Hit Man Manual Triggers Lawsuits

Paladin Press published Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors in 1983 as a how-to guide to contract killing. In 1993, a hired killer named James Perry used the book as his guide while murdering a woman named Mildred Horn, her son Trevor, and a nurse named Janice Saunders in Maryland. Their families sued, and after an appeals court ruled that the First Amendment did not shield Paladin, its insurer paid several million dollars to settle in 1999 and destroyed 700 remaining copies. Paladin faced another suit in 2000 after a hired killer named Robert Vaughn Jones followed two dozen instructions while planning to murder a woman named Bobby Joe Wilson; the parties settled in 2002.

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