did later. This was posted to
Speaker 1: Paladin's website. Quote. Circumstances and changing times have caused Paladin
Speaker 1: to scale back publishing some of the more controversial material.
Speaker 1: It had been known for in the past. After the
Speaker 1: settlement of the Hitman lawsuit, in the passage of legislation
Speaker 1: making it legally treacherous to distribute information on explosives, the
Speaker 1: company stopped publishing some eighty titles on explosives, demolitions, improvised
Speaker 1: weaponry in self defense. So of course the book was
Speaker 1: on the internet. Two weeks later. The Hitman case was
Speaker 1: happening as the Internet was taking off, So in a way,
Speaker 1: for John and Howard, the battle against Paladin was one,
Speaker 1: but the war was lost. And nowadays this issue is
Speaker 1: just as pressing and irresolvable, and just as we've done
Speaker 1: with some of the hate sites recently, we should look
Speaker 1: at trying to close down the servers and things like
Speaker 1: that if we see that they're being used to export
Speaker 1: violence of some sort or and they're being used to
Speaker 1: fullment terrorism. Again, terrorism expert Neil Livingstone, there's no good reason.
Speaker 1: But it's not as easy as it was when it
Speaker 1: was printed literature. If the government had had the will,
Speaker 1: they could have shut fatal undown and taken him into
Speaker 1: chords and things like that, and they could have contained
Speaker 1: the problem at that time, but they let it get
Speaker 1: out of hand. All that stuff that seemed into the
Speaker 1: public domain now and it's all been posted on the internet.
Speaker 1: There's another irony in the timing here, when the Hitman
Speaker 1: book was used again in the unsuccessful hit on Bobby.
Speaker 1: The hit man in that case bought the book just
Speaker 1: months before the decision in the Rice versus Paladin case.
Speaker 1: A few months more and he wouldn't have been able
Speaker 1: to buy the book from Paladin, but he did in
Speaker 1: using Rice Versus Paladin as a precedent. Bobby sued Paladin
Speaker 1: in two thousand two. They settled again. So the Rice case,
Speaker 1: the decision, it's implications, it's either murky or crystal clear,
Speaker 1: depending on who you talked to. Everyone's drawn a different
Speaker 1: lesson from this case. I asked Tom Kelly, what's the
Speaker 1: most important thing you'd want people to take away from
Speaker 1: this story? That things are rarely as simple as they appear,
Speaker 1: at least in this case. But it's reasonably clear this
Speaker 1: book did not inform these murders, you know. I find
Speaker 1: it hard to imagine a case of one human being
Speaker 1: intentionally killing another who happened to read a book on
Speaker 1: how to do that. I interviewed John and Howard twenty
Speaker 1: five years after Milly, Trevor, and Janice were murdered, and
Speaker 1: even though they prevailed in both cases, the medical malpractice
Speaker 1: case and the hit man case, John called it very
Speaker 1: bitter sweet, and maybe even more bitter than sweet. Even so,
Speaker 1: Howard also says this it's what every young lawyer dreams,
Speaker 1: that one day you'll have a case like this where
Speaker 1: you can come out of the gray. Because most of
Speaker 1: the law is practiced in the great You know, is
Speaker 1: there a case out here that's black and white, that's
Speaker 1: good versus evil, where there is no moral argument on
Speaker 1: the other side. You know, I'm ever going to have
Speaker 1: a case that's totally clean, and this was that case
Speaker 1: for me. I think the other thing we do is lawyers,
Speaker 1: is we're sort of all looking for redemption for not
Speaker 1: having done enough right and that's what you hope for
Speaker 1: and for Millie's family. Did it make me feel better? No,
Speaker 1: it didn't take away your pain. It didn't take away
Speaker 1: my pain. I'm sure it didn't take away Tiffany's pain.
Speaker 1: Hopefully we've saved somebody from the pain that we've gone through.
Speaker 1: That was the whole goal, and I think we tried
Speaker 1: really hard to just make that impact that this was wrong.
Speaker 1: This wasn't okay. I think we did, but you can't
Speaker 1: really control this type of information. And all that fear
Speaker 1: around whether this decision would be detrimental to the rights
Speaker 1: of free speech and a free press, Michael Saunders told
Speaker 1: me all they're ruling on is one specific case. They're
Speaker 1: not saying you can sue over whatever you want to
Speaker 1: and win because of this ruling. And here's Howard's take,
Speaker 1: The slope was not slippery. There hasn't been a single
Speaker 1: decision that has expanded No work of fiction, no movie,
Speaker 1: no television show, no writer has ever been held libel
Speaker 1: for somebody misusing his art. That brings me back to
Speaker 1: the writer who started all of this, Rex Ferrell. Paladin
Speaker 1: agreed to protect him as the publisher, cooperated in the
Speaker 1: Horn Perry criminal trials and both of these lawsuits heading
Speaker 1: over correspondence, phone records, payment records. The author's real name
Speaker 1: is nowhere to be found. And so we've come back
Speaker 1: to where I first started my curiosity around this book
Speaker 1: and who wrote it, why they wrote it. I'm not
Speaker 1: looking to docs anyone call them out or hold them
Speaker 1: to some kind of reckoning, but my sense was that
Speaker 1: there's got to be more to the story, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to take you through what I've learned over the
Speaker 1: last few years. I just wanted some answers, so I
Speaker 1: started asking around, what do you know about the author
Speaker 1: Rex Farrell? It's a woman, It's about all I know.
Speaker 1: Do you ever know anything about the author of the book?
Speaker 1: If I remember right, it was a woman who wrote
Speaker 1: the book, and it was a woman who who was
Speaker 1: not a hitman. I don't think she was a professional hitman.
Speaker 1: I think she was a mother or divorced mother of
Speaker 1: a couple of kids, and she was writing a book
Speaker 1: to make enough money to make the rent. In Paladin's
Speaker 1: effort to make it dis look all like this is
Speaker 1: a big joke, that this really was just a comic book,
Speaker 1: they revealed that the author of the book, with a
Speaker 1: pseudonym of Rex Ferrell, was actually a woman and that
Speaker 1: she just made all this stuff up. She may have
Speaker 1: ultimately been involved in right things, but I can't believe
Speaker 1: she was anything other than duped. That's next on hit Man.
Speaker 1: Hitman is a production of I Heart Radio and hit
Speaker 1: Home Media. It's produced and reported by me Jasmine Morris.
Speaker 1: Our supervising producer is Michelle Lance, Mark Ltto is our
Speaker 1: story consultant, executive producers, our main guest, Hatticor and Me.
Speaker 1: Mixing by Josh Roguson, Michelle Lance and Jacopo Penzo. Our
Speaker 1: fact checker is not sumi Ajisaka. Special thanks to Andrew Goldberg,
Speaker 1: Michael Garofolo, Tory Piquette, Lucas Riley, and Bill McQuay. Our
Speaker 1: theme song by Alice McCoy in. Additional music written and
Speaker 1: produced by the students at DIME, powered by the Detroit
Speaker 1: Institute of Music at UCATION,