Don Henley made a third and final appearance in a Manhattan court on Wednesday, testifying in a criminal case involving nearly 100 pages of allegedly stolen Eagles lyrics from the Hotel California era.
Rare books collector Glenn Horowitz, former Roll & Roll Hall of Fame curator Craig Inciardi and rock auctioneer Edward Kosinki have been charged with one count each of conspiracy in the fourth degree, which carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison. Horowitz has been separately charged with first-degree attempted criminal possession of stolen property, as well as two counts of hindering prosecution. Inciardi and Kosinski are also charged with first-degree counts of criminal possession.
Henley first became aware that lyric pages were appearing on auction websites in 2012. He bought back pages for $8,500, but Henley chose not to move forward with purchases when more surfaced in 2014 and 2016. “I’d already been extorted once,” he said during his first day of testimony on Monday. “I wasn’t going to do it again.”
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All of the documents could apparently be traced back to Ed Sanders, who was tasked with writing a book about the Eagles in the late ’70s and early ’80s. Sanders reportedly sold five legal pads of lyrics to Horowitz for $50,000, who in turn sold them to Inciardi and Kosinski for $65,000. Police reports were filed in 2012, 2014 and 2016, along with demand letters for the pages to be returned.
Henley answered questions from the defendants’ three attorneys on Monday and Tuesday, with the primary focus on his conversations with Sanders. Henley maintained that he granted Sanders access to various materials at the time, including the aforementioned lyric pages, but did not give Sanders permission to keep the materials or sell them. He said this belief was based on a 1979 contract between the Eagles and Sanders that allowed Sanders to shop the book manuscript to publishers but also stipulated that the content remained the property of the band.
The defense has presented evidence indicating that Henley willingly sent Sanders material at his home in Woodstock, New York, and that neither he nor anyone else in the Eagles camp asked for their return. (Henley stated that he could not recall whether or not this was the case.) They also asserted that the 1979 contract was never mentioned when the issue of the pages arose in 2012, 2014 and 2016.
Henley was asked numerous questions about his relationship with drugs in the ’70s, as well as his conviction following a teen escort’s overdose at his home in 1980, calling the latter topic “a sideshow.”
He said “sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll is not regulatory,” adding: “I was always lucid when I did business.”
During cross-examination by Assistant District Attorney Aaron Ginandes on Wednesday, Henley was asked whether he needed to review documents in 2012, 2014 or 2016 to determine if the pages were stolen from him. Henley said he did not “because I always knew those were my property.” Ginandes emphasized that the pages always legally belonged to Henley regardless of where they were physically located over the years.
Henley was also asked by Horowitz’s lawyer Jonathan Bach if the 1979 contract included a timeline for the return of the materials. Henley confirmed that it did not, but that he had a “common sense understanding that he would return the materials once he was done with them.”
One of Henley’s lawyers, Thomas Jirgal, was called as a witness on Wednesday to discuss interactions with Sotheby’s after they listed the lyric pages for auction in 2016. He testified that he did not provide a copy of the 1979 contract to Sotheby’s at that time, and that he could not recall when a copy of the agreement was found. Jirgal added that Sotheby’s did not ask for evidence proving that Henley was the rightful owner, noting that he would have provided that if asked.
It’s unclear how long the trial will last. Henley is scheduled to resume touring with the Eagles on March 1 in Hollywood, Florida.
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