When Heavy-Metal Music Went on Trial in Nevada

On Friday, August 24, 1990, Reno Judge Jerry Whitehead ruled that heavy-metal Judas Priest was not liable for the deaths of two young men who cited the band’s subliminal ‘Satanic’ music as the reason they killed themselves.

The men — Raymond Belknap, then 18, and James Vance, 20 — had spent six hours drinking, smoking marijuana, and listening to the band’s Stained Class album, after which each man took a shotgun and shot himself. Belknap died instantly, but Vance lived, sustaining injuries that left him disfigured; he died three years later.

Before his death, Vance and his parents sued the band and their label at the time, CBS Records, for $6.2 million in damages. They claimed that Judas Priest had hidden subliminal messages like “try suicide,” “do it,” and “let’s be dead” in their cover of Spooky Tooth’s “Better by You, Better Than Me,” influencing Vance and Belknap to form a suicide pact.

The suit went to trial in July 1990, and the prosecution played the song forward, backward, and sped up in an attempt to prove the group had brainwashed these two young men into killing themselves.

Whitehead passed away on Monday, October 12, 2020, at 86 years old.