HOUSTON -- A young man tearfully blamed Soldier of Fortune for his mother's murder by a hitman hired through an ad in the magazine, testifying that he feared his imprisoned father would use the publication to have him killed too.
'She always looked after my every need ... She just, she was the worst person to lose,' Gary Wayne Black, 18, said of his mother before breaking into tears.
Black testified Monday in the trial of a $22.5 million suit that he filed with his grandmother against Soldier of Fortune, accusing the magazine of negligence in the murder of his mother.
Sandra Black, 36, was shot twice in the head by a mercenary on Feb. 21, 1985, as she carried groceries into her home in Bryan, Texas.
Sandra Black's husband, Robert Black, was convicted in the murder-for-hire of his wife and sentenced to death by injection. Black, who hired the hitman through a classified ad in Soldier of Fortune, is on the Texas death row.
The magazine's lawyers called as witnesses Col. Charles A. Beckwith of Austin, who led the failed Delta Force mission to rescue American hostages in Iran in April 1980, and William Askins of San Antonio, a former CIA agent and retired Marine major now in the aircraft and heavy machinery brokerage business.
Both said they are regular readers of the magazine and did not think the classified ads appeared to solicit criminal behavior.
'Quite frankly, I didn't pay too much attention to them. So much of them are this macho stuff that didn't make my heart beat fast,' Beckwith said.
Askins said, 'It was widely read in certain circles of the CIA because it's a good military journal that reports on areas that other journals usually don't report on.'
A week before Sandra Black's death, her husband raised the limits on her life insurance policy. Testimony Monday also indicated that Robert Black had increased a life insurance policy on his son.
'I was afraid because I figured if he could hire someone out of Soldier of Fortune to kill my mother, he could hire someone out of Soldier of Fortune to kill me too,' Gary Wayne Black testified.
Defense lawyer Ray Thompson asked the young man whether he had finally accepted the fact that his father killed his mother.
'It wasn't my father that pulled the trigger,' he replied.
Thompson then reworded his question to ask whether Black had accepted the fact his father had his mother killed. He responded, 'It was Soldier of Fortune that gave my dad the way to do it.'
Robert Black contacted John Wayne Hearn through a classified ad Hearn ran in Soldier of Fortune. The suit contends that the magazine should have known Hearn's ad clearly indicated he was willing to kill for a price.
Hearn was sentenced to life in prison for Mrs. Black's murder and also is serving two life terms for Florida murders.
Also Monday, Mrs. Black's mother, Marjorie Eimann, testified about the trauma her grandson went through after finding his mother's body. She said the youth began counseling shortly after his father was arrested in March 1985 and still talks with a school counselor on occasion.
Hearn's ad, which ran September through December 1984, read: 'Ex-Marine -- Nam vets. Weapons specialist, jungle warfare, pilot, M.E., high risk assigments in U.S. or overseas. World security group.'
Observers say the suit against Soldier of Fortune is important because a ruling against the magazine could set a precedent for all magazines being held responsible for actions that occur as a result of their advertising.
