Porn king shot outside court

Press, 8 March 1978, Page 8

Porn king shot outside court

NZPA-Reuter Lawrenceville, Georgia Larry Flynt, the 34-year-old head of a pornography empire who recently (declared he had found God, i has been shot in the stomiach and critically wounded outside a court where he ; was being tried on obscenity charges. i Mr Harold Fahringer, a I lawyer for Mr Flynt, the owner of “Hustler” magazine, said the gunman jumped into a car and sped off after the attack in Lawrenceville, a town 48km north-east of Atlanta, Georgia. i The police said they had arrested no suspects, but were looking for two white males. Mr Gene Reeves, a local lawyer who was represent-

ing Mr Flynt in the case also was shot and wounded as he and Mr Flynt strolled back to the court from a cafeteria. They had eaten lunch there during the noon recess after Mr Flynt testified in his own defence.

Mr John Hughes, the administrator at Button Gwinnett Hospital, said Mr Flynt and Mr Reeves “were in surgery for more than four hours. . . both are quite critical. . . but somewhat stable.”

Mr Reeves had bullet wounds in the arm and the side, Mr Fahringer said. Mr Flynt had “a terrible, ugly hole in his stomach.” A visitor was an evangelist, Ruth Carter Stapleton, President Jimmy Carter’s younger sister, whom Mr Flynt had credited with his “conversion.”