Speaker 1: Hey, listeners, just a heads up. This is a long
Speaker 1: one because we're giving you two episodes in one this week,
Speaker 1: so listen for parts one and two. In our very
Speaker 1: first episode, I said that I hadn't been able to
Speaker 1: get anyone from Paladin to talk to me. We've tried
Speaker 1: a lot of former employees and authors, and everybody seemed hesitant.
Speaker 1: But over the last two weeks we got some replies.
Speaker 1: My name is David du Bro. I worked for Paladin
Speaker 1: Press between and two thousand and ten. David grew up
Speaker 1: in a suburb outside Philadelphia. A few years after he
Speaker 1: graduated from college, he was working in a supermarket and
Speaker 1: he needed a change. At the time, I was very
Speaker 1: much into fantasy role playing games like Dungeons and Dragons,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. Not necessarily D and D, but
Speaker 1: you know, fantasy role playing text based over the internet
Speaker 1: called a telnut protocol. He made some friends through this
Speaker 1: online game called Amber. They invited him out to Colorado,
Speaker 1: and he figured, what the hell, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 1: drive out there and I'm gonna see if I can
Speaker 1: make my life out in Colorado. At the time, there
Speaker 1: was no monster, there was no linked in, so you
Speaker 1: went looking for a real job through the one edge
Speaker 1: of the paper. I know it sounds kind of ancient,
Speaker 1: but that was what we did. David answered a nondescript
Speaker 1: ad for an entry level customer service gig and got
Speaker 1: an interview, and that company was paled and press. It
Speaker 1: was very kind of secretive, is very kind of hush
Speaker 1: hash I didn't know at the time what I was
Speaker 1: getting into. So far in this podcast, we've spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time on the triple murder for higher case
Speaker 1: of Millie and Trevor Horn and Janice Saunders. When we
Speaker 1: last left you, Lawrence Horn and James Perry were both
Speaker 1: found guilty of murder and conspiracy to commit murder. So
Speaker 1: the two men responsible for this crime would be paying
Speaker 1: for it for the rest of their lives. Meanwhile, the
Speaker 1: media couldn't stop talking about hit Man. Grew some triple
Speaker 1: murder shocked the Washington, D C. Area. Today, it has
Speaker 1: become the subject of a First Amendment fight over a
Speaker 1: how to book. The killer apparently went by the book
Speaker 1: This book, hit Man, a technical manual for independent contractor.
Speaker 1: It's a very compelling correlation between the way these murders
Speaker 1: were carried out and the suggestions in the book. Now
Speaker 1: family members want the Murder Manuals publisher to pay. All
Speaker 1: that attention introduced a lot of people to Paladin and
Speaker 1: its enigmatic owner, Paider Lund. So I go out there
Speaker 1: and I do this interview, and the owner of the
Speaker 1: company he's there. He's he's wearing these like short pants
Speaker 1: and his polo shirt, and he's got a handgun on
Speaker 1: the desk. What's funny is that on this upper middle
Speaker 1: class Jewish kid from Philly, things like self defense and
Speaker 1: martial arts and knife fighting, they're they're not relevant to
Speaker 1: my life experience, like guns or what other people do. Still,
Speaker 1: he was intrigued, and they showed me a catalog and
Speaker 1: they said, all right, well, why don't you take a
Speaker 1: look at it and then tomorrow, UM, we'll call you
Speaker 1: back if you're still interested. And I did, and I
Speaker 1: was like, this is neat stuff. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a young man. I could either do customer service
Speaker 1: for a company that publishes these kinds of books and videos,
Speaker 1: or I could be you know, the executive assistant of
Speaker 1: you know, the Boulder Philharmonic orchestra conductor. I'm like, all right,
Speaker 1: there's no real competition here, So I started that next week.
Speaker 1: David says the company wasn't quite what you'd expect from
Speaker 1: the content. Peter was very adamant about not hiring a
Speaker 1: bunch of Cammi clad wackos, which is, you know how
Speaker 1: we kind of called it. There was at least as
Speaker 1: many women as men who worked for Paladin Press. The
Speaker 1: vast majority of the people worked for Palden didn't have
Speaker 1: a real interest in the subject matter, which was kind
Speaker 1: of interesting sometimes to work around. But it was amazingly
Speaker 1: prosaic how boring the office work was. It wasn't like
Speaker 1: everybody was walking around with a R fifteen slung over
Speaker 1: his back, that kind of thing. A Washington Post article
Speaker 1: from the year David was high described Lund sitting in
Speaker 1: a modest office at an old wooden desk, with his
Speaker 1: green beret tacked to the wall, piles of manuscripts everywhere.
Speaker 1: Peter wasn't a big guy either, but he had this
Speaker 1: fierce face, heard these eyebrows, and if he was mad
Speaker 1: with you, you would know it. I never played poker
Speaker 1: with him, but I imagine I would probably be able
Speaker 1: to beat him a few times, just because he wouldn't
Speaker 1: keep it off his face. Lund wore reading glasses in
Speaker 1: knee high socks. He'd spent half the year residing in
Speaker 1: a fourteenth century cottage in the Cotswolds, England, where he
Speaker 1: hunted pheasant and trained a race horse named Miss Optimist.
Speaker 1: Not exactly what I pictured. This was London his late fifties. Well,
Speaker 1: Peter was an engaging fellow in terrorism expert Neil Livingstone
Speaker 1: was a consultant for the ABC News show, and he
Speaker 1: helped produce an episode about Lundon Palette and Press. He
Speaker 1: and a crew flew to Boulder and spent the day
Speaker 1: with lund in his office. I found Peter to be
Speaker 1: pull eight, unassuming, unpretentious. He ran a very neat business,
Speaker 1: very you know, it's very clean and very well organized
Speaker 1: and so on. He described the things that he publishes
Speaker 1: burning blow books, how to burn things down and blow
Speaker 1: things up. He was rather un phased by the notion
Speaker 1: that his books might be used by terrorists or killers.
Speaker 1: He said that we don't tell people how to use
Speaker 1: the information. Honestly, there's a lot we don't know about
Speaker 1: paydirt class in Lundon. Even after all this time we
Speaker 1: know he was born in nineteen two. Livingstone told us
Speaker 1: he was born in South Africa, but he couldn't actually
Speaker 1: remember if that was right. He was married four times,
Speaker 1: according to a Washington Post article, and didn't have any kids.
Speaker 1: His military records are impressive. He served in the U. S.
Speaker 1: Army from nineteen sixty four to nineteen sixty eight and
Speaker 1: then in the Army Reserve for two more years. He
Speaker 1: was recognized as an expert gunner and a sharpshooter, and
Speaker 1: he was a decorated veteran, having received the National Defense
Speaker 1: Service Medal, Vietnam Service Medal, Purple Heart, Parachute Badge, and
Speaker 1: the Bronze Star, among others. And he was quoted in
Speaker 1: a Soldier of Fortune magazine article as saying he was
Speaker 1: an infantry platoon leader and rose to be commander of
Speaker 1: a Special Forces A team and was in charge of
Speaker 1: stopping North Vietnamese supply roots. And that's about all we have,
Speaker 1: at least about his life before Paladin Lund called himself
Speaker 1: a classic individualist, and he really was. You know, he's
Speaker 1: wearing his shorts and his polo shirt. He's got this
Speaker 1: revolver on his on his desk, you know, and it's like,
Speaker 1: this is the closest I've ever been to a handgun
Speaker 1: that hasn't been inside a police officers holster. And and
Speaker 1: the thing is, he always had a handgun on a
Speaker 1: desk until we changed, you know, cleaning services, and then
Speaker 1: it became kind of an issue. But he had a
Speaker 1: very strong feeling about the First Amendment and how inviolate
Speaker 1: it was. I mean, he was you know, he was
Speaker 1: who he was, and if he didn't like him, you
Speaker 1: could eatch it and die. I'm Jasmine Morris from My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio and Hit Home Media. This is hit many.
Speaker 1: You know. It was early days of internet when I started.
Speaker 1: At the time, we got to order through the mail
Speaker 1: and via telephone. Mostly through the mail, we would send
Speaker 1: out catalogs for free to anybody. We got plenty of
Speaker 1: requests for catalogs from people who were in prison. You know.
Speaker 1: I guess it was kind of like a jerk off
Speaker 1: magazine for for violence instead of porn, you know. But um,
Speaker 1: it just had the products and the covers and stuff.
Speaker 1: You didn't have any real content to speak of. Playboy
Speaker 1: Magazine once called Paladin quote the most dangerous publisher in America,
Speaker 1: and it was a nickname that stuck. It does make
Speaker 1: a good kind of tagline, right, that's something that you
Speaker 1: can use to impress people who were impressed by that.
Speaker 1: You know, we didn't call ourselves the most dangerous publisher
Speaker 1: in America. We called ourselves the Action Library, and I
Speaker 1: think that was a term of art that Peter created,
Speaker 1: and that's what it was about. It was about, you know,
Speaker 1: action versus danger, which is different. There's a value judgment
Speaker 1: and danger when you think about it. Okay, what does
Speaker 1: that mean? Dangerous? Publisher? Information isn't dangerous. That's what you
Speaker 1: do with it, that's dangerous. Paladin Press was just the
Speaker 1: small independent publisher serving a niche audience in a liberal
Speaker 1: college town in Colorado, but it would become so influential
Speaker 1: in ways that most independent publishers never could and never
Speaker 1: would dream of. Unfortunately, Peter Lund died in two thousand seventeen,
Speaker 1: so we can't hear from him directly. One person we
Speaker 1: reached out to for more insight into Lund's life insisted
Speaker 1: that we talked to Robert K. Brown, the publisher of
Speaker 1: the Mercenary magazine Soldier of Fortune, who he said, new
Speaker 1: Lund better than most. The next day, we got a
Speaker 1: call from a Boulder, Colorado phone number and a gruff
Speaker 1: but friendly voice on the other end introduced himself is
Speaker 1: Bob Brown. Brown is eighty six now. He's sharp, very polite,
Speaker 1: and he refers to get straight to the point. He
Speaker 1: heard we were doing a story on Paladin and Lund
Speaker 1: and he was calling us back because his friend said
Speaker 1: we were good people. The call was quick. Brown is
Speaker 1: quite hard of hearing, so phone calls are difficult these days,
Speaker 1: and he respectfully declined to be interviewed, but he offered
Speaker 1: to email us some information on Paladin and Lund and
Speaker 1: with an okay, Darlin, the call was over. The two
Speaker 1: men met back in the early nineteen sixties. Brown was
Speaker 1: about ten years older than Lundon, but they both had
Speaker 1: military backgrounds and were attracted to the idea of mercenary
Speaker 1: work fighting communism in foreign countries. Most of the time.
Speaker 1: Brown mentions lund in his memoir I Am Soldier of Fortune,
Speaker 1: it's about these near misses adventures they almost had. There
Speaker 1: was the plot to invade Cuba and rescue some refugees
Speaker 1: that was back in Miami in nineteen sixty three, But
Speaker 1: it plays like a Looney Tunes adventure where their boat
Speaker 1: gets stuck in the mud. They didn't pack enough food
Speaker 1: and the guns didn't show up. In time, there was
Speaker 1: a treasure hunt in Papua New Guinea, gold supposedly hidden
Speaker 1: by a crooked priest. The time they tried to parachute
Speaker 1: into Peru to deliver aid to a secluded mountain village
Speaker 1: buried by a landslide. Brown actually laid the groundwork for
Speaker 1: Paladin himself in nineteen sixty three, the same year he
Speaker 1: tried to invade Cuba with one. First of all, what
Speaker 1: was Paladin Pressed? This was a book company that put
Speaker 1: out books for soldiers, put up books on how to
Speaker 1: build bombs. Here's Brown on a Colorado public affairs show.
Speaker 1: And it was also not very popular, definitely not well.
Speaker 1: It was an offshoot of a publishing company I started
Speaker 1: way back in nineteen sixty three when I published a
Speaker 1: book called A hundred and fifty Questions for Guerrilla. Back then,
Speaker 1: Brown called his publishing house Panther Publications. Paladin's website once
Speaker 1: said this early work really set the tone for the
Speaker 1: publisher's future. Quote it would be first to print books
Speaker 1: about controversial or suppressed subjects, and it would also be
Speaker 1: criticized for publishing works that some people found objectionable. Brown
Speaker 1: is an adventurous and charismatic Vietnam vet with a colorful
Speaker 1: military history. We found him on the Army Register from
Speaker 1: nine and in various interviews and in his memoir I
Speaker 1: Am Soldier of Fortune, Brown talks about serving in the
Speaker 1: Army in the fifties and eventually rising to lieutenant colonel
Speaker 1: and intelligence. He says he was also kicked out of
Speaker 1: the Special Forces twice. He debbled in journalism, picking up
Speaker 1: freelance assignments for the Associated Press, and he once told
Speaker 1: a reporter that he planned to in script his tombstone
Speaker 1: with his motto, slay dragons, do noble deeds, and never never, never,
Speaker 1: never give up. When Brown first started Panther Publications, he
Speaker 1: was mostly publishing military manuals like the Special Forces Handbook.
Speaker 1: They were publishing military manuals because they weren't classified, they
Speaker 1: had free material to use. That's Michigan State professor and Larabee,
Speaker 1: an expert on bomb making manuals. There's an Army manual
Speaker 1: called booby Traps, for example, that really dangerous stuff comes
Speaker 1: from directly reprinted army manuals. Or they would somehow take
Speaker 1: them and rearrange them and cabled them together in some
Speaker 1: way to form new versions of these manuals, Mom has better.
Speaker 1: They become a fight on too primas well. It was
Speaker 1: definitely a very unsettled time in the culture Vietnam vets.
Speaker 1: When they came home, they were not exactly welcomed with
Speaker 1: open arms. Paladin has always been pretty ZEITGEISTI One fifty
Speaker 1: Questions for a Gorilla by Alberto Bio, who was credited
Speaker 1: with training Fidel Castro's fighters, came out just after the
Speaker 1: Cuban Missile crisis. They were putting out military manuals during
Speaker 1: the Vietnam War. A lot of the interest in these
Speaker 1: kinds of manuals is attached in various ways to veterans
Speaker 1: who had military experience, who also had read military manuals,
Speaker 1: and who brought them home, and they maintained a continued
Speaker 1: interest in this kind of military identity. Brown identified a
Speaker 1: niche an audience saw them clearly because he was one
Speaker 1: of these guys, and then he made and marketed things
Speaker 1: for them. Here's how Anne Larabee describes the appeal of
Speaker 1: these books. It's a kind of Maverick masculinity. Um. You
Speaker 1: can see it in a lot of the Paladin books.
Speaker 1: For example, there's a certain kind of masculine identity that
Speaker 1: keeps being repeated, and it's this this guy who he's
Speaker 1: not beholden to anyone um, He's not beholden to any
Speaker 1: nation or any state, or any set of ideas. He's
Speaker 1: this maverick who can take care of himself and who
Speaker 1: has the violent means to defend himself. But eventually that
Speaker 1: tight core audience of disaffected Vietnam vets gave away to
Speaker 1: something else, may be less authentic. Again, here's David Dubro.
Speaker 1: Most people they buy this stuff, they read it, and
Speaker 1: they never do anything about it. They never actually do it.
Speaker 1: They just wanted the knowledge. They just wanted to have
Speaker 1: the thing and be cool and to know that, hey man,
Speaker 1: I've got this information now and it's maybe counterculture and
Speaker 1: I can pretend to be a badass. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that they weren't band asses. I don't know. But the
Speaker 1: point is, you know, most people, the vast majority of them,
Speaker 1: just didn't practice it. And nine using the name Panther
Speaker 1: became a major liability. Two members of the Black Panthers
Speaker 1: were convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the
Speaker 1: murder of a Nebraska police officer who died opening a
Speaker 1: suitcase filled with homemade explosives. Others had been arrested for
Speaker 1: planning to bomb department stores, including the Macy's in Midtown Manhattan.
Speaker 1: And how were the Panthers learning to make bombs and
Speaker 1: wage guerilla warfare? Well, some of their underground publications were
Speaker 1: directing subscribers to check out a printing house Panther Publications
Speaker 1: Congress noticed in the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, led
Speaker 1: by Arkansas Senator John L. McClellan summoned owner Robert K.
Speaker 1: Brown to testify. Here's Anne Larabee again. It's kind of
Speaker 1: an entertaining mistake that they thought that Robert K. Brown
Speaker 1: was a Black Panther, that he had named Panther Publications
Speaker 1: after the Black Panthers because that's where they were really after.
Speaker 1: We couldn't get the audio of this because it's still
Speaker 1: on reel to real, So I'm going to read the
Speaker 1: senator's questions, and I asked my husband to read Robert K.
Speaker 1: Brown's parts. Senator McClellan began the questioning, do you feel
Speaker 1: that by this kind of activity you're contributing to the
Speaker 1: violence that is occurring in this country and a building
Speaker 1: up of a guerrilla movement in America, no more than
Speaker 1: General Motors in respect, possibly to the Black Panthers driving
Speaker 1: a General Motors car to conduct a bombing. People advertise
Speaker 1: weapons for sale too, but they don't advertise that it
Speaker 1: is to be used for murdering people. McClellan looked closely.
Speaker 1: In one of Brown's book ads. This says grilla warfare.
Speaker 1: It says that is the purpose of it. What other
Speaker 1: purpose do you advertise it for? If you did not
Speaker 1: say guerrilla warfare and the documents you sent out simply
Speaker 1: because we describe guerrilla warfare does not mean that we
Speaker 1: are promoting guerrilla warfare within the United States. Sir, By
Speaker 1: this kind of publication, you are, in a sense advocating
Speaker 1: and encourage guerrilla warfare in the United States. I disagree
Speaker 1: with you. I am not encouraging it. You do so
Speaker 1: by making available the things that are needed to carry
Speaker 1: it out successfully. The book itself does not pick up
Speaker 1: a gun, Senator. We'll be right back. After the Senate inquiry,
Speaker 1: Panther publications became palid and press. Brown didn't want any
Speaker 1: more government types confusing him with the Black Panthers, and
Speaker 1: his old friend Peter Lund joined the company as co owner.
Speaker 1: In an interview on a Colorado public affairs show, Robert K.
Speaker 1: Brown put it this way. I got together with Peter Lund.
Speaker 1: He had money, I had none. We put the company
Speaker 1: together with his input acation that started palid and Press.
Speaker 1: That happened in seventy. Then I sold my interest out
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy. By the time and officially joined Paladin
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy, the FBI had begun investigating how they
Speaker 1: came to publish these official military technical manuals. But they
Speaker 1: quickly realized these manuals were in the public domain again,
Speaker 1: and Larabie the Army tried to pull them back. It
Speaker 1: reclassified some of its manuals, and it also wrote to
Speaker 1: libraries and he asked them to send back their copies
Speaker 1: of things like booby traps and other kinds of manuals.
Speaker 1: They tried to haul them back, but it was too late.
Speaker 1: They were already well seated out there through these paramilitary publishers.
Speaker 1: In addition to asking for these manuals back, officials approached
Speaker 1: libraries and asked to see a log of everyone who
Speaker 1: had checked out one of these books. The librarians were
Speaker 1: up in arms because they really saw it as an
Speaker 1: assault on the right to read. And because these books
Speaker 1: weren't classified, the libraries owned them. They really took offense
Speaker 1: at the Treasury Department coming out and putting them under
Speaker 1: some kind of surveillance. The American Library Association took a
Speaker 1: very significant stand against government interference in people's right to read.
Speaker 1: That was their platform. Here's a moment where Paladin really
Speaker 1: does seem like it's fighting the good fight for the
Speaker 1: First Amendment, which protects a lot of the freedoms that
Speaker 1: have really come to be associated with what America means.
Speaker 1: Freedom of religion, the right to peaceably assemble and protest,
Speaker 1: and most importantly for our story, the right to free
Speaker 1: speech and a free press. It was a platform that
Speaker 1: would also serve Paladin Press for decades. Brown and Lunde
Speaker 1: ran Paladin together for four years until Brown got itchy feet.
Speaker 1: That's how he puts it in his book. He sold
Speaker 1: his stake in Paladin Press to lund for just fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand dollars and returned to mercenary work, this time in Rhodesia.
Speaker 1: Again from his memoir quote, all sorts of adventurers, ne'er
Speaker 1: do wells, and fugitives from all over the world were
Speaker 1: headed for the land of high a guns. Some intend
Speaker 1: on fighting the communist back terrorists, and others just to
Speaker 1: kick some butt. Not long after he founded Soldier of Fortune,
Speaker 1: that magazine would advertise for Paladin. They advertised the hit
Speaker 1: Man Book too, which is actually how detectives believed James
Speaker 1: Perry discovered it. Referred to as the Journal of Professional Adventurers,
Speaker 1: the monthly magazine published stories of mercenaries fighting wars all
Speaker 1: over the world and quickly gained a following. In an
Speaker 1: interview with news Max Brown explains what set the reporting
Speaker 1: in his magazine apart. Some journalists did appreciate what we
Speaker 1: were doing in the quality of journalism we were coming
Speaker 1: up with, but certainly the fact that we were involved
Speaker 1: in training various and sundry groups, the one that comes
Speaker 1: with the mind, of course of the countryes in Central
Speaker 1: America and also in El Salvador. Most journalists took exception
Speaker 1: of fact that we carried guns everywhere. When and if
Speaker 1: we get fired upon, we and uh fuck her back.
Speaker 1: That being said, Uh, we really didn't give a who
Speaker 1: what the other journalist said, and he was say none,
Speaker 1: I'm ever want to challenge us physically in the back
Speaker 1: of the magazine. There were also classified ads for things
Speaker 1: like ninja lessons, gun silencers, and job ads for guns
Speaker 1: for hire. In a man would answer an ad and
Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortune to hire a guy to kill his wife.
Speaker 1: A jury in a wrongful death lawsuit found the magazine negligent,
Speaker 1: although a circuit court of appeals later reversed the verdict.
Speaker 1: That same year, four hitmen, also advertising and Soldier of
Speaker 1: Fortune killed a man named Richard Braun. Again, a jury
Speaker 1: found the magazine negligent and the case was settled out
Speaker 1: of court. And shortly after that and Arkansas man suffered
Speaker 1: injuries when he was attacked by two men, one who
Speaker 1: had advertised in the magazine. When the judge suggested the
Speaker 1: magazine ad was not protected under the First Amendment, Brown
Speaker 1: settled so in Soldier of Fortune stopped publishing ads for
Speaker 1: hired guns, though Brown never claimed personal responsibility for the deaths,
Speaker 1: telling the New York Times, I feel I should be
Speaker 1: no more concerned about that than the auto dealer who
Speaker 1: sells a car that runs somebody down. Peter Lund had
Speaker 1: the same view, and while Brown stopped publishing some controversial content,
Speaker 1: Lund started publishing it under his helm Paladin actually expanded
Speaker 1: way beyond official military manuals and guerrilla warfare books about revenge, mayhem, explosives, survivalism,
Speaker 1: and contract killing. Just to be clear, Palat and Press
Speaker 1: published books and videos on a wide variety of topics.
Speaker 1: One Palatin author described it as ranging from outlandish to legitimate. Training.
Speaker 1: By the early nineties, Paladin went mainstream. By then, the
Speaker 1: book The Ultimate Sniper was considered an authority and was
Speaker 1: required reading for professional snipers and training with law enforcement
Speaker 1: in the military. Bob Dole wrote the foreword to a
Speaker 1: Paladin book about skiing, and the humorous book Get Even
Speaker 1: The Complete Book of Dirty Tricks sat on shelves at
Speaker 1: Barnes and Noble. The company was offering seven D print
Speaker 1: titles and selling as many as three D fifty thousand
Speaker 1: books a year. Lund was employing more than people, and
Speaker 1: Paladin was a place where you can move up if
Speaker 1: you had the right work ethic and if the boss
Speaker 1: liked you. And David was often one of the first
Speaker 1: to arrive at the office. You know, I would get
Speaker 1: in there and then like Pater's already, He's in that
Speaker 1: upstairs office kitchen, you know, frying up pork chops at
Speaker 1: five five in the morning, and you know, the joke was,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, you haven't lived until, you know, had
Speaker 1: pork chops with pay here at five in the morning.
Speaker 1: He just loved meat man. He ate a lot of meat.
Speaker 1: David was eventually promoted to manager of Paladin's video production department.
Speaker 1: Peter was not a guy who gives ada boys. Peter
Speaker 1: was a kind of boss who said, black man, you're
Speaker 1: doing good. You know you're doing good because I haven't
Speaker 1: shake hand you. He preferred to let people do what
Speaker 1: they were supposed to do, and then he would do
Speaker 1: what he had to do. Lund treated his employees well.
Speaker 1: He paid benefits, He threw big Christmas parties, He allowed
Speaker 1: employees to take hiking breaks midday, and every other year
Speaker 1: he took his workers and their spouses on a retreat
Speaker 1: to Mexico. Turnover was low, though we won't get into
Speaker 1: it here, it's worth noting that in two thousand seven
Speaker 1: Lundon was sued for sexual harassment. It apparently came out
Speaker 1: in testimony that lund regularly walked around the office wearing
Speaker 1: nothing but a towel, He made unwelcome sexual advances to
Speaker 1: female employees, and once while handing out annual bonuses, asked
Speaker 1: the women in the office to give him a kiss
Speaker 1: before handing the checks. Anyway, David eventually became an author himself.
Speaker 1: The first book I ever wrote was a book for
Speaker 1: Paladin Press, and it was called The Ultimate Guide to
Speaker 1: Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse. Zombies were becoming a big thing,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, you know something that the Paladin audience.
Speaker 1: I bet there are a bunch of people who are
Speaker 1: interested in zombies too, So how do I write a
Speaker 1: Paladin book about this kind of subject? Paladin's website once
Speaker 1: said quote Lunch seeks out authors who are knowledgeable in
Speaker 1: their fields and encourages them to write for his audience.
Speaker 1: By publishing books no other publisher will touch, and encouraging
Speaker 1: authors to tell their own stories, he has earned their
Speaker 1: loyalty and assured their success. Many authors have established themselves
Speaker 1: as experts in certain areas, so even when it came
Speaker 1: to killing zombies, this had to be expert zombie killing.
Speaker 1: What I did was I did research, I talked to people.
Speaker 1: I I got information from the books and videos and
Speaker 1: magazines that I've read, and I colliated it into this
Speaker 1: book about how to Survive a zombie apocalypse. Taking survival
Speaker 1: skills and handgun skills and knife fighting and everything else
Speaker 1: and combining into this thing where okay, this is how
Speaker 1: you get yourself out of this fictitious cham And like
Speaker 1: some other Paladin authors, David took up a pseudonym F
Speaker 1: Kim O'Neill Dave dubro. Video guy doesn't have credibility, whereas
Speaker 1: of a made up, you know, army veteran who's actually
Speaker 1: seen a real zombie. You know, he does have credibility.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's right. But there was another reason some
Speaker 1: authors did this. Every once in a while, a few
Speaker 1: people wrote books under pseudonyms just because they didn't want
Speaker 1: to get in trouble. In the Paladin catalog, there are
Speaker 1: lots of macho sounding pen names like Ragnar Benson, George
Speaker 1: Hayduke Rex Ferrell. I mean, like it or not, somebody
Speaker 1: who hasn't thought about this kind of stuff, right, You say,
Speaker 1: hey man, you know, they say, so what do you do?
Speaker 1: And I say, well, you know, I worked for Paladin Press.
Speaker 1: You know we're a publisher. Oh yeah, what do you publish?
Speaker 1: You know, books, videos on Marshall, it self defense, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. Oh yeah, what kind of titles Oh well,
Speaker 1: you know, like put them down, take them out, My
Speaker 1: fighting secrets of fulsome prison. Oh my gosh, what are
Speaker 1: you guys doing. I'm like, that's awful, that sounds terrible,
Speaker 1: that's wrong with you. There are a bunch of people
Speaker 1: were just going to be turned off by that and say,
Speaker 1: you're the writer of a book like that, you know,
Speaker 1: maybe it doesn't quite grease the social skids the way
Speaker 1: you would think. All of this reminds me of that
Speaker 1: correspondence I found from Rex Ferrell, something we haven't talked
Speaker 1: about since the first episode. Quote, by the way, an
Speaker 1: answer to your question and that of Mr Lund. I
Speaker 1: get my materials from books, television, movies, newspapers, police officers,
Speaker 1: my karate instructor, and a good friend who is an attorney. No,
Speaker 1: I am not a hit man. I don't even own
Speaker 1: a gun. But don't tell anybody. But even though some
Speaker 1: of Paladin's authors weren't experts at all, sometimes the consequences
Speaker 1: of sharing their expertise we're very real. We'll take another
Speaker 1: look at Paladin in part two. Stay with us. These
Speaker 1: are how to guide on how to do nothing more
Speaker 1: than create violence, chaos, anti government, bigoted violence. They teach
Speaker 1: you how to build bombs, they teach you how to
Speaker 1: build guns. They provide you know, motivation and encouragement. That's
Speaker 1: Vincent Suffalu, a retired special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol,
Speaker 1: Tobacco and Firearms and the author of a book called
Speaker 1: Rats Snakes about his career as an undercover officer. He
Speaker 1: worked mob cases, drug trafficking, and contract killing. That's why
Speaker 1: we called Vince in the first place. He actually posed
Speaker 1: as a hit man many times, so he has a
Speaker 1: unique view into this world. The people who who I've
Speaker 1: approached in an undercovered capacity have come from every walk
Speaker 1: of life. We asked him, who tries to hire hitman?
Speaker 1: For the most part, I'm usually a little bit baffled
Speaker 1: that the middle income soccer mom, or the local football coach,
Speaker 1: or your regular neighbors um would even consider taking an
Speaker 1: act like that. But yes, it's amazing how many people
Speaker 1: I've talked to about murdering a loved one. It's it's
Speaker 1: a little disturbing, needless to say. So when he says
Speaker 1: he's seen a lot of Paladin books, including Hitman in
Speaker 1: the Wrong Hands, I'm going to believe him. I've come
Speaker 1: across the book in the hands of all types of gangsters,
Speaker 1: subversive groups, why supremacist groups, biker groups, drug dealers, you know,
Speaker 1: anti government, protest type groups. It's not something we would
Speaker 1: necessarily look for, but it's something we would recognize immediately
Speaker 1: upon executing a search warrant or being Say, if I
Speaker 1: walked into an undercover environment working some sort of case
Speaker 1: and somebody had that book and or the Anarchist Cookbook,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm already drawing conclusions about this person that their
Speaker 1: level of seriousness is a little bit higher than maybe
Speaker 1: just bluster or you know, running their pie hole. We've
Speaker 1: been narrowly focused on Hitman throughout this podcast because of
Speaker 1: its linked to the Horn Perry murders, but the influence
Speaker 1: of Paladin books in general is much much wider. Reminds
Speaker 1: me of something I've said before. This isn't just one story,
Speaker 1: it's fifty. Well. I created the fictional company Hawkeye Enterprises
Speaker 1: in a separate town from the university town where I
Speaker 1: was at the time, believing that was the kind of
Speaker 1: name that would seem right up the alley of people
Speaker 1: at Paladin or Soldier of Fortune and others whose mailing
Speaker 1: lists I might get on criminologist Dr Park Deats has
Speaker 1: spent more than a decade studying Paladin, Soldier of Fortune
Speaker 1: and other publishers putting out similar books. It seemed to
Speaker 1: me that it was wise if I was going to
Speaker 1: be digging around in an arguably dangerous network of people,
Speaker 1: to shield my family and friends from what I was
Speaker 1: up to there. And I got on every wacky mailing
Speaker 1: list you can imagine. Some of it was legitimate, but
Speaker 1: some of it was also unlawful solicitations. For example, one
Speaker 1: particular person who was well known in those circles had
Speaker 1: a publication in which he was offering to sell mail
Speaker 1: order cyanide. And this is in the wake of the
Speaker 1: Thailand All tamperings, which in two became the second most
Speaker 1: publicized crime in his tree. The Chicago Thaile and All murders,
Speaker 1: as they became known, were a series of deaths caused
Speaker 1: by product tampering when someone laced taile in all capsules
Speaker 1: with potassium cyanide. Among those killed a twelve year old
Speaker 1: girl and three people from the same family. The crime
Speaker 1: sparked a number of copycat incidents and deeds. Was hired
Speaker 1: by the Food and Drug Administration and the pharmaceutical industry
Speaker 1: to investigate, and I looked for where someone could learn
Speaker 1: to do such a crime and found the only source
Speaker 1: for such information at the time to be Paladin Press
Speaker 1: publications and publications by a handful of other publishers of
Speaker 1: similar materials. He's referring to publishers like Loompanics and Delta Press,
Speaker 1: though Paladin has been described as the principal publisher of
Speaker 1: this kind of content. According to Deeds, the poor Man's
Speaker 1: James Bond, published by Paladin, gives recipes for assium cyanide
Speaker 1: and sodium cyanide. He believed that book and a couple
Speaker 1: other Paladin titles had inspired the title and all killings.
Speaker 1: The culprit was never found. Lund had a memorable response
Speaker 1: to Dietza's findings that in the wrong hands, Paladin books
Speaker 1: could be dangerous. He told author Eric Larson, quote, I
Speaker 1: really can't be bothered by him. If you take two
Speaker 1: hundred thousand people, you're gonna find two or three who
Speaker 1: don't wear underwear, four or five who cultivate Bonsai trees,
Speaker 1: six or eight who have shaved their heads. There's no
Speaker 1: statistical validity to the man's conclusions. It's as if you
Speaker 1: went to a party last night and met five people
Speaker 1: who were divorced and decided the divorce rate had gone
Speaker 1: up catastrophically. Here's Lund in a rare appearance he made
Speaker 1: on sixty Minutes with Mike Wallace. Why do you publish
Speaker 1: these things? It's market driven? My absolutely again, terrorism expert
Speaker 1: Neil Livingstone, he had this very warped view that he
Speaker 1: wasn't doing anything morally questionable. It was just business and
Speaker 1: it was great that he can have such a business
Speaker 1: in the United States. He wasn't there to decide who
Speaker 1: could and could not buy his books. What you're saying is,
Speaker 1: no matter what pain has caused, I'm a defender of
Speaker 1: the First Amendment and my right to make money from
Speaker 1: these books. I'm saying that ideas and knowledge don't kill people.
Speaker 1: People kill people. We've been talking about how the content
Speaker 1: in these books could have and have had consequences. But
Speaker 1: what if this content wasn't allowed? What about those consequences.
Speaker 1: We're talking about censorship and maybe your but Paladin, it's
Speaker 1: such a fringe example. Well, the Freedom Forums National First
Speaker 1: Amendment ombudsman Paul McMasters once said, that's where you fight
Speaker 1: the First Amendment battles. You fight them on the fringes,
Speaker 1: or you fight them on the frontiers, or the next
Speaker 1: thing you know, you're fighting them on your front porch.
Speaker 1: So for the most part, Paladin Press was safe. But
Speaker 1: Livingstone also goes on to say this evidence of intent.
Speaker 1: Later on, if someone carried out a crime. Is it
Speaker 1: true that Timothy McVeigh ordered one of their books? I
Speaker 1: think I read that somewhere. Yeah, he did, but he
Speaker 1: would have found it totally useless. That's Tom Kelly, a
Speaker 1: press lawyer who represented Paladin. Timothy McVeigh, the domestic terrorists
Speaker 1: who murdered one d sixty eight people in Oklahoma City bombing,
Speaker 1: was found to have owned several Paladin books, including one
Speaker 1: called Homemade C four A Recipe for Survival. Now it's
Speaker 1: worth noting that C four was not the explosive that
Speaker 1: McVeigh used. He built a truck bomb using nitrogen fertilizer,
Speaker 1: but the book was used in his trial as evidence
Speaker 1: that he had the knowledge to build explosives. In fact,
Speaker 1: Paladin's own finance director Dana Rodgers, had to read the
Speaker 1: catalog description from the witness stand quote. Serious survivors knew
Speaker 1: the day may come when they need something more powerful
Speaker 1: than commercial dynamite or common improvised explosives for blowing bridges,
Speaker 1: shattering steel, and derailing tanks. They need C four. Oh wait,
Speaker 1: here's another one. Remember the fifty one day standoff between
Speaker 1: federal agents and the members of the Branch Davidians, a
Speaker 1: religious cult back in. This siege ended with a massive
Speaker 1: fire that took over the Waco, Texas compound, killing seventy people.
Speaker 1: This raid was made possible by a search warrant, which
Speaker 1: was secured in part because agents heard the head of
Speaker 1: this cult was trying to get his hands on the
Speaker 1: anarchist cookbook, the most notorious how to book on making
Speaker 1: explosives and weapons, among other things, and it was distributed
Speaker 1: and advertised by Paladin Press. I actually found a list
Speaker 1: of quote crimes involving Paladin Press publications and some court documents.
Speaker 1: I'm just going to read them to you. Here goes
Speaker 1: the murders committed by America's first female serial killer, Sylvia
Speaker 1: Secrist Kip Kinkle of Springfield, Oregon, who killed his parents
Speaker 1: before engaging in a shooting rampage. The murder of talk
Speaker 1: show host Alan Burg by the Order in Colorado attempted
Speaker 1: spousal homicide by William Chancellor in Texas, murder of a
Speaker 1: grocery store manager by Stephen Red in California, spousal homicide
Speaker 1: by Michelle Williams in Ohio. Extortion and loan sharking by
Speaker 1: Lawrence Tubiolo of Arizona, Attempted bombing by Robert A. Strickland
Speaker 1: in Florida, Solicitation of murder by Robert G. Lees of Washington,
Speaker 1: the manufacturer of fifty illegal silencers by Carl Genova of
Speaker 1: New York, Triple homicide by Dana Yule of California, Murder
Speaker 1: and attempted murder by package bomb by Dominic Perry in Australia,
Speaker 1: Triple homicide by Tony Dwong in California, robberies by Terry
Speaker 1: Adams and Matthew Taylor, and Tennessee letter bombs by Raymond
Speaker 1: neil Best in Alberta, Canada, Attempted bombing of police chief
Speaker 1: by Terence Rolls in Alberta, Canada. For murders by Lester
Speaker 1: Leroy Bauer Jr. Of Texas, and triple homicide at the
Speaker 1: Mildred Horn residents in Maryland. Multiple murders, bombings, robberies, extortion
Speaker 1: and Paladin Press was protected under the First Amendment in
Speaker 1: every single one of these cases, that is, until the
Speaker 1: murders of Million Trevor Horn and Janice Saunders. That's the
Speaker 1: case that changed legal history. Peter himself, you know, he uh,
Speaker 1: it was funny. He kind of went through a change
Speaker 1: over time from an adventurer himself. You know, he was
Speaker 1: a former Special Forces, a team leader in Vietnam. He
Speaker 1: was a man who was used to violence and had
Speaker 1: actually seen it, you know. I mean, there's a difference
Speaker 1: between somebody who has to put sights on somebody and
Speaker 1: pull the trigger versus somebody who doesn't. And it's not
Speaker 1: necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, it's just
Speaker 1: a thing. And that's something that Peter had to do.
Speaker 1: And not only that, the cultural shift over time, I
Speaker 1: think he got kind of disillusioned with He was very
Speaker 1: much a man of the seventies and eighties and not
Speaker 1: so much that the two thousand's people moving away from
Speaker 1: can do more towards what can you do for me?
Speaker 1: Um I think helped him shift away from that. I
Speaker 1: first started looking into this story back in two thousand fifteen,
Speaker 1: when Palette and Press was still very much in business.
Speaker 1: That's when I made my first call to their offices
Speaker 1: and Boulder and the very mention of the book. Hitman
Speaker 1: ended that versation quickly. But I'd always imagined someday I'd
Speaker 1: be able to interview Peter Lund for this podcast. I
Speaker 1: was going to keep trying, and then in June two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen, he died suddenly on vacation in Finland. Apparently
Speaker 1: he was on his way to Russia. He was seventy
Speaker 1: five years old. I was shocked. The official Paladin statement said,
Speaker 1: quote Petar was always a doer, and we at Paladin
Speaker 1: take comfort in the fact that he died doing what
Speaker 1: he loved most. A lot of Lund's life is a mystery,
Speaker 1: and his death is going to remain one. Two. A
Speaker 1: Soldier of Fortune social media post said that he had
Speaker 1: been found unconscious in his hotel room and could not
Speaker 1: be revived. He lost sight in one eye a few
Speaker 1: years back, they said, but otherwise had no serious health issues.
Speaker 1: A post on guns dot Com said he was quote
Speaker 1: killed while on vacation. It's a weird word choice. Killed.
Speaker 1: Less than six months later, word went out that Paladin
Speaker 1: Press was shutting down. They put out a another statement
Speaker 1: saying thanks for the trust you placed in us for
Speaker 1: the past forty seven years. It has been quite a ride.
Speaker 1: We reached out to LUN's wife, who also helped him
Speaker 1: run Paladin. She was in charge of the business after
Speaker 1: he died and ultimately made the decision to close the doors.
Speaker 1: She declined an interview. You know, he could have just
Speaker 1: been on a nice, leisurely trip with his wife. But
Speaker 1: the myth of Peter Lund, of the man who kept
Speaker 1: a handgun on his desk, who almost invaded Cuba, who
Speaker 1: fought for the First Amendment for information to stay free
Speaker 1: no matter the cost, The myth of the most dangerous
Speaker 1: publisher in America. It's never gonna die. The editor of
Speaker 1: AMMO Land News wrote, quote, who knows what Peter was
Speaker 1: up to in Finland on his last trip, but I
Speaker 1: am comforted to know he remained dangerous right to the
Speaker 1: sudden end. Next, on hit Man, I represent a woman
Speaker 1: named Bobby who was the survivor of an attempt to
Speaker 1: murder attack by a would be hitman who had bought
Speaker 1: a book about how to do that. The other time
Speaker 1: hit Man was used horrifying scene in Sue in which
Speaker 1: this young would be killer man had a cerreted type
Speaker 1: wire that was used to slip throats, and he went
Speaker 1: after with that in the battle to get it off
Speaker 1: the shelves. Forever. This ship cannot be protected by the
Speaker 1: First Amendment. That was the legal principle that we follow. Literally,
Speaker 1: this ship can't be protected. That's a slippery slogan because
Speaker 1: there will be always someone who is discussing, astounded and
Speaker 1: agreed by the content of someone's speech. Hit Man is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Hit Home Media.
Speaker 1: It's produced and reported by me Jasmine Morris. This episode
Speaker 1: was reported by Michelle Lands. Marc Lotto is our story consultant.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are main gesh Hatiki Door and Me. Mixing
Speaker 1: by Michelle Lands and Jacobo Penzo. Our fact checkers are
Speaker 1: Austin Thompson and not Sumi Ajisaka Special thanks to Lucas Riley.
Speaker 1: Our theme song by Alice McCoy and additional music written
Speaker 1: and produced by the students at DIME powered by the
Speaker 1: Detroit Institute of Music Education.