, by David Holthouse at Media Matters.
Robert Brown established Soldier of Fortune magazine in 1975 (one notable subscriber - Timothy McVeigh). . The magazine has been instrumental in recruiting and employing mercenaries and hitmen all over the world. An interesting view of murder for hire.
Throughout the 1980s, a second poster hanging in the Soldier of Fortune offices (incongruously located in Boulder, Colorado, a liberal college town) depicted a vulture with the slogan, "Killing is our business, and business is good."
That certainly held true for hit men who advertised in Soldier of Fortune. One of them, Knoxville, Tennessee nightclub operator and former prison guard Richard Michael Savage, said that he received 30 to 40 calls a week after he placed this ad in the June 1985 issue of the magazine: "GUN FOR HIRE: 37-year-old professional mercenary desires jobs. Vietnam veteran. Discrete and very private. Body guard, courier, and other special skills. All jobs considered."
One called wanting to recruit a small army to raid a gold mine in Alaska, one of Savage's hitman associates told People magazine in 1986; another floated a plot to steal an army payroll in South America.
Based on its interview with the Savage associate, People magazine reported in 1986:
Yet another wanted to raid Nicaragua and promised to supply guns, camouflage clothing, rubber boats and $50,000 for each mercenary when the raid was completed. Savage...was enthusiastic about every harebrained scheme he heard, but ultimately was persuaded to concentrate on murder. So, if the caller sounded discreet, Savage would ask for a round-trip airline ticket and $1,000; the two would meet face-to-face, then feel each other out in a minuet of death, until each was certain of the other's credentials.
Two of the respondents Savage contacted were business associates of suburban Atlanta resident Richard Braun. Not long after the ad was published, Savage and two associates ambushed Braun and his 16-year-old son in the driveway of their home. Triggerman Sean Trevor Doutre stepped in front of the car and fired a MAC 11 assault pistol. Braun was shot and killed; his son was wounded.
Four months later, Savage subcontracted the murder of Palm Beach, Florida resident Anita Spearman, who was clubbed to death by Doutre while she slept. The victim's husband contracted her murder for $20,000 after reading Savage's ad in Soldier of Fortune.
Another hit man, Texas long haul trucker John Hearn, said "If I had never run an ad in Soldier of Fortune I would have never killed anyone." Hearn's 1984 ad, which ran in four issues of the magazine, solicited "High risk assignments, U.S. or overseas." After it was published, Hearn said, he was so deluged with phone calls that he was forced to hire an answering service. He estimated that 90 percent of the callers wanted to pay him to commit a crime, including bombings, jailbreaks, and assaults, and that he received three-to-five contract murder offers per day.
In February 1985 Hearn shot to death Sandra Black in a hit arranged by her husband for $10,000. Later that year he committed a double murder in Florida after being hired by another Soldier of Fortune reader.
Brown stopping running gun-for-hire ads in 1986 after the Savage killings came to light, though he and his staff denied any responsibility for the murders. "We're as culpable as any newspaper which accepts an ad from a used-car salesman and doesn't go out to check the condition of his brakes," said Executive Editor Bill Guthrie.
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