Lawrence Horn

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

Lawrence Horn is an African-American 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 wife, mentally challenged son, and the family's overnight nurse. The motive for hiring the murder was that Horn stood to gain around $1.7 to $2 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 1993 for the murders, and in 1996 Lawrence Horn was found guilty on three counts of first-degree murder and one count of murder conspiracy.

The case prompted a lawsuit against Paladin Press, the publishers of Hit Man, which is a how-to book that James Perry used as a guide to execute the murders.