THE BLOODY FALL OF A HUSTLER

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP81M00980R000600210027-4
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 15, 2016
• Document Release Date: June 8, 2004
• Sequence Number: 27
• Publication Date: March 20, 1978
• Content Type: NSPR

AIRED TIME
Approved For Release 20NI0"? CiAIRDP81 M00980R0a0F00210027-4
Nation
The Bloody Fall of a Hustler
Sniper strikes down porn's Larry Flynt
L arry Flynt, the owner of Hustler mag-
azine, was the last defense witness at
yet another of his trials for distributing
pornography. "Hustler is a satire," he ex-
plained on the witness stand last week.
"It is one big put-on."
"You did superbly," one of his law-
yers told him when the state court in the
Atlanta suburb of Lawrenceville (pop.
5,200) adjourned for lunch.
The 35-year-old publisher then joined
another of his lawyers, Gene Reeves Jr.,
47, in walking three blocks down Perry
Street to the V and J Cafeteria. They were
strolling back to the courthouse at 11:55
a.m. when there were two bursts of gun-
fire. Flynt toppled forward, face first, onto
a concrete driveway, bullet holes in his ab-
domen. Reeves, struck in his arm and
chest, staggered a few feet and collapsed
on the sidewalk (he was later reported to
be in satisfactory condition).
Despite early reports of two attackers
speeding away in a car, nobody actually
saw any gunmen. In fact, the only clue
the police discovered was a spent.44 mag-
num cartridge. Investigators thought the
shots might have been fired from an aban-
doned hotel across the street. A rear door
of the hotel gives access to a parking lot,
an easy escape route for a gunman.
At Button Gwinnett Hospital, Flynt
lay in critical condition. Surgeons began
by removing much of his intestine. Then,
in a second operation, they removed his
spleen. After transferring him to Emory
University Hospital in Atlanta, doctors
finally removed the bullet lodged near his
spinal cord. It had cut spinal nerves, leav-
ing him paralyzed from the waist down.
Doctors gave him less than a fifty-fifty
chance of regaining full- use of his legs.
President Carter's sister, Ruth Stapleton,
who had presided over Flynt's celebrated
conversion last fall, flew in to Atlanta and
called him "one of my good Christian
friends." Sometime Comedian Dick Greg-
ory visited, and so did Kennedy Assas-
sination Theorist Mark Lane. Fellow Por-
nographer Al Gold-
stein, publisher of
Screw magazine, ar-
rived in a chauf-
feured black limou-
sine and a bullet-
proof vest. Said he:
"Maybe it was some-
body down here who
thought Larry was making fun of them."
The police had no explanations.
Flynt occasionally received death threats
-most recently at a rally in Cincinnati
last year to protest his pornography con-
viction there. But he had lately been so
confident of his safety that he was trav-
eling without a bodyguard, though he had
been advertising for one in newspapers.
Local opinion was that although Flynt
had no personal enemies, many people
hated him for his opinions and his ram-
bunctious life. Said Lawrenceville Mayor
Rhodes Jordan, 60: "Somebody was send-
ing Flynt a message, that they don't want
his type of filth around."
Ever since Flynt came out of the
Kentucky mountains to escape the pov-
erty of his sharecropper family, he has
led an aggressive life. He quit school in
the eighth grade, entered the Army at
14, worked nights at a General Motors as-
sembly plant, whizzed through two mar-
riages, two divorces and a bankruptcy
by age 21 and finally opened eight "Hus-
tler" go-go bars around Ohio. He started
Hustler, the most vulgar of the leading
sex magazines, as a newsletter for his
bars, and pushed it in four years to a cir-
culation of almost 2 million, with a prof-
it last year of some $13 million. In re-
cent months he branched out into
newspaper publishing, buying the Los An-
geles Free Press, the Atlanta Gazette and
the Plains Monitor in Carter's home town.
Among his hob-
bies, Flynt acquired
a fascination for
the Kennedy killing.
He bought full-page
newspaper ads offer-
ing $1 million for in-
formation leading to
the arrest of Kenne-
dy's murderers. In the underground Los
Angeles Free Press, he published a re-
port last month charging that a CIA-FBI
conspiracy was behind the assassination.
After last week's attempt on his life,
Flynt's wife Althea, 24, publicly accused
the CIA of shooting Flynt because he was
about to publish the names of J.F.K.'s as-
sassins in a Free Press special edition.
From his hospital bed, Flynt himself
made the absurd charge that the shoot-
ing was an attempt to stop his assassi-
nation inquiry.
At week's end, police had no solu-
tion. Meanwhile, the judge declared a mis-
trial on the original obscenity charges,
and authorities were considering drop-
ping them altogether. ^
Approved For Release 2004/07/08 : CIA-RDP81 M00980R000600210027-4