Charges dismissed in ‘Hotel California’ theft conspiracy case

The criminal trial of a prominent rare book dealer accused of conspiring to possess dozens of pages of handwritten lyrics by Eagles co-founder Don Henley collapsed abruptly Wednesday when a Manhattan judge dismissed charges in the case, citing to concerns about the way the evidence was provided. completed.

The resignation by Judge Curtis Farber of the state Supreme Court, two weeks into the trial that already included days of testimony by Mr. Henley, was a major blow to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted the case. started researching several years ago.

It was also a form of revenge for the bookseller, Glenn Horowitz, and two other men who stood trial with him.

The case focused on about 100 pages of draft lyrics for hit songs by the Eagles, including “Hotel California,” “New Kid in Town” and “Life in the Fast Lane.”

Prosecutors say the notes were stolen decades ago by an author who signed a contract in the late 1970s to write a book about the Eagles that was never published. The author, Ed Sanders, has not been charged. He sold the documents in 2005 to Mr. Horowitz, who in turn sold them to the two other defendants, according to the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which began an investigation after complaints from Mr. Henley.

The trial took a sudden turn after Mr Henley’s lawyers sent a trove of evidence to defense lawyers and prosecutors last weekend. That evidence, which included hundreds of email messages between Mr. Henley, his agent, a private investigator and several attorneys working for him, was produced after Mr. Henley waived attorney-client privilege.

Defense lawyers were furious that the material had not been provided sooner and told Judge Farber on Monday that they should have been able to refer to the email messages during cross-examination of Mr Henley and one of his lawyers, Eric Custer, who had testified. last week.

Some statements in the emails conflicted with testimony given in court, defense attorneys said, and they asked for the charges against their clients to be dismissed.

Judge Farber told attorneys Monday that he was not inclined to dismiss the charge, but added that there is “no doubt that there is a discovery violation here” that “seemed designed to withhold information” about crucial elements of the case, including whether the text sheets had been stolen.

He asked defense lawyers to review the newly disclosed material and report back to him so he could decide on the “appropriate sanction.”

The lawsuit had attracted widespread attention because it involved documents related to one of the most beloved bands of the 1970s, whose breezy country-rock style sold millions of records. The charges were against a book and manuscript dealer who had placed the papers of Norman Mailer and Tom Wolfe in university libraries and worked to sell Bob Dylan’s archive for a sum estimated at twenty million dollars.

Mr. Horowitz began his career in the rare books room of The Strand bookstore in Greenwich Village and went on to build a thriving business with offices in Manhattan and East Hampton, N.Y., bringing gallery-style glitter to the stuffy world of archives and antiquarian books .

His sale of Vladimir Nabokov’s literary estate to the New York Public Library in 1992 was considered the first archive deal worth more than $1 million. Rick Gekoski, a bookseller who did business with Mr. Horowitz, described him in 2007 as “a great combination of a scholar and a con man.”

Much of the case focused on when and how Mr. Sanders – founder of a countercultural Lower East Side band called the Fugs and author of a book about Charles Manson and his cult – came up with the draft lyrics.

In 2005, Mr. Sanders wrote in an email that an assistant of Mr. Henley had sent him some of the archival material he had researched “at Henley’s home in Malibu.”

Mr. Henley testified that he gave Mr. Sanders access to documents stored in the shed of his organic farm in Malibu, California, but that he never relinquished ownership of those materials.

Defense lawyers said their clients could not be found guilty because no theft could be proven and introduced evidence, including old mailing labels, that they said suggested Mr. Henley had mailed materials to Mr. Sanders’ home in Woodstock, N.Y.

Prosecutors had written in a preliminary investigation that a contract between Mr. Sanders and the Eagles “made it clear that Sanders had had no ownership interest in the lyrics and had no right to copy or possess the lyrics beyond his work on the book that the Eagles had hired. him to write.” They added that the Eagles equipment was “stolen” when Mr Sanders failed to return it to Mr Henley within a reasonable time.

Decades after working on the Eagles manuscript, Mr. Sanders sold the draft to Mr. Horowitz. Prosecutors said he sold them seven years later to Craig Inciardi, a trustee at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, and Edward Kosinski, the owner of an online auction site. The two men tried to resell some of it through Mr. Kosinski’s website and the auction houses of Christie’s and Sotheby’s.

The first pages of lyrics up for auction were for the song “Hotel California”; Mr. Henley paid $8,500 to get them back. His lawyers informed Mr. Kosinski that the material had been stolen, but did not pursue a lawsuit. After other parts of the text were subsequently put up for sale, Mr. Henley went to the district attorney’s office.

Prosecutors said that during the investigation, Mr. Horowitz tried to fabricate a false origin for the texts to suggest that Mr. Sanders had received them from someone other than Mr. Henley.

In a 2017 email to Mr. Sanders that was cited in an indictment, Mr. Horowitz appeared to suggest that the text might have come from Glenn Frey, another co-founder of the Eagles who had died the year before.

“Unfortunately, he is dead,” Mr. Horowitz wrote in reference to Mr. Frey, adding that identifying him as the source “would make this go away once and for all.”