Speaker 1: You know, you don't really expect the suspected murderer to
Speaker 1: call you back and confess. I mean, that's just not
Speaker 1: what happens. My name is Kevin Sullivan. I'm a senior
Speaker 1: correspondent for the Washington Post. I've been at the Post
Speaker 1: for twenty eight years, and in three I covered the
Speaker 1: murders that Lawrence Horn was involved with. On March three
Speaker 1: of that year, Millie Horn, her eight year old son Trevor,
Speaker 1: and his nurse, Janice Saunders were murdered. Back then, Sullivan
Speaker 1: was a general assignment reporter in the Montgomery County Maryland Bureau.
Speaker 1: Montgomery County is not the kind of place where we
Speaker 1: have a lot of triple murders. It's a sort of affluent,
Speaker 1: relatively peaceful kind of place, so this was a big
Speaker 1: deal for us. Sullivan was assigned to track down Millie's ex, Lawrence,
Speaker 1: who was living out in Los Angeles. I ended up
Speaker 1: finding a phone number and I called the number and
Speaker 1: I heard, you know, this is Lawrence Rren. Please leave
Speaker 1: me a message. And a few hours later my phone rang.
Speaker 1: He said, yeah, this is Laurence. Sorry, and you were
Speaker 1: trying to reach me, And I said, I'm just calling
Speaker 1: about what happened, and I wondered if you had anything
Speaker 1: to say about it, and said, well, what happened? What
Speaker 1: are you talking about? And I said, you haven't heard
Speaker 1: from the Montgomery County Police and he said, no, I
Speaker 1: have one message on my machine. It was from you.
Speaker 1: What are you talking about? What happened? So I said,
Speaker 1: Mr Horne, I'm sorry to be the one to tell
Speaker 1: you this, but there's been a murder here and your wife,
Speaker 1: Millie and your son Trevor had been killed. And there
Speaker 1: was silence on the other end of the phone for
Speaker 1: a couple of seconds, and then I heard him say
Speaker 1: Millie Trevor and he started crying. There are lots of
Speaker 1: other details about this, and i've've completely forgotten, but that
Speaker 1: I will always remember. A few weeks after they spoke
Speaker 1: on the phone, Sullivan flew out to l A to
Speaker 1: see if he could interview Lawrence in person. He came
Speaker 1: to the door and I said, Mr Horn, and he
Speaker 1: said yeah, and I said, I'm Kevin Sullivan from the
Speaker 1: Washington Post. We've been we've been talking on the phone.
Speaker 1: And he looked at me and he said, how did
Speaker 1: you find me? The most remarkable thing was that he
Speaker 1: opened the door and let me in. I was fully
Speaker 1: prepared for him to say, I really can't talk about this.
Speaker 1: I have nothing to say, and close the door in
Speaker 1: my face. In his article, he described Lawrence's quote dark
Speaker 1: and cramped one bedroom apartment off grungy Hollywood Boulevard. Well,
Speaker 1: I remember walking down the hallway thinking this is kind
Speaker 1: of a creepy place. And and when he came to
Speaker 1: the door, he himself was kind of a mess. He
Speaker 1: was very heavy, he was wearing an old sweatsuit. He
Speaker 1: looked kind of schlobby. He had a baseball cap on,
Speaker 1: and he had the like tight little brat tail kind
Speaker 1: of braids, you know, sticking down from the back of
Speaker 1: the cap. But he just seemed sort of worn down
Speaker 1: by life. He didn't look like the kind of high flying,
Speaker 1: you know, motown record executive that he kind of portrayed
Speaker 1: himself as. On the phone, Lawrence spent the next several
Speaker 1: hours telling him his whole life story, as afternoon turned
Speaker 1: into evening and the apartment grew dark around them, and
Speaker 1: he was adamant about his innocence. I mean, he portrayed
Speaker 1: himself as very close to Berry Gordy, you know. He
Speaker 1: told me that he taught Stevie Wonder how to sign
Speaker 1: his name. He was making the case to me that
Speaker 1: somebody like him could never have done this. He was
Speaker 1: a great guide, had this great career. He said something like,
Speaker 1: if I had done this, how could I go on
Speaker 1: living with with something like that on my conscience? It
Speaker 1: would mean that I'm a monster. I'm Jasmine Morris from
Speaker 1: My Heart Radio and hit Home Media. This is hit Man.
Speaker 1: I've been looking into this book, Hitman, a technical manual
Speaker 1: for independent contractors, for years, and I've been talking to
Speaker 1: Tiffany Horn for almost as long. And after talking to Tiffany,
Speaker 1: I got a pretty clear picture of who her dad was.
Speaker 1: But the thing that's kind of hard to fathom is
Speaker 1: actually how big of a deal he was in Motown
Speaker 1: back in the day. He was partly responsible for some
Speaker 1: of the most important songs that are important to so
Speaker 1: many people. So I wanted to talk to those who
Speaker 1: were there while he was helping to make these things.
Speaker 1: Lawrence Horn is the person that made everything happen for me.
Speaker 1: That's music producer Tony bon Jovi, and I have to
Speaker 1: ask any relation to s Jon bon Jovi is my
Speaker 1: second cousin and I produced the records that got him
Speaker 1: signed and made the hits for him. In the early sixties,
Speaker 1: as a teenager in New Jersey, Tony had been teaching
Speaker 1: himself to be a recording engineer. He thought he'd figured
Speaker 1: out some of the tricks to the Motown sound and
Speaker 1: he wanted to meet with someone from the label. Motown
Speaker 1: instructed me to go to New York where Lawrence Horn was.
Speaker 1: He said, you have a tape to play for me,
Speaker 1: and I said, yes, I do, and I played him
Speaker 1: what I had done to some of the recordings and
Speaker 1: he was impressed. And that's when he said to me,
Speaker 1: would you like to come to Detroit to Motown. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like asking a ten year old he wants to
Speaker 1: go to Disneyland. So at seventeen, Tony found himself rubbing
Speaker 1: elbows with Motown's biggest stars, all at the direction of
Speaker 1: Lawrence Horn. You know, here's Smoky Rominson had the Miracles
Speaker 1: and all those hit records that I'm sitting there next
Speaker 1: to him. I'm in high school and I'm sitting next
Speaker 1: to him or Stevie Wonder. Lawrence made me feel comfortable.
Speaker 1: You're no, don't worry when you go in there. Don't
Speaker 1: feel that they're in inmidating you. You're just like them.
Speaker 1: Tony worked for Motown until the early seventies and then
Speaker 1: he went on to a successful music producing career of
Speaker 1: his own, but he kept in touch with Lawrence. As
Speaker 1: professional as my relationship was with him, it was very
Speaker 1: personal as well, because he nurtured that because I was
Speaker 1: a kid, and he would say, yeah, you learned a
Speaker 1: lot out in Detroit, didn't you. I said, yeah, I did,
Speaker 1: all because of you. Lawrence Thomas Horne was born in
Speaker 1: Detroit on April eighteenth, n His mother owned a modeling
Speaker 1: school and agency, and his father was a baker. Even
Speaker 1: as a kid, he was good with electronics and he
Speaker 1: attended Cast Technical High School, a magnet school in Detroit.
Speaker 1: Here's Lawrence's daughter, Tiffany. I mean he was friends with
Speaker 1: Diana Ross when they were in high school. You know
Speaker 1: their legendary. It's like you look back now sometimes I
Speaker 1: can't even believe he was part of that, but he was.
Speaker 1: And to better understand Lawrence who he was and who
Speaker 1: he became, we've got to first talk about how Motown
Speaker 1: became what it is. It's part of the legend of Detroit,
Speaker 1: A young songwriter named Barry Gordy was working his day
Speaker 1: job on the assembly line of the Lincoln Mercury car
Speaker 1: plan but he had an idea. What if he applied
Speaker 1: that same production model to cultivate musicians and make hit records. Well.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty nine, with eight dollars borrowed from his family,
Speaker 1: he launched his own record label. He bought an old
Speaker 1: house on West Grand Boulevard and a fixed a sign
Speaker 1: to the front that read Hitsville, USA, a move that
Speaker 1: could be read as arrogant or prophetic, maybe both. By
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty one, Motown scored its first number one hit
Speaker 1: with the marvel Atts Please, Mr Postman, I am Juanna
Speaker 1: are Royster. I am from Detroit, Michigan, and at one
Speaker 1: time I worked at Motown. Wanna was there at the beginning,
Speaker 1: sitting at the front desk as a receptionist. The essence
Speaker 1: of Monttown then and now is a out loves and family.
Speaker 1: Whether you were family or not, it made no difference.
Speaker 1: We were all family. Gordy fostered talent like Marvin Gay,
Speaker 1: the Temptations, Mary Wells, Stevie Wonder, so many artists that
Speaker 1: are considered legendary today. When I was in eighth grade,
Speaker 1: I joined a group called the Primets. Eventually we auditioned
Speaker 1: for Mr Barry Gordy. That's Mary Wilson, one of the
Speaker 1: original Supremes. Within a few years, Barry Gordy's Motown had
Speaker 1: become one of the most successful black owned businesses in
Speaker 1: the US, all during a time when segregation was still
Speaker 1: common practice and a growing civil rights movement was gaining momentum.
Speaker 1: He didn't find us, We found him, and which continued
Speaker 1: to go there until he finally relinquished the idea that
Speaker 1: we weren't good enough and signed us. In fact, that's
Speaker 1: how most of the artists came to Motown. They heard
Speaker 1: about this place where young people, especially black people because
Speaker 1: it was in the black neighborhood, would go then get side.
Speaker 1: At two years old and just out of the Navy,
Speaker 1: Lawrence Horn had served on board an aircraft carrier where
Speaker 1: he hosted his own radio show under the DJ name
Speaker 1: LT The Tall Cool One, Your Man with the Plan,
Speaker 1: his plan get a job with Barry Gordy. Want to
Speaker 1: recognized him when he showed up at Motown for an interview.
Speaker 1: When I became a student at cast Technical High School,
Speaker 1: I remembered Lawrence being six six and just being shocked
Speaker 1: that you know, this tall, slender, very handsome guy was
Speaker 1: walking down the hall. Are you kidding me? Lawrence also
Speaker 1: made a good impression on Motown's Boss. Well, he got
Speaker 1: a position as a recording artist, I said, artist. I sorry,
Speaker 1: he was a recording engineer. I mean he was an
Speaker 1: artist in a way. And while you might not recognize
Speaker 1: Lawrence's name, you definitely know his work. If you look
Speaker 1: at some of those old Motown records, there's actually little
Speaker 1: codes on them. This was common back in the day.
Speaker 1: You can find them on any vinyl record, but you'll
Speaker 1: see letters, and if you see an L on any
Speaker 1: Motown record, that stands for Lawrence. The other thing that
Speaker 1: Barry Gordy put on those labels was the phrase the
Speaker 1: sound of Young America, which Motown definitely was Any Holland
Speaker 1: one third of the Holland ten and that's about it.
Speaker 1: Hdh wrote, arranged, and produced so many of the songs
Speaker 1: that helped to find the Motown sound in the sixties,
Speaker 1: like Baby Love, You Keep Me Hanging On, and Stop
Speaker 1: in the Name of Love. Any said he once heard
Speaker 1: it described as Oreo music. Black on the outside went
Speaker 1: on the inside like the Oriole Cookie because the chords
Speaker 1: that we were used were really pop chords, but we
Speaker 1: just had an R and B feeling because of the
Speaker 1: way we were brought up. Here's Mary Wilson again. What
Speaker 1: was the Motown sound? Can you describe it? You know
Speaker 1: what it has to do with a lot of different
Speaker 1: elements and and yes, everyone has trying to say what
Speaker 1: it is. It's like love. Can you tell what love is? Now?
Speaker 1: I guess you can't. Obviously Mr Gordy was the person
Speaker 1: on top, but it was all of the workers under
Speaker 1: him who made the music what it is. I actually
Speaker 1: met Lawrence Horn in the studio a as he ran
Speaker 1: the sessions, and you know he was at in the
Speaker 1: pioneer days when they were still kind of creating the
Speaker 1: motown sound. In his autobiography To Be Loved, Barry Gordy wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: engineers are often some of the most important, yet overlooked
Speaker 1: factors in a record success. From those early days when
Speaker 1: Lawrence Horn had to handle most of the recording and mixing,
Speaker 1: We've been fortunate to build one of the best engineering
Speaker 1: teams in the business, and Lawrence was the master of
Speaker 1: the control room as chief recording engineer. He handled all
Speaker 1: the recording and technical equipment. I think I would even
Speaker 1: ask him, you know, why were you never a singer
Speaker 1: or a musician, And he would say he liked the
Speaker 1: behind the scenes and that was what he was good at.
Speaker 1: For him, that was nirvana. He absolutely loved recording, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. His face would light up and
Speaker 1: when things did not work right, it bothered him because
Speaker 1: he was one who wanted everything to be just right.
Speaker 1: He was also known for being quirky and technical. His
Speaker 1: personality was extremely off. I mean, he was more of
Speaker 1: an intellectual. For an example, you know this character that
Speaker 1: Spark from Star Trek, that was really his idle. That's
Speaker 1: the first time I've ever said, you know, he was
Speaker 1: the one from this other plan and he himnd is
Speaker 1: that's way over the earth things. Here's Adam White, a
Speaker 1: music journalist who co authored a book on Motown. He
Speaker 1: actually gets his first credit on a couple of Moton
Speaker 1: albums in sixty three for editing and engineering two albums
Speaker 1: that Motown put out by Dr Martin Luther King. His
Speaker 1: famous speeches the Great March on Washington and the Great
Speaker 1: March to Freedom in Detroit in June sixty three, I
Speaker 1: have a dreen this afternoon one day right here in Detroit.
Speaker 1: For an engineer to actually be named on a Moton
Speaker 1: album sleeve back then, believe me, was pretty unusual. And
Speaker 1: you know the number one hit My Girl by the Temptations,
Speaker 1: Lawrence engineered that. I understand he worked on Stop in
Speaker 1: the Name of Love, and I know he worked with
Speaker 1: the song Shotgun Shotgun. That's the hit single Shotgun by
Speaker 1: Junior Walker in the All Stars. Gordy shared a producer
Speaker 1: credit with Lawrence on the song, which he rarely did.
Speaker 1: The song Shotgun actually starts with the sound of a
Speaker 1: shotgun blast. And while this is a wildly popular song,
Speaker 1: you know it if you heard it, it's really hard
Speaker 1: to hear the same once you know this story. Of course,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about this in the context of this show
Speaker 1: with a lot of hindsight, and I want to play
Speaker 1: you this song and a lot of the others that
Speaker 1: Lawrence helped create, But after months of asking, the publisher
Speaker 1: wouldn't give us the rights to use them here. I mean,
Speaker 1: I can't speculate why, but it does remind me of
Speaker 1: that first phone call I made to Palette and Press
Speaker 1: about the book hit Man, the one that was clearly unwanted.
Speaker 1: Knowing where the rest of the story goes, it's not
Speaker 1: a huge surprise. I want to jump ahead to the
Speaker 1: early days of the investigation, which went on for a
Speaker 1: really long time and became incredibly frustrating and intense, because
Speaker 1: I want to talk about something else that Lawrence recorded.
Speaker 1: But first you have to remember, whoever had killed Millie
Speaker 1: Trevor in Janice left no evidence behind that could identify him,
Speaker 1: and investigators were a long way from discovering the truth
Speaker 1: behind this triple murder. On March twelfth, a little over
Speaker 1: a week later, investigators got a warrant and executed a
Speaker 1: search on Lawrence's Los Angeles apartment, where he lived with
Speaker 1: his girlfriend at the time. The police gathered lots of
Speaker 1: cassette tapes. Prosecutor Bob Dean, they looked at records that
Speaker 1: he kept back on that day. He was a computer
Speaker 1: specialist for the early nineteen nineties. He was very advanced
Speaker 1: in his computer assessories and equipment. Lawrence recorded more than music,
Speaker 1: He recorded everything. Really, he was just ahead of his time,
Speaker 1: regularly documenting everyday moments in a way that is now
Speaker 1: so commonplace. He taped phone conversations. He had a cam
Speaker 1: quarter that he'd used to record trips around town with
Speaker 1: his daughters. This is the audio from some of those tapes. Okay,
Speaker 1: detectives found hours and hours of footage like this in
Speaker 1: Lawrence's apartment, but one tape in particular stood out to
Speaker 1: prosecutor Bob Dean. Can you describe it? Do you remember?
Speaker 1: He had set up the camera in his TV room
Speaker 1: videoed himself watching TV time stamped the night of the murder.
Speaker 1: In this video, Lawrence is filming his TV that's tuned
Speaker 1: to a rolling channel guide, clearly displaying the time and date.
Speaker 1: It reads eleven o three pm March second Pacific Standard time,
Speaker 1: showing he was definitely miles away when Millie, Trevor, and
Speaker 1: Janice were killed and he wanted to prove it. Here's
Speaker 1: John Marshall, a lawyer and close family friend. So you think, well,
Speaker 1: that was pretty clever, until you think, why would you
Speaker 1: do that? We'll be right back. It's actually kind of
Speaker 1: an adorable, meat cute scenario. That's Lawrence and Millie's daughter, Tiffany.
Speaker 1: They basically had like a whirlwind romance. It was pretty
Speaker 1: quick as the sixties come to a close. Motown undergoes
Speaker 1: some major changes. Barry Gordon decides to relocate Motown to
Speaker 1: Los Angeles to be closer to the film and TV industry.
Speaker 1: The hit making team of Holland Dozer Holland leave the label,
Speaker 1: also move out west and take Lawrence with them. In
Speaker 1: two on an American Airlines flight from Detroit to l A,
Speaker 1: a young flight attendant named Millie Marie catches his eye.
Speaker 1: Here's Millie's sister, Maryland Farmer. Millie told me that she
Speaker 1: had met this man and she was really dazzled by
Speaker 1: the fact that he was recording people like Diana Ross
Speaker 1: and the Supremes and Stevie Wonder. She was excited about that,
Speaker 1: but wow, she'd met someone who was big time. Millie
Speaker 1: was born in ninety in a small town called round Oh,
Speaker 1: near the city of Walterboro, South Carolina. Our parents were
Speaker 1: sharecroppers and we were poor, you know, but I don't
Speaker 1: ever remember being hungry, and my dad was adamant that
Speaker 1: we had to take care of each other. Millie wanted
Speaker 1: to get out and see the world, and as a
Speaker 1: young woman, she figured there was one way she could
Speaker 1: accomplish that goal and get paid for it. Here's Tiffany.
Speaker 1: She would read these penny romances my aunt's tell me,
Speaker 1: and many times the star was a flight attendant, she'd
Speaker 1: be up all night under the covers with a flashlight
Speaker 1: reading them. Like she was obsessed with these books. I mean,
Speaker 1: she was living her dream life. To get hired as
Speaker 1: a flight attendant during the nineteen fifties and sixties, a
Speaker 1: woman had to meet very strict requirements. It buried by airline,
Speaker 1: but in general, you had to be female, unmarried, and
Speaker 1: under thirty. You had to weigh less than one thirty
Speaker 1: five pounds and be no taller than five ft eight.
Speaker 1: On top of that, airlines just weren't hiring many black women.
Speaker 1: I know she applied to one and she was rejected
Speaker 1: because of her knees. They said that her knees were
Speaker 1: too big. Can you believe that Lawrence had definitely met
Speaker 1: his match? A woman is driven and willful as he was.
Speaker 1: They were larger than live personalities. And it's funny because
Speaker 1: when they got together it was even more charismas so
Speaker 1: on their own they were their own big personalities. They'd
Speaker 1: walk into a room and you have this beautiful black
Speaker 1: woman with green eyes and blonde hair and this tall
Speaker 1: guy with curly hair and eyes are on them immediately.
Speaker 1: They were both magnetic. Tiffany showed me a photo of
Speaker 1: them together from around this time. Millie is sitting on
Speaker 1: Lawrence's lap with his arm around her waist. Their style
Speaker 1: is peak nine seventies, brown leather, high waisted pants. They're
Speaker 1: both beaming. My dad, he knew what he wanted, and
Speaker 1: he pursued her, and he bought her jewelry and took
Speaker 1: her on trips to Vegas, and they ended up getting
Speaker 1: married on one of those trips in secret. That was
Speaker 1: August three, just a year after they met. He was
Speaker 1: thirty three, she was twenty four. If they wanted to
Speaker 1: do something, they did it. And I think that's probably
Speaker 1: one of the things that attracted them to each other.
Speaker 1: Whether it was considered a luxury thing or something where
Speaker 1: maybe a lot of black people didn't have access to
Speaker 1: at that time, I would say, honestly, like my parents
Speaker 1: were never afraid. Tiffany was born about a year after
Speaker 1: Million Lawrence were married. Even she remembers being swept up
Speaker 1: in her parents aura. I can remember being in the
Speaker 1: car on a ski trip and just being in the
Speaker 1: back seat and just wishing that was my life all
Speaker 1: the time, that they could get along and that it
Speaker 1: was the three of us and we were together all
Speaker 1: the time. This was before or my brother and sister
Speaker 1: were born, but something was always a little off between
Speaker 1: her parents. Tiffany told me this story about how Lawrence
Speaker 1: and Millie were on one of their trips, this time
Speaker 1: in Mexico. Millie couldn't swim, but one day at the beach,
Speaker 1: Lawrence helped her out onto a raft anchored just offshore,
Speaker 1: and then he just left her there. He just swam away,
Speaker 1: and so she sat there crying until a stranger came
Speaker 1: to help her back, and he was gone. He just disappeared.
Speaker 1: That jumps out at me as like unusually cruel that
Speaker 1: he did to her. Well, why don't you tell me
Speaker 1: about your relationship? Describe that is towards the end of
Speaker 1: the match, it was unique, unpredictable, A fast, me stormy.
Speaker 1: That's Lawrence Horne's voice. This recording is from a deposition
Speaker 1: he gave for a civil case. We'll get into later
Speaker 1: in this story, but I wanted you to hear him
Speaker 1: describe his relationship with Milly in his own words. Did
Speaker 1: it change over that three Yes? And could you tell
Speaker 1: us what the nature of the change was. It was
Speaker 1: a series of events. I recall it as being just
Speaker 1: constantly one negative on top of another. Trevor, the twins
Speaker 1: were born in four They were premature. Millie had a
Speaker 1: problem with the birth that created a problem. Because Tiffany
Speaker 1: and I weren't here, it just got worse. When you
Speaker 1: hear Lawrence describe the marriage, it sounds a lot like
Speaker 1: the way Tiffany talks about it. Big personalities, huge emotional swings, breakups, reconciliations.
Speaker 1: But there's something darker. Here's what he told Kevin Sullivan,
Speaker 1: the Washington Post reporter after the murders. He talked at
Speaker 1: length about Millie, and he really threw her under the bus.
Speaker 1: He said that she was volatile and emotional and unpredictable
Speaker 1: and violent with him sometimes. And and I said, well, really,
Speaker 1: everybody else seems to say that she's this wonderful person
Speaker 1: and and he said, well, I mean I think I
Speaker 1: saw a side of her that nobody else did. And
Speaker 1: he and he really kind of went on and on,
Speaker 1: and at one point, I remember he even suggested maybe
Speaker 1: she had done it. And I said, oh, come on,
Speaker 1: I don't think a mother could arrange something like this,
Speaker 1: And he said, yeah, no, I guess that's crazy. But
Speaker 1: you know, my life with her was so so topsy turvy.
Speaker 1: Back to the late nineties seventies, Lawrence and Millie are separated.
Speaker 1: Millie and Tiffany moved to Maryland to be close to
Speaker 1: her family, and Lawrence stayed in l A. But they
Speaker 1: kept going round and round for another five years. In
Speaker 1: in nine three, the same year Paladin put out hit Man,
Speaker 1: a technical manual for independent contractors, they reconciled again. He
Speaker 1: never really would let her go. I mean she would
Speaker 1: date and he would pop back up. I think she
Speaker 1: had filed for divorce, but she wasn't divorced. She was
Speaker 1: even engaged at one point, but he was able to
Speaker 1: get her to break it off. He had such a
Speaker 1: power over my mom because she truly loved him, and
Speaker 1: you know that's how she ended up being pregnant again
Speaker 1: with my brother and sister. I was shocked. I thought
Speaker 1: the marriage was over. You know, I knew something was
Speaker 1: going on. I would hear her whispering on the phone.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, what is going on? So I'm like listening
Speaker 1: at the door, like ear to the door trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what's happening with my mom. In twins Tammiel
Speaker 1: and Trevor were born, but even with Trevor and critical condition,
Speaker 1: Lawrence showed no interest. And it was summer, which meant
Speaker 1: Tiffany was visiting her father in California. He refused to
Speaker 1: fly back and blamed me, and he told my aunts
Speaker 1: who were calling, that I wanted to go to the
Speaker 1: Motown Picnic, which was true. I was nine and it
Speaker 1: sounded fun. This was an annual event where Tiffany got
Speaker 1: to hang out with her favorite artist, Stevie Wonder. I
Speaker 1: didn't want to go sit in the hospital, but I
Speaker 1: had no idea what was happening. We wouldn't leave until afterwards,
Speaker 1: which is awful and horrible, and I can't believe he
Speaker 1: did that to my mother, and he put me in
Speaker 1: the middle. And that's one of my worst memories and
Speaker 1: when I kind of really realized my dad wasn't totally
Speaker 1: my ally like he made himself out to be. At
Speaker 1: the same time, Lawrence's marriage to Milly was falling apart,
Speaker 1: so was his career. By the mid eighties, popular music
Speaker 1: as well as Young America had really moved on from Motown.
Speaker 1: He would always bring me music that I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: this is not what I want. I want Madonna and
Speaker 1: I want Prince and I thought Michael Jackson used to
Speaker 1: be on your label, and he's like, not anymore. So
Speaker 1: I had all of the old Jackson five albums and
Speaker 1: I had Lionel Richie. That was kind of cool because
Speaker 1: Lionel Richie had like a moment, you know, But other
Speaker 1: than that, it was like, yeah, this is easy listening
Speaker 1: and this is from the sixties. I don't want this.
Speaker 1: Lawrence's venture with the hit makers Holland Osher Holland didn't
Speaker 1: work out either, and he went back to work for
Speaker 1: Barry Gordy. I don't think Barry Gordy ever looked at
Speaker 1: him the same, so he felt like he kind of
Speaker 1: was being punished Over the years for that. Lawrence fell
Speaker 1: from chief recording engineer to tape librarian, cataloging and organizing
Speaker 1: the work from his golden years in the basement of
Speaker 1: Motown's l A operations. It's a task that must have
Speaker 1: been humiliating for someone with so many hits on his resume.
Speaker 1: Here's Eddie Holland, the technical people. They sort of moved
Speaker 1: into the basement part of this building. I visited him
Speaker 1: a couple of times. He was engineering somewhat, but he
Speaker 1: was doing mostly cattle up it. He had been that lawless.
Speaker 1: He grew up dealing with more talent. He could do
Speaker 1: better than most people. By seven, Lawrence and Millie were
Speaker 1: officially divorced and locked in a bitter custody battle. He'd
Speaker 1: been ordered to pay six fifty dollars a month in
Speaker 1: child support payments, on top of the seventy five dollars
Speaker 1: per month he was paying in health insurance, and court
Speaker 1: records show that at one point he had three hundred
Speaker 1: sixty dollars in his bank account. My dad had been
Speaker 1: at the top of the world, and the sixties and
Speaker 1: seventies were his prime. He talked a lot about legacies.
Speaker 1: Motown did create a legacy, and he was part of that.
Speaker 1: He was very proud of that. And the eighties it
Speaker 1: started to decline for him. He didn't have as much
Speaker 1: money anymore and he was trying to hold on. That
Speaker 1: was kind of painful to see. That experience is seeing
Speaker 1: your parents kind of fall from grace in real time.
Speaker 1: In Motown, founder Berry Gordy would sell the label to M. C.
Speaker 1: A in a Boston based investment firm for sixty one
Speaker 1: million dollar and Lawrence was let go in it's very
Speaker 1: difficult for people to continue living a life that's no
Speaker 1: longer as glamorous and as you know, financially gratifying as
Speaker 1: it was. That's Mary Wilson again. Perhaps that's something that
Speaker 1: may have happened with Mr. Horn. I couldn't tell you
Speaker 1: if that's how it happened, but I'm sure a lot
Speaker 1: of that is what was going on. And that's when
Speaker 1: sometimes certain things, you know, happened, and they do desperate
Speaker 1: things because they're trying to, you know, make their life
Speaker 1: work again. His life sprailed down when so many things
Speaker 1: were not going the way you know, he wanted or
Speaker 1: thought or expected. Whenever I think about what was going
Speaker 1: on between Million Lawrence and really will never know for sure,
Speaker 1: but I keep coming back to the first chapter of Hitman.
Speaker 1: Rex Ferrell actually starts off like he's a teacher with
Speaker 1: a reading list for aspiring contract killers. Read and reread
Speaker 1: pertinent articles relating to weapons and techniques that interest you
Speaker 1: in magazines such as Soldier of Fortune, New Breed, and
Speaker 1: Gung Ho. He says, keep up quote on New trends
Speaker 1: and developments, as well as new gadgets and inventions. Get
Speaker 1: into detective fiction. Quote, chuckle through the trench coats and
Speaker 1: warped personalities. It's worth it, he says, because with the
Speaker 1: right attitude, in an open mind, almost any good mystery
Speaker 1: or murder story can provide some ingenious new methods of terrorizing, victimizing,
Speaker 1: or exterminating. Sometimes the warped imagination of a fiction writer
Speaker 1: we will point out and obvious but somehow never before
Speaker 1: realized method of pacification or body disposal. Most important of all,
Speaker 1: keep in mind this was but, he says, Quote, A
Speaker 1: subscription to your local newspaper maybe the wisest investment with
Speaker 1: the highest return that you'll ever make. He instructs the reader.
Speaker 1: Each morning, sip your coffee and carefully study the paper.
Speaker 1: Quote to see who in your area might be your
Speaker 1: next employer or victim. Follow closely news or rumors of
Speaker 1: particularly nasty divorce proceedings involving any wealthy or socially prominent couples.
Speaker 1: Chances are one could use your discreete professional services, or
Speaker 1: perhaps I'm not so wealthy acquaintance who prefers not to
Speaker 1: become entangled and messy divorce proceedings. You may find it
Speaker 1: a proper time to collect on that old life insurance policy.
Speaker 1: By the early nineties, Lawrence and Millie Horn's divorce and
Speaker 1: the subsequent custody battle had definitely gotten messy. My mother
Speaker 1: didn't trust him at all. She felt like he was
Speaker 1: up to something. I mean, she made it very clear
Speaker 1: he couldn't come in to see Trevor, especially when she
Speaker 1: wasn't at home. According to written testimony from the custody case,
Speaker 1: Lawrence claimed that Milly interfered with his attempts to see
Speaker 1: Tiffany and the twins Tammiell and Trevor. He wrote, quote
Speaker 1: chief other advised me that if I wanted to exercise
Speaker 1: my visitation with Trevor, I would not be permitted to
Speaker 1: sit on any of her furniture or the floor, that
Speaker 1: I would not be permitted to use the bathroom during
Speaker 1: the four hour time period allotted for the visit. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, Millie said he never made an effort.
Speaker 1: As she put it, quote, he found the time to
Speaker 1: ski and aspen and vow while I made decisions regarding
Speaker 1: a life threatening condition concerning our ill son, Trevor, and
Speaker 1: caring for Tammiel and Tiffany at the same time. But
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, in the year before the murders,
Speaker 1: Lawrence was showing up in Maryland a lot. My mom
Speaker 1: said that he could come and pick us up after
Speaker 1: school when he was in town, but he couldn't come
Speaker 1: into the driveway. She was very adamant about that, and so, yeah,
Speaker 1: I told him, you can pick us up, but you
Speaker 1: have to, you know, meet us at the end of
Speaker 1: the driveway. We'll walk down my sister and I. So
Speaker 1: he would greet us sometimes with the camp quarter and
Speaker 1: he would be, you know, videotaping us. I've been good,
Speaker 1: You've been good? Are you never? Never not good? When
Speaker 1: are you ever bad? I? Never? So why would you
Speaker 1: say I've been good? My dad would record everything for
Speaker 1: the most part, as much as he could. When we
Speaker 1: would get in the car with him. In these video tapes,
Speaker 1: they go to a toy store, they go out to eat,
Speaker 1: drive around and listen to music. Who was that saying?
Speaker 1: He would act like it was part of his video
Speaker 1: diary of his visit to take back to our family
Speaker 1: members in California, like his mom, his sister, my cousins
Speaker 1: that lived there. Why it's Disney's my married from time.
Speaker 1: That's not true. Have we I kind of believed him.
Speaker 1: He definitely found it important to tape us. None of
Speaker 1: it seems terribly unusual when you remember that recording was
Speaker 1: second nature to Lawrence. But you can't miss the skepticism
Speaker 1: in Tiffany's voice. Why yeah, out flee everybody stay high?
Speaker 1: Why think I want to think that they can see
Speaker 1: They've already seen that, showed them a picture. H don't
Speaker 1: feel like that? Why you have a big dam And
Speaker 1: then there's this moment in the tape Lawrence is picking
Speaker 1: the girls up near the driveway. Where is Trevor? Which
Speaker 1: one open you up front? Up there? That's where is Trevor?
Speaker 1: Which one is his room? Where up front? Hitman is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio and Hit Home Media.
Speaker 1: It's produced and reported by me Jasmine Morris. Our supervising
Speaker 1: producer is Michelle Lance. Mark Loto is our story consultant.
Speaker 1: Executive producers are Main Guesh, Hatika Door and Me. Mixing
Speaker 1: by Josh Rogison, Michelle Lance and Jacobo Penzo are fact
Speaker 1: checkers are Austin Thompson and not Sumi Ajisaka. Voice acting
Speaker 1: by Levi Petrie. Special thanks to Andrew Goldberg, Michael Garofolo,
Speaker 1: Tori Piquette, Christopher Hasiotis, and Nathan Morris. Our theme song
Speaker 1: by Alice McCoy and additional music written and produced by
Speaker 1: students at DIME, powered by the Detroit Institute of Music Education,