on the morning of march 3rd 1993 in silver spring maryland vivian rice stopped by her sister's house on her way to work but this morning something was wrong both garage doors were open and her sister's minivan was missing inside the house vivian would discover a brutal triple homicide executed by one of the most ruthless and cunning killers to ever challenge the fbi [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] when three people were found murdered in their home it appeared like a burglary gone awry but a crime this horrific deserved the closer look the suspect who had the most to gain from the deaths also had the perfect alibi photographic proof that he was three thousand miles away when the crime was committed i'm jim calstrom former head of the fbi's new york office it's our job to find the holes in even the most bulletproof alibi in this case we had our work cut out for us a montgomery county maryland police officer responded to vivian rice's frantic 9-1-1 call [Music] he found a female victim dead just inside the front door he also found a second woman dead [Music] and a young boy apparently murdered in his bed you guys got three victims here need detectives and evidence technicians over here through the day and into the night investigators would scour the scene for evidence thoroughly searching both inside and outside the house they soon identified all the victims mildred horn was a 43 year old divorced mother employed as an american airlines flight attendant she had been shot three times in the head her eight-year-old quadriplegic son trevor who required round-the-clock nursing care appeared to have been suffocated police found him disconnected from his respirator and trevor's overnight nurse 38 year old janice saunders had been shot twice in the skull and in the eye [Music] evidence technicians began work immediately they were thorough but there was little evidence to collect they dug a single distorted bullet fragment from the wood beside trevor's window [Music] investigators took swabs of blood carefully collecting samples for dna testing but the blood would match only the victim's dna with so little to lead investigators to a suspect technicians scrounged harder for clewers anything and everything would seem promising [Music] outside the house investigators found a metal file [Music] police were thorough but the killer had been meticulous montgomery county maryland homicide detective craig wittenberger named lead investigator struggled to make sense of a case with three helpless victims no obvious motive and few clues there were some things that struck us as odd i think from the very beginning of the on-scene investigation inside the house the four-year area a closet the contents had been dumped everything been pulled out of the closet dumped onto the floor we found a purse which we would later learn ultimately belong to millie you had a lot of stereo entertainment equipment tvs a lot of jewelry furs that was untouched and left which again strikes you as odd if this is a if this is a burglary or robbery going bad you're going to take something in fact mildred's minivan was missing from the garage as her sister had noticed but it was found quickly not far from the house [Music] some of mildred's credit cards were also missing but found the next day on a nearby roadside by a jogger investigators now positively eliminated burglary as a motive instead they wondered if the missing items were a deliberate attempt by the killer to throw them off his trail the scene had the earmarks of a planned professional execution as for a suspect at the crime scene vivian told the mildred's ex-husband lawrence horn was probably responsible she begged them to investigate he quickly became the prime suspect all the family members were giving us this information that kept pointing to lawrence horn that would be based on the very stormy rocky relationship that millie and lawrence hornet had for many many years uh danny could you get this drum set up in number five for me please all right investigators learned that in the 1960s and 70s horn had been a top producer and recording engineer for motown records credited with many hits including shotgun by junior walker and the all-stars he'd married mildred an airline attendant in 1973. then he'd moved with motown from detroit to los angeles but when the company's fortunes waned so did his he and mildred divorced in 1987 but their problems continued as bob dean maryland assistant state's attorney soon discovered we did some research on lawrence horn in the courthouse that day particularly what the status of his child support payments were and whatever civil aspects of his ongoing civil battle with his wife were and he had just been held in contempt several months before for failure to pay 18 18 000 in child support but in reviewing more court records investigators learned that on march 3rd the day of the murders horn's financial outlook had brightened considerably with his wife and son dead he now stood to inherit 1.7 million dollars the money came from a malpractice settlement awarded to trevor when a routine operation left him with brain damage should trevor die the settlement also listed his beneficiaries the beneficiaries of trevor were obviously his mother and his father and that was millie and lawrence if millie were dead lawrence got everything at detective wittenberger's request the los angeles police department contacted lawrence horn within hours of the murders they tracked him to his mother's house police told horn about the murders and were surprised by his response am i a suspect no sir mr warren's behavior was very odd it was odd enough that the lapd officers took note of it from the very very outset not only did he not want to cooperate and want to want an attorney basically his only questions or inquiries about were whether he was a suspect in this thing took him to the station for further questioning they asked where he was at the time of the crime [Music] he told them he was with his live-in girlfriend shira bogue i was at home and described their activities later they would question her and she'd corroborate his story i was at home [Music] if horn or someone he employed had crossed state lines to commit the crime they would have violated the interstate travel and aid of racketeering statute a federal offense under fbi jurisdiction now the fbi was brought in a heinous crime had shocked the quiet community of silver spring maryland a triple murder that brutally ended the lives of a quadriplegic boy his mother and his overnight nurse with the prime suspect 3 000 miles away in los angeles the prospect of an interstate investigation loomed local detectives called on the fbi okay all right goodbye special agent ed roach the case immediately became a coast to coast uh investigation because the principal suspect uh was living at that time in in los angeles so we involved the los angeles division of the fbi perhaps that we could assist later in the investigation either through profiling at quantico or with the assistance of the fbi laboratory desperate for more clues investigators sent a k-9 team back to where mildred horn's credit cards had been found by a jogger the team soon recovered a rusty piece of metal badly corroded but clearly a gun part wittenberger sent it to the fbi lab for testing fbi examiners determined the part was a trigger mechanism from an ar7 rifle a gun that's easy to disassemble into small pieces for transport or disposal which seemed exactly what the killer had done he had also taken another step to distance himself from the weapon he'd very carefully drilled out the serial number often a trained examiner can piece these numbers back together but this killer had erased them for good [Music] another firearms expert would determine how long the gun parted lane by the side of the road analysis showed the amount of corrosion was consistent with the time elapsed since the killings had occurred so this was likely the murder weapon while the fbi lab processed the gun part investigators in maryland interviewed tiffany horn lawrence and mildred's 18 year old daughter she was a student at howard university in washington dc they gave her a routine polygraph test which he easily passed did you commit those murders no later that day tiffany would talk with detective wittenberger revealing three key clues [Music] the first was something that had happened in the summer of 1992. her father had called asking her to videotape the outside of her mother's house for him along with trevor's womb the idea was so bizarre she'd only taped trevor and his nurse with trevor in his bed attached to his respirator tiffany gave the tape to her father now wittenberger and the fbi wondered if horn wanted someone to know the layout of the house then on march first two days before the murders horn had called her again he wanted to know where his younger daughter tamiel would be for the next few days [Music] tiffany said tamiel would be with aunt vivian the night of march 2nd because her mother was flying out on an early flight the morning of march 3rd it made investigators suspect that horn had known when the murders would occur tiffany shared one other revealing incident at about 2 30 the morning of the murders she had inadvertently called her mother tiffany had hit the wrong speed dial key on her phone she'd meant to call her boyfriend she apologized and hung up the timing of the call helped investigators estimate the timing of the murders along with another observation trevor's round-the-clock nurses made entries every hour in a log book near his bed based on that the 230 phone call the two o'clock entry in the nurses log and they're not being a three o'clock entry and the autopsy findings i think we pretty much based the time of death as being around to between 2 30 3 o'clock in the morning on march 11 about a week after the murders wittenberger and his partner flew to l.a with the assistance of the los angeles police department they carried a probable cause affidavit to search horn's apartment they collected hundreds of audio and videotapes police also gathered computers personal papers address books bank statements and telephone walls [Music] back at the station investigators began the time-consuming task of reviewing all they'd recovered they'd printed thousands of pages from the hard drives of horns computers they found he'd made handwritten notes on documents regarding trevor's settlement money the notes confirmed what they already suspected horn was well aware he could gain a fortune from his son's death and he was well versed in the legalities of the settlement investigators also found a map that was telling it was hand drawn showing mildred horn's neighborhood the streets were outlined and labeled an x and her initials marked her house had horn been directing a stranger to find her perhaps a contract killer in the hundreds of hours of videotape that were recovered on the screen one home movie stood out horn had videotaped himself standing in front of his television set which was tuned to the cable tv program guide station the station was clearly broadcasting the time and date 11 45 pm march 2nd 1993 california time 2 45 am march 3rd maryland time exactly the time and date of the murders investigators quickly dubbed it the alibi tape since it seemed to have been created for that purpose now wittenberger and the fbi seemed to have some substantial leads but they were still far from apprehending the mastermind of this brutal crime [Music] when investigators searched the la apartment of their prime suspect in a triple murder they discovered a suspicious videotape among themselves they called it the alibi tape but they would soon find a recording that was even more incriminating [Music] a 22-second exit from horn's dozens of audio tapes it was from a conversation between horn and an unknown male [Music] the words were cryptic but their meaning was clear [Music] right you know right there i couldn't the noise you understand i'm saying i wasn't able to do that i didn't want to go [Music] after listening to that we felt mr horn probably was in los angeles at the time we also felt after listening to that conversation that this was probably the individual that committed these homicides making that phone call with the help of the fbi investigators subpoenaed telephone records from a t for all the calls placed to lawrence horn's residence from a week before the murders to a week after [Music] most were useless but four long distance calls stood out two had been made just days before the murders from a detroit pay phone the other two were made in the early hours of march 3rd from pay phones near mildred horn's house one from outside a denny's restaurant and the other from a days inn the call from the denny's was made to the home of lawrence horn at 5 12 a.m marathon time just a few hours after the murders [Music] [Music] and who had made the call investigators spent hours scanning dozens of registration forms from local motels a check of the hotels and the motels in the area a few mile circumference of the murder scene turned up an individual checking in approximately midnight the day these murders were committed to the day's end using a michigan driver's license in the name of james edward perry james edward perry seemed a promising suspect [Music] with lawrence horn's roots in detroit's music industry and the detroit call in his telephone records perhaps there was a connection background checks revealed he'd served about 10 years time for shooting a michigan state trooper after an attempted bank robbery in the early 1970s now he was a minister [Music] he claimed he would be able to pick lottery numbers for people people could call him for his advice he had business cards and flyers that he would hand out that he was like i say a minister i believe he called himself on some of these things apostle james as investigators learned more about perry wittenberger had picked up another trail in lawrence horn's telephone records he'd noticed some calls have been made on a calling card he subpoenaed the records the name on the card was camilla mckenny fbi agents appeared at camilla's address instead they found marsha webb it turned out she was lawrence horne's cousin oh no she said horn had asked her to get the card claiming he needed it for business she'd made up the name mckenny she thought her past payment problems might keep her from getting a card the calling card records revealed a complex web of phone calls they began almost a year before the murders and continued for several months after we examined the records for that calling card account and saw that there were numerous calls throughout 1992 and 1993 from pay phones in los angeles pay phones that we plotted out on a street grid primarily within walking distance of lawrence horn's house that went directly to james perry's house in detroit i could do it and likewise there were numerous calls from 1992 to 1993 of pay phones throughout detroit primarily on the east side of detroit which is where james perry lived to lawrence horn's house in hollywood and we figured perry was looking for the rest of his payment and we surmised that that horn was waiting for his windfall from his son's estate but if it seemed investigators had finally hit the jackpot the prize remained just out of their grasp connecting suspects to calls required painstaking detective work logging the time and phone number where each call was made and received then attempting to place the suspects accordingly horn and perry had covered their tracks with many layers of deception investigators were beginning to bog down and their frustration was starting to show it starts out at an extremely extremely fast pace everything's hot and heavy very high profile murder murder case everything like i say is rocking and rolling very quickly then all of a sudden the skids are put on that the investigation starts to slow down because now we're we've almost shifted gears and now going into a documentation it turns into almost a paper trail case but wittenberger and the fbi stayed on the trail like bloodhounds and in late september of 1993 they closed in on james perry they began a 24-hour a day seven day a week surveillance we had the michigan state police and the fbi both both agencies agreed to put them under surveillance in a cooperative effort it was during a week in september that we saw that james perry hung out with a particular individual we didn't know who he was until we checked the tag of his car this guy named thomas turner a background check showed the 52-year-old turner was a trucker by trade more significantly he was another of lawrence horne's cousins he was also fast friends with perry the two had met in prison 13 years before when perry was serving time for the state trooper shooting incident and turner for robbing a bank identifying turner would prove an important break in the case [Music] but for now investigators were hoping for something more immediate wittenberger and an agent did what investigators call tickling the wires they paid perry a visit thinking perry would then contact horn and start talking the investigators only talked briefly with perry but he admitted he was in maryland on march 3rd though he claimed it was for business and that he knew nothing about the murders [Music] in september of 93 after weeks of wrangling for a court authorization to tap lawrence horn's home phone federal agents finally got the go-ahead special agent roach was key in obtaining the approval we were hoping to get the smoking gun the conversation between james edward perry and uh and lawrence horn we were hoping for a conversation that would say something like i want the rest of my money you know i did the deed uh the down payment's not enough uh you promised me such and such i only got this and uh now i want the rest of my money or maybe uh you're gonna be next something like that would have been terrific but horn and perry were too sly to let anything slip and by mid-november with the investigation at full tilt they stopped talking to each other all together despite months of slow but steady progress horn and perry were still one step ahead of the law fbi's coast-to-coast investigation of a triple murder committed in maryland left agents scrambling to link la's lawrence horn and detroit's james perry to their case investigators knew the two men were talking but they didn't know how were they using perry's former jail buddy thomas turner as a go-between the fbi secured authorization to tap turner's phone yep that was the key [Music] both horn and perry talked to turner often and turner relayed messages between them but they were careful not to use language that might incriminate them and once again agents found themselves back in the same old grind monitoring and logging hundreds of calls then trying to make links between one surveillance would be taking place actively taking place a physical surveillance in los angeles on lawrence horn while at the same time 24 hours a day the detroit division was conducting physical electronic surveillance on thomas turner and physical surveillance on james edward perry as before they made a few connections between calls and callers but mostly the process seemed just a test of their endurance and dedication horn and perry were giving them a run for their money [Music] then around thanksgiving after three grueling months investigators got a bite perry was preparing to move agents secured a federal warrant to search his residence before he left it was a dangerous mission perry had shot a michigan police officer and he was known to own high-powered weapons an fbi swat team made the entry wittenberger and his partner follow they rouse perry and his girlfriend from bed catching them unaware and unarmed [Music] then they began to search the house police collected videotapes bank statements and other documents [Music] much of what they found seemed strangely out of place in the home of a so-called minister there were voodoo relics soldier of fortune magazines and books on topics like criminal investigations managing gunshot wounds and interpreting blood stains investigators hope to prove that perry had bought the books as well they called the publishers getting only one hit from paladin press a cancelled check proved to be the turning point in the case perry had ordered two books from paladin press about a year before the murders two chilling titles hitman a manual for independent contractors and how to build disposable silencers you read through those books it was very disturbing to see the number of similarities and parallels from the hitman book to what transpired inside millie's home on march 3rd finally the pieces began to form a single picture mildred's missing minivan was explained perry had used it to get back to his rental car which he parked some distance from the crime scene as the book recommended the credit cards found by a jogger on a road near the house also fit in neatly it said to if you want to make it look like a a burglary do a little bit of messing around the house take some items and throw them along the side of the road it said throw the pieces of the rifle along the side of the road another thing that the book recommended was to take a little narrow file and run it through the barrel of the rifle and a little narrow file was found in the backyard with deposits of chemicals consistent with gunpowder gunshot residue the book also suggested using an ar7 rifle exactly the gun whose trigger mechanism was found earlier likewise examiners determined the single spent bullet found in trevor's room was 22 caliber popular with assassins [Music] 22s distort when they enter a human body so it's hard to match them to a gun they're also small quiet and inexpensive [Music] in january of 1994 there was another big break in the case after months of pressure from wittenberger a grand jury subpoena finally brought in thomas turner he agreed to talk in exchange for immunity 1992. in a deposition for a maryland grand jury turner said his cousin lawrence horn had come for a visit in may of 1992 five months before the murders though turner hadn't seen him in 20 years horn immediately complained of trouble with his ex-wife mildred turner gave him the name of james perry yes i'm sure that's all turner would say though wittenberger believed he knew much more fortunately he'd said enough at that point because of what we had learned from thomas turner and what we had learned from the hitman book and the wiretaps we felt we were in a position to establish a conspiracy to establish that james perry had in fact carried out the killings that summer wittenberger struck on july 19 1994 he arrested horn at his los angeles apartment without incident wittenberger would question him for 45 minutes at the police station but horn refused to talk about the crime [Music] on the same day fbi agents in detroit were waiting for a judge to sign the warrants for the arrest of perry [Music] in the meantime they conducted an overt surveillance the tactic is designed to pressure a suspect while making sure he doesn't flee it wasn't supposed to be a covert surveillance we really didn't care if he saw them or not we just didn't want it to be a confrontational surveillance until the warrants were signed once the warrants were finalized agents could arrest perry until then they would follow him in the open knowing he knew they were there they would keep him in sight at all times [Music] perry grew increasingly annoyed the fbi didn't let up it seemed perry wondered what the fbi was trying to do though he seemed more irritated than concerned [Music] he drove off still in clear view of agents they didn't know where he was headed but stayed with him anyway [Music] [Music] a man the agents were not familiar [Music] the two drove off in perry's car with the tail close behind him well let's give him something to play with [Music] then incredulous agents guessed where perry was going after only about an hour the constant tale had made perry so angry he decided to file a complaint amazingly he took his gripe straight to the detroit fbi field office perry's timing was incredible he and his friend arrived at the office just as fbi agents awaited final word on his arrest warrant i want to see an fbi agent now this is a bad idea now i want to see an fbi agent right now perry demanded to see an agent i'm not going to calm down and he was quickly accommodated a clerk called special agent roach bring him on in while agents checked him for weapons perry confronted roach wanting to know if agents were going to arrest him or if they were just planning to harass him first of all i appreciate it we told him in minutes you were going to expect a phone call from montgomery county maryland telling us the warrants have been signed and you've been indicted for three counts of first degree murder and the telephone came in a few minutes later and we advised him that he was in fact under arrest even with both men in custody one question still remained if perry was the hired gun how had horne paid him for the crime after months of relentless pursuit by local investigators in the fbi the elusive horn and perry but there remained a nagging question how had horn paid perry for the crime the answer came two months later only as a result of still more dogged detective work as we were reviewing the results of the search on james perry's house we noticed this photograph that in essence showed various cassette tapes that james perry had that was the purpose of the photograph but underneath one of the items here we saw a western union card we got a bundle of records from western union showing us that there were indeed a number of transactions from los angeles to james perry's live-in girlfriend pauline mcgee the person sending it was george bernard shaw well we now had another area to investigate for a few months [Music] after much digging dean discovered a man named george bernard shaw had died in july of 1992 in an auto accident in los angeles when dean sleuthed out the la times for the day of shaw's death he discovered the man's connection though it wasn't in his obituary we have on the front page mary wells dies and for those in our generation she was a big motown star go to the obituary page big story about mary wells dying in los angeles in the lower right hand corner was a list of other people who had passed away one is a guy named george bernard shaw with no information about him just the cemetery lawrence horn had used the name of this anonymous dead man as the front for his payments which were made with the money horn was able to save almost two years after the crime investigators had finally pieced together the whole story it had been a cold and calculated murder for hire that took more than a year to plan [Music] james perry had followed the instructions in the hitman book almost to a t harry had bought an ar7 rifle and drilled out the serial number as the book suggested [Music] and he'd built a disposable silencer using the book's directions he'd carefully cut the parts and assembled it he also packed a bag of supplies a brown mechanic suit so he could walk through mildred's neighborhood looking like a repairman and latex gloves so he'd leave no fingerprints in the months before the crime he and horn had talked often discussing each detail at perry's request horn had sent him a map of mildred's neighborhood and a video of trevor's room horn had chosen a date when tamiel would be out of the house his only show of mercy in this heinous crime on the appointed day perry had driven a car rented by turner from detroit he checked into a motel near mildred's house in maryland perry had paid cash as the book recommended hoping the motel wouldn't require an id i haven't seen somebody paying cash without his xerox driver's license police might never have cracked the case we couldn't believe that he did something that dumb that put him in silver spring maryland on the date and the time of the murders then he driven his rental car to a shopping center near mildred's house and walked from there following horne's hand-drawn map [Music] in the house unsuspecting nurse janice saunders made the 2 a.m entry on a medical log attached to trevor's bed [Music] [Music] perry approached the french doors at the back of the house as planned [Music] the locked the doors were easily opened [Music] he ended barely making a sound inside he assembled his rifle in homemade silence [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] he likely took saunders completely by surprise [Music] do [Music] [Music] but when the boy stopped breathing his medical alarm spoke for him upstairs his mother awoke [Music] mildred horn went downstairs to investigate there she too met the killer perry shot mildred three times in the face then perry roughed up the house a little to make it look like a robbery-gone band as the book instructed he took mildred's credit cards but it seems the persistent beeping of the medical alarm unnerved even this calculating killer [Music] he stuck to the manual instructions on his way out he quickly bored out the gun barrel using the metal file to foil ballistics tests as the book instructed [Music] for a quick escape he took mildred's minivan back to where his rental car was parked on the way he'd scattered mildred's credit cards and the gun parts though only the trigger mechanism was found all right i'm sitting there can you uh it was a case that had to be put together by really an exhaustive search of every clue possible every clue imaginable um and we literally spent a year and a half two years doing nothing but working on this case in september of 1995 two and a half years after the murders james perry was brought to trial in maryland bob dean served as special prosecutor because of his intimate knowledge of the case perry received life for conspiracy and three death sentences for the murders those death sentences were later commuted to life perry has no chance for parole [Music] he has never admitted to committing the crime lawrence horn's trial began that april in a packed maryland courtroom he faced the same charges as perry so much of the same evidence was used bob dean again served as special prosecutor after a five-week trial the jury found horn guilty on all counts he showed no emotion and like perry he never confessed to the crime on may 13th horn received three life sentences without parole he appealed once and was denied i think both mr horn and mr perry did a very good job in planning this and they came very close to getting away with this there would be one more bittersweet victory for the families of the victors following the murders they filed a federal lawsuit against the publishers of hitman a technical manual for independent contractors in late may of 1999 they won the suit including a multi-million dollar settlement and a promise from the publisher to stop selling the book [Music] you