King of Wild Beasts

I'd written who I believed to be Rex Ferrell. I'd emailed multiple times to several different email addresses, called a bunch, tried a few family members, mailed certified letters. I even wrote her on Pinterest, on Instagram and Facebook. But no matter what I did, I didn't hear back. I mean, I was only gone for a moment. It was nothing, no time at all. But when I returned there was a missed call from one of the numbers I tried, and there was a voicemail, a long one. I was excited,

kind of felt like I was gonna puke. I wasn't entirely sure what I was gonna say, but I hope to have a chance to tell her what kind of journalists I am that I'm not looking for some kind of gotcha moment that I had no interest in doxing her or pursuing some kind of moral reckoning. I just want to know what happened, what was her story? And then I held the phone up to my ear and

pressed play. Ye, nothing, just some background noises. I listened to it three times, hoping I had missed her message, like maybe it was just at the very end or really quiet. No, this was clearly a missdial. Now when I try that number, it goes straight to voicemail. I hope she's listening to this right now. It eventually calls me again. She's got my number from my Heart radio and hit Home Media. I'm Jasmine Morris. This is Hitman.

On the very last page of Hitman, Reck Ferrell boasts someday, when you've done and seen it all, when there doesn't seem to be any challenge left or any new frontier left to conquer, you might just feel cocky enough to write a book about it. You might just feel cocky enough to write a book about it. It's so obvious, especially now that Rex Ferrell, this macho rogue Maverick, the King of the Wild Beasts, was always just to put

on a persona. When I got ahold of the print copy and thumbed through its pages, I was struck by some of the photographs about halfway through, where Rex Ferrell shows how to make a homemade silencer. These photos are in black and white. They're super grainy and kind of hard to see any real detail. But the person in these photographs demonstrating how to make these d i y weapons.

They're only shown from the neck down, but as I looked closely, it looks like they're wearing a woman's engagement ring. And in the Homework and Surveillance chapter, one of the centerpieces of this book is a ten page questionnaire which the hitman is supposed to submit to the employer and seeks detailed information on the source, background, habits, whether he has guns in the house, burglar alarms, whether he knows martial arts, schematic of surrounding houses and neighbors Tom Kelly,

Paladin's press lawyer. It says directions, please print plainly, answer all questions as completely as possible. Use additional sheets of necessary, supply all information available, even if not requested. No detail is too small. This sounds a little bit more like a college application than Hitman making a deal with an employer really bordering on the absurd. There are hands drawn diagrams in maps and a sample information sheet. These are all drawn and written in a sort of flowery cursive.

So I knew it was all fake, but that didn't make my job any easier. How do you find someone who wrote under a pen name, someone who might not want to be found? I scoured message boards, Amazon reviews, comments sections, hoping for some kind of bread crumb that would lead me to this person. Nothing. I asked the same question over and over. Yeah, I was gonna ask you about this author? What do you know about the anonymous office you just mentioned the What did you know

about the author of the book? So? Who was the actual author? Do you ever know anything about the author of the book. My good friend, investigative journalist Andrew Goldberg, offered his help. He tracked down some court documents and dockets and handed me a stack of paper with every woman's name circled. I asked Howard Siegel why they never looked into the author? Why didn't her name come out in the lawsuit? He said, quote, we simply didn't need her.

There was no possible upside. What was she going to say that she was trying to help would be murderers, of course not she was going to tow the party line and say she was just kidding or providing information. Never bring a witness in who can't add to your case. When you have them, buy the balls, you don't let go to see if you can get a better grip. The question is why didn't they depose or subpoena her, meaning Paladin Press. So I asked Paladin's lawyer. He confirmed

what Lund had said on sixty minutes. The author chose to be anonymous, a right protected by the First Amendment. In Paladin agreed. Paladin deemed itself obliged to keep that implied pledge of confidentiality, just as you would a news source grasping for leeds. I remember these two amazing private detectives I'd interviewed years prior for another radio piece, legit sleuths who were also married to each other, Um Collin Collins,

I own North Dinder Investigations. My favorite operative's Sean Kaufman. My name is Kaufman, and I'm a licensed private investigator in the state of Colorado, and that opens the gate to many mysteries. Colleen later named a character in one of her romance novels After Me. That's another story. I see Colleen Man tell you what, don't get on her bad side, dude, don't make her look for you because palso wham bam, she will find you, and then she'll send me out to serve you. I did find someone

a c I A one what. So when I got this person on the phone, the first thing I said was how did you find me? Wow? What did you say? I said, Well, I just want you to know it wasn't easy. She said, that's because I'm in the CIA, So finding people is what Colleen and Shawn do, which is why. Back in two thousand fifteen, I emailed Colleen with everything I knew about Rex Ferrell and told her the entire story about this Hitman book, The Trible Murder

Paladin Press. To my surprise, she'd actually visited Paladin. You're ago. I wrote a fiction novel which was really really bad, because everybody's first books usually are really bad, and they had a serial killer in it and guns and all kinds of things. So I thought, gosh, there's that soldier of Fortune magazine here in town. And yet palat impressed or something I should call them, you know, because I want to talk about guns and killings and stuff. She said,

it was a rather memorable experience. I mean, of course it was. But was stunning to me was when I got there there was all this security. I remember thinking, well, this is really weird, you know, and there was a camera and bars and this is fine. I was in this portal and the door was locked, and this man's voice said, is that you calling for the appointment? And I said yes, I remember. He took me back to a room and there was the desk in the place

was actually pretty bare. Its step for dozens and dozens of boxes. She said she couldn't remember if it was actually soldier of Fortune or paladin, but she told me whoever she talked to pulled a gun out of his desk. Sounds familiar, and so I interviewed him about guns. Well, I didn't have a lot of friends. I was pretty new and Boulder, so nobody told me that they were strange, you know. And I really the first thing I do when I go to a new town find find me

the right wing. Hey, everybody here know where I gets a good hollow tips ammunition. I had no idea I was like clueless. I probably would wearing a nice little suit with heels. You know. Back in two thousand fifteen, Colleen told me quote pseudonyms can be difficult to track down depends on what other information you have. For example, do you have a birth date or even a year of birth, or even a range of age such as thirty to thirty five years old, any family member or

spouse names. No, At the time, I had none of this. Nothing is impossible, she said, until one learns it's really impossible. Gosh, I think you just first said you were doing research on someone called rex Ferrell. Give corrects me up that name whenever it's spare time. I was like digging another rabbit hole going. I would find more and more information, and a lot you had already found two, you know. I was exchanging notes with you about Okay, I found this, Yeah,

I read that too. What did you see this? We were doing that back and forth, and then I found the piece that you hadn't found yet, and it was what opened the door. Well do you trying to speak to the Rex Ferrell? There were so many dead ends along the way. I'd learned something that would turn out to be completely wrong, and I'd find myself going in a totally different direction. At one point, I thought the real Rex Ferrell was a real estate agent in Miami.

She was connected to a man who will We'll get into that later. Anyway, I sent off a few emails and I hoped for the best. I never heard back, and after looking into this woman further, I started to have my doubts. The age didn't quite line up. It just didn't feel right. But this piece that Colleen found led me to someone who claimed to be a friend of Rex Ferrell's and author herself, Karen Abbott. She once quoted an email from Rex publicly, I don't want to

be a hero, tragic or otherwise. Rex supposedly wrote, I just want to sit in my rocker on my front porch and tell my grandson's stories. They're certain are fantastic lies. Ultimately, Abbott didn't want to talk to me without Rex's permission, which she never got as far as I know, so she declined to participate in this podcast. It was frustrating, but I understand. I'm protective of anyone who shares their

story with me too. Either way, I felt like I was getting closer, but then at the beginning of this year, I made a few more phone calls, talked to a bunch of people, and literally stumbled into this conversation. I'm not going to give away my source, but I'll play you my responses. They asked me if I wanted to know who actually wrote hit Man, we do? That would be so helpful. You're kidding me. I finally knew her name. Wow, yeah, because she's I mean, she's been protected, her nance to

redacted and everything. Wow. I've been wrong, so wrong. My jaws on the ground right now. I've been looking for this for a year. I mean really, it's been years, one concentrated year of looking. But suddenly there it was a bunch of letters on a pad of paper that I scribbled down into a name, the name. We'll be

right back. Women are highly emotional, rarely rational creatures. One of the first things that jumped out to me when reading Hitman was the way Rex talked about women, or has he put it the h M i W, which stands for Hitman's ideal woman. The book's misogyny is unsettling.

Take chapter eight, danger ego women in partners because of their uncanny ability to get into places and situations a man might find hard to duplicate because of their deceitful game playing natures, and because a woman can be twice as vicious as a man, a woman could be a better hired executioner than a man. We had an actor

read some lines for Only for the World. A woman usually makes only one man her target, and the nesting instinct quickly takes her off the street and ties her down to the little world of babies and laundry and house work she creates and protects for her own. And then there's the part where Rex Ferrell advises his reader

on avoiding quote woman problems. He writes, once a woman becomes the proclaimed property of one man, she feels it her duty to ward off other predators, whether real or imaginary, through suspicion, jealousy, accusation, or even by becoming her own detective, to protect and preserve her rightful place. This book has been linked to the deaths of two women and the attempted murder of another, and what happened to them is

a familiar, terrifying and infuriating story. Women killed at home, at work in a car by their husband's ex husband's boyfriends, neighbors, in this book, women are property. They serve at one purpose, to serve their man, and if they don't, they should be properly done away with. She will have to be a very understanding woman, for if she knows too much, she could become a hitman's worst enemy on the face of the earth, and may someday have to be eliminated

in the name of self preservation. Eliminated in the name of self preservation. It's like that Margaret Atwood quote. Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them. The woman who wrote that book, if she needed the money, I mean, you can always choose to do something else. I mean, if you're that good of a writer, writes something else. That's Tiffany Horn Millie's daughter, Trevor's sister. When the family sued Paladin.

Tiffany was a young mom. She was just trying to live a normal life, which she told me was a struggle at the time given what happened to her family. So she didn't have a ton to say about Paladin or the author when I asked her, But in caring about her story just propelled me to keep looking for answers. She remembers first hearing about the Hitman book leading up to the criminal trials before her dad, Lawrence Horn, and the hitman he hired, James Perry, were convicted. We found

out that the book was actually written by a single mom. Like, how crazy is that? That was hard to wrap my head around. I didn't even think about that, like a mom actually like help kill him, because I mean those were her words. She wrote that book, and it's not just a fantasy. I know they said that, but I don't believe that because it was really explicit. I mean, did she strike you as a hit man? Oh no, no, but again you know, very limited telephone type contact. No,

that's Don Corson. Remember he represented the plaintiff and the second time Hitman was found to be used in this case, in an attempted murder. He remembers speaking with the real rex Ferrell once as he built his case. The impression we got she was a grandmother and an author and she was doing this for money. Rex Ferrell won't confirm her identity. Paladin's closed now and their press lawyer won't

confirm it. But my best available information tells me I'm right, And as far as I can tell, the real rex Ferrell is now a grandmother in her seventies. She has a social media presence and some of her posts are public. I shouldn't be surprised by anything anymore. But she's not at all what I pictured, not from what you'd imagine from everything we've heard about the typical Paladin writer. She's shared liberal memes about immigration, privilege in women's rights, and

she's really funny. I came across a few videos of her. Her hair is white for the most part, she has green eyes, and she's beautiful. In one of these videos, she's singing, laughing, and wearing a sweater that says Grandma on it. She has a slight Southern acts in and yet it's hard to imagine this is the same person who told their readers the kill is the easiest part of the job. People kill one another every day. It takes no great effort to pull a trigger or plunge

a knife. Is being able to do so in a manner that will not link yourself or your employer to the crime. That makes you a professional and the acceptance of the valuelessness of life has given your own life value. Regardless of whether Rex Ferrell ever decides to tell me

her story. Case files from the two lawsuits filed against Paladin gives some insight into how this book was written and given everything we know now well, she submitted her first manuscript to Paladin Press with the attached letter dated November that reads, Dear Sirs, enclosed is my manuscript entitled Hitman, a tech call Handbook. And because we've now shared Rex was a woman, we got a different actor to read Rex's correspondence. This book is written in first person, but

a fictional professional hit man, Finnie Finnigan. The third chapters contained many references to books I and my friends have purchased from your fine library. This letter in manuscript landed on Virginia Thomas's desk, who was an editor at Paladin at the time. I reached out to her for this podcast and didn't hear back. But that's okay. There are court documents again, Attorney Don Corson, I remember we took miss Thomas's deposition or testimony in Bomby's case. I was

able to get a transcript of that deposition. Most of Thomas's answers are I don't know or I don't recall. I mean she was deposed something like eighteen years later, but don has her read some of her correspondence with rex Ferrell. Thomas says, after reading rex Ferrell's manuscript, she rejected it and sent the author a dated January four. It reads, you will find your manuscript for Hitman a

technical handbook enclosed. Since we publish only nonfiction, we cannot use this, and that's our producer, Michelle reading for Virginia. Our readers are interested in the how to aspects of survival weapons and military a thank you for allowing us to consider your work. The idea is intriguing, as are some of the tactics you suggest. Have you considered writing nonfiction? The concluding sentence reads, good luck to you with this project. Feel free to contact me with other ideas that might

fit our market. The original intention was quite a long ways from what Plato turned it into. Rex Ferrell took Thomas up on her suggestion and sent another proposal in letter dated January enclosed. Please find the first two chapters in an outline proposed which you suggested for my on fiction rewrite hit Man a technical manual for the independent contractor. According to court documents, about three weeks later, on February.

Thomas replies with this recommendation, make sure the material is how to, since our readers buy books to learn, but flush out the material with personal anecdotes as though you were a working or retired hit man. People essentially like to read about other people. Rex Ferrell writes back six days later, the tone I am using is totally professional. However, due to the serious nature of the book, I am

finding it hard to apply appropriate anecdotes. I do include accounts of real hit men who have been apprehended by the authorities, and I feel very satisfied that the finished product will make us both Prior and Virginia. Thomas responds with, as I told you in our tele phone conversation, we received Hitman, and I am excited about it. I found it most intriguing reading. Congratulations, you did what you set out to do. I just want to underline what's happening here.

Rex Ferrell initially submitted a work of fiction, and at Paladin Presses Encouragement or guidance, whatever you want to call it, wrote an entirely new book other than you know, asking rex Ferrell to change the format of the book. There were some other changes. For example, apparently the original preface

to Hitman. Read this information and more will be made available to enrich your fantasies and add spice to your dreams of reasserting your status as the dominant sex of the species who ruled with an iron will in the days before overpopulation, mass production, and women's liberation. Ultimately, that didn't make it into the book, and Rex Ferrell initially had a different last name, one that wasn't working for Paladin. Thomas writes, we must change the name Rex Savage to

something a little less stereotyped. However, Rex Savage, the publisher suggests that you think of another name, possibly something that sounds like a person who might belong to the mob, although not too obviously. Then let's develop a persona for the author for advertisements and future books. Write a personal history for Mr X for that use. I am inclosing your copy of the contract for hit Man signed by us. There was a notation at the top right corner that

read five advanced paid. You will notice that we also signed the paragraph on privacy that you added. She wrote. That paragraph, apparently written by Rex Ferrell, said publisher agrees to accept full financial and legal responsibility for any litigations or censors that may arise out of this same ale use or misuse of the contents of the contracted book. Furthermore, publisher will, to the best of his ability, protect the

true identity of the author. I'm so fascinated by all of this because these are her words, that's all I have from her. And you have to wonder if her book stayed the work of fiction she initially wrote, if it never been turned into how To Manual, if any of this would have ever happened. Paladin went on to sell just over copies of hit Man, mostly via their catalogs and eventually even through bookstores like Borders, Powell's Bookstore, and Barnes and Noble, and then on March three, Millie

and Trevor Horn and Janie Saunders were murdered. The author, who was just horrified that this has happened. I mean, Stephen King was horrified when learned that one of his books inspired a school shooting. I think that's a normal human reaction. That's Tom Kelly, Paladin's lawyer. She's a decent

human being and wanted the book off the shelf. We know the author was fearful of something like this, happening based on her correspondence with Paladin as she was writing this book, and once it did, she apparently tried to do the right thing. Of course, her request was not honored. Don Courson again, who represented the plaintiff and the second hit Man lawsuit, and Paladin kept it on the market, and their sales actually spiked because a lot of notoriety,

a lot of publicity about it. According to court documents, sales of Hitman increased dramatically during the period after the author asked that the manual be withdrawn due to the murders. They made a conscious decision to continue selling the Hitman book knowing and it had been used to murder people,

and it was a strategic choice in their part. In other words, they knew what had been done, they knew that the harm had been inflicted on humans, they knew the author didn't want to They thought they're more likely to win the case if they kept it on the market. So that's how the book came to be, how it evolved, and how she wanted to pull it after the murders. But I still have so many questions. Should I even

be looking for this person? To someone who wrote under a pen name, who obviously wanted to protect their identity deserve to remain anonymous after something they created and put out into the world actually hurt people. I don't know, but if I could talk to Rex Ferrell, I think the first thing I'd ask her is what do people get wrong about you? Who was she then and who is she today? I'd like to ask her the same question I've asked so many others in this podcast. Is

there anything to be learned from all this? Until then, all I have is this voicemail but us. When I thought I'd reached the end of the Rex Feral journey, and when I thought that I'd never really understand the woman I saw on social media, the grandmother who apparently feels strongly about women's rights, immigration, I found an arrest record. The person who I believe to be the author had been connected with an incident related to kidnapping, false imprisonment,

armed robbery, burglary, grand theft, and conspiracy. And what my image of this person was about to do a whole other one. Eight. Once again, I'd come across an entirely different story, one that I never ever saw coming. I looked into the man she was arrested in connection with and every newspaper article or court record led to another one and another one. I'm still finding them. This man, he was a former police officer. He was a master

instructor in combat karate. This guy would become an FBI fugitive, and one retired sergeant who encountered him told me he is still suffering from PTSD from it. This guy used a lot of pseudonyms, among them Rex Reid and Rex James Rex so that macho rogue Maverick that Hitman is based on. I was starting to realize maybe he did exist.

After all. People told us that Rex Reid was a bad guy and that if anybody tried to mess with them that you know, you guys will never take him alive, and you know some officers might get hurt in the process. That's next on hit Man. Hitman is a production of I Heart Radio and hit Home Media. It's produced and reported by Me Jasmine Morris. Our supervising producer is Michelle Lance.

Mark Flatto is our story consultant. Executive producers our main guest Hat ticket Or and Me, mixing by Michelle Lance and Josh Grogison. Our fact checker is not Sumi Ajisaka voice acting by Levi Petrie and Kelly Jane Farnsworth. Special thanks to Andrew Goldberg, our theme song by Alice McCoy, and additional music written and produced by the students at DIME powered by the Detroit Institute of Music Education,