Every time I hear some story on the news abotu a hitman, it’s usually some coworker or associate of a disgruntled husband who got paid $3,000 to club the wife over the head, or something like that. Strikes a stark contrast to characters in movies like Assassination Tango, Grosse Pointe Blank and Collateral.
Is there any basis in fact for the stereotype of a cool, confident, professional hitman who works like a ninja and gets away clean, enjoying a six-figure salary for his deadly work? You just don’t hear about much assassination here in the US. Entirely fiction?
In the 1970s there was a number of terrorists who used to assassinate for money. Carlos the Jackal is the most notorious of them, becoming a “Terrorist for Hire” in 1976.
‘Murder, Inc. or Murder Incorporated, was the name given by the press for a notorious organized crime organization in the 1930s and 1940s that carried out hundreds of murders on behalf of the mob.
…
The killers were paid a regular salary, plus an average fee of US$1000–$5000 per killing. Their families also received monetary benefits. If they were caught, the mob would supply the best lawyers.’
I like the scene in Frederick Forsyth’s The Day of the Jackal when the OAS try to find such a contract killer. Apparently you nose around among the ex-mercenaries in Belgian Bars and see who knows of someone. I suppose things have changed since, but the basic principal’s the same. Still, how would you ever know if the guy you found was both trustworthy and competant?
Just based on the stuff I read in the news, my theory is that pretty much everybody that claims to be, or is believed to be, a hitman is actually an undercover officer there to arrest the dumbass for attempting to hire a hitman.
The ones you hear on the news are the ones that are either ones clearly identifiable as murders or ones that get caught. If I’m paying prime $$ it better damn be neither.
It’s kind of naive to believe there aren’t simply because you don’t hear about them. Were I in appropriate circumstances I could see myself on either of the three sides of such a deal and there’s nothing magical about these ‘appropriate circumstances’. This is not like saying ‘If I found myself in the appropriate circumstances I’d be a time traveler’ since that relies on the existence of time travel. There are plenty of people who have the means. Almost everybody wants somebody else dead. There are plenty of people who recieve government or non-government training that could pull it off and could use some extra cash.
Another way to look at it is - What mechanism do you propose would prevent such a thing from happening? Not being able to find somebody trustworthy or getting in touch with them is a fallacious line of reasoning - if that was an insurmountable problem then there wouldn’t be any illegal transactions to begin with. You can easily wind up in jail for a longer time for dealing drugs than for hiring an assasin and there isn’t exactly a short supply of drug dealers. They trust each other to a sufficient extent to conduct business and so do hit men, arms traders, slave traders, etc.
When I was growing up there were hits in Moscow almost every week. Government officials, small and big businessmen, etc. - shot while exiting their cars (the phrase ‘control shot’ was colloquial usage among kids, for example. This meant a last shot in the head after the victim was already down to prevent medical intervention) , apartments torched, car bombs, kidnappings and simple disappearances. Most of these were never solved nor even traced to any suspects. Bombs and silencers are not too easy to come by and don’t come cheap.
From personal experience - my second cousin died in an apartment fire a few years ago. Her dad was a businessman, he barely survived. He recieved a few threats about paying somebody off and when he didn’t his phone lines were cut in the middle of the night and the apartment torched. I don’t know the exact details but it’s definitely never was solved. This sort of thing might sound like bad late-night television in the US but in a lot of other countries it’s the reality of day to day life.
Yes, but there’s a difference between mobsters who will kill you if you annoy them or interfere with their business plans, and professional hit men.
The mob guys who kill people aren’t “professional hit men”, they are professional criminals. They make money via regular crime, not accepting contracts to kill particular people. In other words, they don’t kill strangers, they kill people they run into during their course of business. Or if they do kill strangers they do so on the orders of their boss. The capo tells the rank and file mafia guys to go to such and such a business and kill such and such a person. And the guys go and kill him, and maybe the boss gives them some extra money or maybe it’s just the kind of favor you are obligated to do for your boss when he asks you to.
But those mafia killers don’t sit around in a luxury apartment waiting for a phone call from a third party, then negotiate the salary, then carry out the hit. Rather they’re out putting whores to work, collecting from bookies, breaking the thumbs of deadbeats who owe money, etc. And when their boss orders them to kill somebody, they kill him.
Right but businessmen, government officials, movie stars, etc. typically do not have flunkies willing to kill for them on demand. And just like these people do not import their own cocaine into the country they don’t go around having their personal assistants kill for them, but to believe that no people with money are going to look for a way to use it to have somebody killed is silly.
Since killing someone often isn’t all that hard, and you can pay some yahoo thug to do it for $5000, what extra do you get for paying $50000 to a career hitman?
I would imagine that unlike bad television and hollywood, most high paying hitmen are not weirdos in armani suits with silenced pistols. They’re the guy who you pay $50,000 know how to really make sure it looks like an accident or even something specific. If you want somebody dead and you can afford $50,000 then regardless of evidence at least some of the arrows will still be pointing towards you. If they could just trip, hit their head and roll into the pool that would be ever so convinient.
I’m sure the Bulgarian Secret Police and similar organisations of the Eastern block would welcome the chance to make large amounts of money from a rich patron who wanted someone unimportant knocked off. After all they are past masters of such Assassinations. Georgi Markov - Wikipedia
Killing someone is easy. Getting away with it is the hard part.
Anyway, pro hitmen are notoriously bad about turning in their W-2’s at the end of the year, so it’s hard to say.
But it is a lot easier to get someone to score coke for you than to get someone to find a hitman for you. Rich people buy cocaine from their regular cocaine dealer, they don’t regularly have people killed.
I have to say the idea that a rich person can look up hitmen in the phonebook, place a call, pay $50,000 and have somebody untraceably killed is a fantasy. If that rich person has mob connections they could ask for a favor. “We do this favor for you. And someday, you will do us a favor in return.”
You can’t just hang out in hitmen bars until you find the right contractor. Yes, there are hitmen…but they work for various mafias and governments not as independent contractors.
Ok I can believe communication or trust difficulties, I can believe paying thugs rather than hitmen, but the market is not big enough? Are you located on the same planet as I am? The majority of people want at least somebody dead, and most people don’t do anything about it because it’s not a pressing enough concern to justify the associated risks, costs and hassles. Of course society the way it is shame on all of you who want to jump up and scream “Well, I don’t!”. Sit down and think about it before casting the first stone. You might not want to kill them, or have them killed, or hurt their loved ones, but there is somebody maybe even marginally connected (if at all) to your life that you want gone, or at least ‘unborn’ - you imagine a universe without them being born in the first place as a better place.
Is it so much of a stretch that people who are assholes and have money and don’t necessarily associate with the best of people? You don’t need elite CIA training to get rid of somebody - look at the schmucks that DO get caught and it’s fairly obvious your run of the mill upper class coke dealer can probably do a much better job and not get caught. Not by the virtue of being a hitman but by the virtue of being a professional criminal with a certain amount of resources and experience. Once, twice, thrice, and bam he’s a professional hitman cause it pays all that much more.
Look, if this is so hard to believe let’s start a poll in IMHO for a name and a paypal fund for the $100K and find out the easy way.
The market is not big enough for high-dollar professional hitmen, no. You go on to provide evidence for this yourself in the same paragraph.
Cite? Please don’t project. If I wanted somebody dead badly enough that I’d actually do something about it, either they’d be dead or in hiding, or I’d be dead or in prison.
Exactly. No reason for high-dollar professional hitmen.
