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. Belknap died instantly, but Vance lived, sustaining serious injuries that left him disfigured he died three years later.īefore his death, Vance and his parents sued the band and their label at the time, CBS Records, for $6.2 million in damages. One day in December 1985, the men - Raymond Belknap, then 18, and James Vance, 20 - had spent six hours drinking, smoking marijuana and listening to the metal band’s Stained Class album, after which each man took a shotgun and shot himself.
Twenty-five years ago today, a judge ruled that heavy-metal trendsetters Judas Priest were not liable for the deaths of two young men who cited the band’s music as the reason they killed themselves.
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