MURDER BY THE BOOK

By ADAM COHEN

Shooting to kill is best done at close range, but stand at least three feet back to avoid getting blood spattered on your clothing. You'll want to use a silencer, which you can easily make from common hardware. And aim for the eye sockets; a shot anywhere else in the head might leave the victim alive. Such is the wisdom of Hit Man, a step-by-step guide to succeeding in the paid-killer trade. Author Rex Feral, a pen name that's ersatz Latin for "king of the wild animals," insists that this $10 murder-for-hire manual provides a public service. Sometimes, Feral explains, a hit man is the only means of obtaining "personal justice."

It's hard to imagine what kind of justice was at work the night of March 3, 1993, in Silver Spring, Md., when contract murderer James Perry suffocated eight-year-old quadriplegic Trevor Horn and fatally shot his mother Mildred Horn and nurse Janice Saunders. Perry was hired by Lawrence Horn, Mildred's ex-husband, who was after a $2 million settlement his son had received for the accident that caused his injuries. Perry bought a copy of Hit Man before the killings, and prosecutors showed that he followed at least 20 of its specific instructions. He stole out-of-state license plates and attached them to a rental car that he drove to the scene. He appears to have used a homemade silencer on his AR-7 rifle. He shot both women in the eyes.

Perry and Horn were convicted of first-degree murder. But family members have also sued Hit Man's publisher, Paladin Press, claiming the company is liable for the murders because it provided the blueprint. Though the First Amendment traditionally protects even the most objectionable writing, a federal court of appeals in Richmond, Va., earlier this month allowed the suit to go forward. In a groundbreaking ruling, the court said the Constitution does not protect books that aid and abet in the commission of a crime.

Renegade publisher Paladin Press was founded in 1970 by Peder Lund, a former Green Beret captain, and Robert Brown, who later left to start Soldier of Fortune magazine. The Boulder, Colo., publisher's "Action Library" runs heavily to books on armed combat and bombmaking. Among its classic titles: Homemade C-4: A Recipe for Survival, a book whose discussion of ammonium nitrate Timothy McVeigh allegedly used to assemble the Oklahoma City bomb. Paladin also sells instructional videos like Winning a Street Knife Fight: Realistic Offensive Techniques and the fast-selling Advanced Ultimate Sniper. Lund makes no apologies for the information he disseminates. "As a human, I feel very sorry for anyone who's put through any physical suffering," he told the Wall Street Journal in 1993. "As a publisher and as a pragmatist, I feel absolutely no responsibility for the misuse of information."

The victims' families say the recipes for murder in Hit Man are not worthy of First Amendment protection. "There is nothing good for society about this book," insists Rodney Alan Smolla, a law professor at the College of William and Mary, who argued their case. "People cannot openly traffic in information that has the sole purpose of assisting others to commit murder." Along with its grisly instructions, Smolla points out, Hit Man has such reprehensible details as a suggested price scale for contract killings: $75,000 to $100,000 for a county sheriff; $250,000 for a federal judge.

But Paladin says Hit Man is being maligned unfairly, because it was written at least partly with tongue in cheek. "I have trouble taking the book seriously," says Thomas Kelley, lawyer for the publishing house. He argues that the book contains many "clearly absurd things," like its advice that hit men be careful not to remove their gloves--and leave fingerprints--if they help themselves to snacks in the victim's refrigerator. And Kelley says the book cover's boast that Feral is a hit man and a "lethal weapon aimed at the enemy of the one who pays him" misstates the author's credentials. The real author is a female, he says, and "I'm surely convinced she's never hurt a soul."

Some civil libertarians are worried that the appeals court ruling will lead to lawsuits against writers and publishers. Novels like The Godfather, works of history like The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, and even TV news shows contain graphic descriptions of murder, notes University of Illinois law professor Ronald Rotunda. "I wouldn't be surprised if energetic prosecutors in less enlightened jurisdictions take advantage of this decision." But Floyd Abrams, a lawyer who often defends the media, doubts the ruling can be applied much beyond manuals on how to kill. "This is a book," says Abrams, "that tests anyone's fidelity to the First Amendment."

--With reporting by Melissa August/Washington

With reporting by Melissa August/Washington