Do we know the same guy? Is it Lloyd Riddle? I used to work with him at the local community college. He killed at least two people and probably a third. He was caught and convicted after a botched contract killing in Michigan – somehow he left a credit card receipt at the crime scene. He offered to sell me a gun several times, which was odd because I don’t think I ever suggested an interest in buying one.
In the next job I had, one of my co-workers was a retired county cop. We were chatting about something, and I mentioned knowing this crazy guy who killed somebody, and she knew exactly who I was talking about before I even mentioned his name. Lloyd was very well known to the local police ling before he was ever accused of murder.
Serial killers have been paid to reveal the locations of their victims. Clifford Olson and Wesley Shermantine are two such cases. Olson’s wife received $100,000 for 10 victims.
Although, not a hired killer, she did obtain $10,000 for each child.
Personally, I would rather pile all the money together and burn myself alive than accept death money, but this would seem, at first glance, to help set the price for murder.
It’s the economics that interfere with the Hollywood fantasy.
What does it cost to stay in a fancy hotel nowadays - hundreds of dollars a night? Even Comfort Inn in a big city is probably over $100/night. Fly to and from anywhere on short notice, there’s probably a thousand dollars. Plus first class? Fancy meals? Champagne with the hot-looking undercover FBI lady? You have to pull down hundreds of thousands a year. We won’t even get into the issue of money laundering all that loot.
Not to mention, all these activities leave paper trails; video surveillance in the hotel, government documents to travel, credit cards, etc. I always wonder how someone shows up in England or Paris and there’s a set of guns waiting. Everything is Xrayed at the airport nowadays; how many thousand to get a disposable gun from a local source that won’t blab? How do you meet a “reliable source” in Berlin without getting known, getting a reputation?
The odds of one simple thing going wrong - one witness seeing the wrong thing, some idiot with a cell phone camera… It’s getting harder every year.
Plus, a lot of people who want someone offed don’t have a lot of money. they are often caught when they approach someone they know has a criminal past - who finds it easier to rat them out for better parole terms than to go along - so they hook them up with an undercover officer under video surveillance.
The only real market for this sort of thing would be international intrigue or organized crime, both of which have their own in-house talent - more trustworthy and a lot cheaper, although in many cases these types overestimate their competence (having watched too much Hollywood).
The target killers of Karachi, Pakistan, assassinate politicians, police, and protesters for as little as $700 a pop. In this excerpt from “The VICE Guide to Karachi,” VICE cofounder Suroosh Alvi interviews an armed target killer in the backseat of a taxi.
Mainstream news outlets are virtually devoid of information about the target killers of Karachi, Pakistan. This is probably because even if you manage to land an interview with one, there’s always the chance you will be murdered before completing it.
Just as a weak data point, I can recommend Thomas Perry’s novel The Butcher’s Boy as a very believable portrayal of just such an elite assassin-for-hire.
What if there is someone in the way of making millions or billions in profits, and that person needs to die in a way that seems an accident, preferably done by a professional, reliable assassin. There has to be demand for that, and supply.
Here in Peru we do have assassins for hire. They are not always part of any criminal oranizations, but are hired on a case-by-case basis.
A common tactic is that the assassin is a passenger on a motorbike and get alongside the target on a red light, boom boom boom go away.
We even have an interesting legal problem with a notorius underage killer (who’s just escaped from the juvenile facility) who killed at least 10 people, but since Peruvian law doesn’t have provision for indicting minor, he simply goes to a sort of rehab center for a couple of years, getting away with murder. This is a loophole that’s being exploited by criminal organizations.
Also, Peruvian law doesn’t let allow the publishing of photographs or even the name of a minor, so he’s always pixelated and only his initials printed.
Of course there are criminals all over the world who will kill someone for $200 and a can of paint thinner. And there are plenty of organized crime syndicates who have people who are willing to kill anyone the boss tells them to kill.
What does not exist is a Hollywood style professional assassin who sits in a luxury hotel in Cancun until he gets a call offering ONE MILLION DOLLARS to assassinate some businessman or politician or scientist or journalist.
Huerta88 explained the problems in forming an efficient market for such services 5 years ago.
There are people who have a million dollars in untraceable cash that they can spend without blinking an eye.
There are people who would have no moral qualms about killing someone who stands in the way of making millions of dollars.
There are people who are reckless enough that they are willing to hire a complete stranger to kill someone.
But the intersection of all the qualities a person would have to have before they are a serious customer for professional assassination services is pretty small. And pretty much invariably, anybody who fills all the criteria already works in organized crime, and therefore isn’t going to hire a Hollywood style assassin, but rather will use the services of a garden variety organized crime thug.
There just is no efficient way for the sociopathic customers to pair up with the sociopathic sellers outside of organized crime. When Tony Soprano wants someone whacked, he doesn’t go to the French Riviera to track down a guy who’s “the best” and offer him a million dollars. He turns to one of his associates, guys who he’s worked with for years and who he can trust, and they get a bit of a bonus next week.
But remember that the mafia doesn’t operate on the principle of the boss paying his underlings to commit crimes for him. Instead the underlings pay the boss a cut of everything they earn. And so when your boss tells you that Johnny Left-Ear needs to get whacked, you don’t tell him that you’ll do the job in return for $50,000 or whatever. You do it because he’s the boss. Money flows from the bottom to the top, not the other way around.
