There are mob buttonmen of course, but I am talking about the Hollywood-style professional killer for hire who is actually a professional, not some asshole who took a few bucks to kill some guy’s wife. Has one ever existed?
Thanks for your help,
Rob
The only people that need people murdered on a regular basis are mobmen. The one-offs usually fall to some asshole who takes a few bucks to kill some guy’s wife.
What demographic are you speaking about that would need people murdered?
I’d think that a freelance professional assassin would run into a kind of a catch-22–if he was well-known enough to get hired, then he’d be well-known enough that he would get caught or assassinated himself.
After all, didn’t the A-Team have a similar problem in almost every episode? 
I do assume that there are CIA spies or something that would be able to do an assissination if the powers that be wanted it. But that’s not a “Hollywood Style” assassin.
I don’t know about that, Ramírez Sánchez was pretty well-known for many years before his capture. Of course, he did have some government backing and wasn’t strictly an assassin, but it still doesn’t seem impossible that someone could have the right connections to find such work without drawing excessive attention to themselves.
I suppose you’re right, but I suppose the “government backing” thing makes a big difference.
But I realize that I’m pretty much talking out of my posterior and I probably shouldn’t have posted in this thread in the first place. I’d better get myself back to IMHO…
I would think that organizations that need to kill other people on a regular bases would have an in house staff for that sort of thing.
Freelancers wouldn’t work as you would want someone you can hold accountable.
A professional with no location can take your money and run, and you’d be left with the option of seeking out the guy that recommended him to you.
Maybe someone can start in house, develop a reputation, and then go freelance. Though doing business with a new client every day is also a risky venture for the freelancer.
Maybe there is one crazy ex-Navy Seal out there living in the subway and making contracts in vague terms through Craig’s list. You never know.
I doubt that there are many people who are strictly assassins. From what I’ve read of the mafia, most killings are carried out by “soldiers” who spend most of their time doing other things. I imagine that other criminal organizations are the same way – they have “muscle” guys who will kill people when necessary, but it’s not an everyday thing.
I have no doubt that many (most?) governments have people in their employ who have the training and skill to assassinate someone. But again, I expect that those people spend most of their time doing other things (probably less dramatic military or intelligence work).
I would expect that those two groups – criminal organizations and governments – comprise almost all of the demand for assassination services.
If his Wikipedia entry is accurate, it sounds like he wasn’t much of an assassin.
Back in the early '90s, Texas Monthly did an article about a professional “assassin” living in Houston.
A Houston detective picked up a case where someone was looking for an hitman for hire. He presented himself as the hitman, gathered enough evidence and made the arrest. A few similar cases showed that he was pretty good at covincing the suspects that he was legitimate, at avoiding anything that might constitute entrapment and at gathering enough information for a conviction. After a while, he doing cases for departments across Texas.
Not really; that Jason Bourne stuff almost completely Hollywood bullshit (albeit very entertaining bullshit). The Central Intelligence Agency, the British Secret Service, and other intelligence agencies do have paramilitary arms, of course, mostly recruited from their respective nation’s militaries, but most of what these people do is training and direction for insurrection, or the rare active op. When the CIA really wants to set up an assassination, they go “out of house” to a private contractor–usually a known criminal–in a way that is at least ostensibly deniable. The problem is that these people are typically only marginally competent, often rejects from real military Special Forces (think the Sean Bean character fromm Ronin: “What color is the boathouse at Hereford?”) and so often fumble jobs badly, which is why there are so many badly planned or botched assassinations.
To answer the question of the o.p., there are certainly people who make a living killing other people for fun and profit, but it’s not a great living, certainly not the globe-hopping million-dollar-a-shot good time depicted in movies like The Bourne Identity, Gross Pointe Blank, Bangkok Dangerous, et cetera, and it should go without saying that large dedicated organizations like those depicted in Mr. And Mrs. Smith are pure movie fantasy. Many of the former East Bloc nations maintained small cadres of dedicated assassins, used by the Soviets when wet work was necessary, and the Israeli Mossad and the Mossad-trained SAVAK performed some noteworthy public assassinations, but the flip side is all of the half-baked plans the CIA developed to off Castro that amounted to a bucket of piss.
Ilich Ramírez Sánchez (the so-called “Carlos the Jackal”) is really more of a professional terrorist for hire, who started out working for the PFLP until he shafted them by embezzling money and failing to execute hostages. Had he not received support from several Middle East despots from time to time he wouldn’t have lasted as long as he did.
Stranger
Can’t really make a full-time living at it - No health insurance and the work is really seasonal. But if your regular job has a generous PTO policy it’s a nice way to make a little extra money over the summer…
… or so I’ve heard.
When I lived in Russia in the 90s there were many killings linked to professional hitmen, linked to business disputes. One of the most high profile was the murder of Paul Tatum, an American, who was in a high profile property dispute with the mayor of Moscow over control of a hotel. These kinds of killings might be more like mob killings than what the OP wants.
People certainly look for them, as you can tell from the news.
But they seem to find alkys or junkies, desperate for fix money, who screw things up.
This is just a guess but I would think that if there really are “professional assassins,” used by government agencies and not individuals, they would try to make it look as little like an actual assassination as possible. No silenced pistols, garrote wire or any of that other stuff from pop culture. More like car “accidents” or “suicide.”
I’d agree. And I’d think the kind of person calculated and clinical enough to carry out that kind of killing, would have no qualms about maybe taking a few ‘innocents’ out with the target, thereby confusing the actual motivation. Okay, I’ve been reading too much Dean Koontz, haven’t I? 
Assassinations per se are political, so a professional assassin would be someone along the lines of the Matt Damon charcter in the Bourne Conspiracy movies, mentioned before.
But as far as professional killers for hire, they certainly exist in Thailand. In fact, Ratchaburi province has a reputation for churning them out. Many are known to police, who keep an eye on them as best they can. Supposedly, the names of a couple hundred are known to the police, but there’s no hard evidence against them (sometimes they’re protected by the police). My understanding is many of them believe they will be caught someday, but they pursue their chosen profession largely out of some weird misplaced romanticism. It’s almost always business rivals they’re hired to kill, sometimes inconvenient spouses or lovers.
Amateur killers for hire are also somewhat numerous over here. There’s a stereotype, not completely unjustified, that if you need someone killed on the cheap, go talk to the nearest motorcycle taxi driver. They wait in queues at the entrances to many small lanes leading off main roads, ready to ferry you up. Many times when someone gets arrested for an amateur hit, he turns out to be a motorcyle taxi driver.
I assume you have proof of that assertion.
I remember that some weirdo magazine(s) regularly published personal ads by people who made it clear they’d kill for money. Is that Hollywood enough?
The government eventually stepped in and stopped the ads.
I can’t recall when this matter appeared in the news, but I would guess it was less than 20 years ago.
And BTW, feel free to say I’m full of shit, but other posters will follow who’ll attest to my assertion.
No… I remember this. Something like a “Commando” magazine or something of that ilk.
Soldier of Fortune. But so what? Any thirteen year old kid with $50 can post an ad in the magazine classifieds. That doesn’t make him an expert assassin.
Which asssertion? That the CIA goes out of house for wet work, or that most private contractors are bumbling idiots? Check out the Channel 4 documentary, 638 Ways to Kill Castro for a quick precis on what the US government has in both official and unofficial capacity to remove Fidel Castro from the ranks of the living. Former CIA agent and White House “plumber” E. Howard Hunt has written extensively and authoritatively (if not without personal bias and agenda) about the various clandestine activities that the CIA has been involved in, including the overthrow and assassination plots or attempts of various South American politicians and leaders.
Stranger
Not Hollywood enough for you?
Besides, the ads indicated they were run by guys who were serious. You say they’re teenagers. Prove it.