Lawrence Horn

This article is about the musician. For the linguist, see Laurence R. Horn.

Lawrence Horn is a musician, formerly a record producer and chief recording engineer for Motown Records. He is currently serving a life sentence for hiring a hit man to commit a triple-murder.

Horn was notable for pioneering many mixing techniques while at Motown, and for directly supervising most of the mixes for Motown singles during the label's success period from 1964 to 1967.

Laid off by Motown in 1990, Horn slid into debt. In 1993, Horn contracted James Perry to kill his ex-wife, mentally challenged son, and the family's overnight nurse in their Silver Spring, Maryland, home. The murders were carried out on March 3, 1993. The motive for hiring Perry to commit the murders was that Horn stood to gain $1.7 million from his son's trust fund that was established after the settlement of a lawsuit resulting from a medical procedure that left him a quadriplegic. Perry was sentenced to the death penalty in 1995 for the murders, and in 1996 Lawrence Horn was found guilty on three counts of first-degree murder and one count of murder conspiracy and sentenced to life imprisonment. The conviction of the assassin, Perry, was overturned by an appeals court and a second trial sentenced him to three life terms in Maryland's prison system in 2001. Perry died of an undisclosed illness while still in custody on December 30, 2009.

The case prompted a lawsuit against Paladin Press, the publishers of Hit Man, which James Perry used as a guide to execute the murders. The lawsuit was settled when the publishers agreed to stop selling the book and pay millions of dollars in compensation to the families of the victims.