Talk elsewhere about the Boeing whistleblower death got me thinking.
Suppose you’re a CEO who wants someone dead badly enough. I know you can hire some guy off the streets for cash and drugs. I know governments have huge massively funded systems devoted to train killers of all kinds. I know about mercenaries, who supposedly do a lot of nasty stuff that is ostensibly legal.
But do you think guys like the Jackal actually exist, especially these days? Trained professionals who can be hired by private entities to kill someone? How would such people establish a reputation and be contactable? We take for granted that the rich can get anything, but can they get THAT kind of value for their money?
The professional high profile contract assassin is as much a manufacture of Hollywood and thriller authors like Robert Ludlum as the jet-setting secret agent with a “license to kill” who is recognized by every hotel manager and casino manager as their best customer. It doesn’t work for the reasons you mentioned; cultivating a reputation to earn fees of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars per ‘job’ would also make that person extremely vulnerable to being baited and captured by law enforcement, and there frankly just aren’t enough of those kinds of jobs to sustain such an industry.
This is not to say that there aren’t people with the requisite skills and resources to commit assassination-to-order in a expert manner but they are trained, employed, and protected by government agencies, and even then there are enough things to go wrong in a murder that even the best schemes and experts fumble regularly. There are also people who work for organized crime who are particularly experienced and at ease with murder but they are generally less than professional; more The Sopranos than Prizzi’s Honor.
Although there are “private military contractors” which can be hired to provide legal security and logistical support outside of direct combat (or, in some cases, extralegal and ‘shady’ work), most self-described “mercenaries” in this day and age are incompetent boobs or criminals who work for strongmen, international gangs and smugglers, et cetera.
Reading about the supposedly ‘suspect’ death of John “Swampy” Barnett, it seems unlikely that his death was a murder-for-hire. First, there were many other whistleblowers with comparable experience, and the case in no way hinged upon his testimony. Second, if someone in Boeing management decided to have him killed, why would they not do it before his testimony? Third, it is really not easy to fake a violent suicide without leaving traces of defensive wounds or actions. Fourth, how do you imagine that transaction goes down? Some set of upper management people would have to discuss the proposed assassination (because it wasn’t a failure of a single Boeing official but a systemic problem), then somehow draw enough cash and wash it in some way to make a payment, then contact a professional killer and negotiate terms, give instructions, et cetera, all risking that they are dealing with an undercover law enforcement agent (which most supposed ‘assassins’ turn out to be). Frankly, while these issues will hurt Boeing and it is possible a few managers may lose their jobs, the consequence of being caught in a web of assassination are so much worse that it beggars believe, and it isn’t as if this would be a crime of passion that the perpetrator didn’t have time to think through. And none of this was going to stop further investigation of Boeing for the multitude of failings, shady practices, bad quality control, and general shit-fuckery, nor are they likely to suffer crippling fines or other restrictions as they are the only major commercial domestic manufacturer of airliners and also a massive defense and aerospace contractor.
The reality is that being a whistleblower is a terribly stressing position comparable to losing your family or being stalked; being under opposing counsel questioning for a long day is demoralizing and often dehumanizing; and while it is often the case after a suicide that friends and family claim that there is no way the victim would do that, the reality is you don’t know what is going on in someone’s head, especially if they are lonely and feel hopeless. And it was because of Boeing, at least in part, that he was driven to this. But absent of any forensic or other evidence that this was actually a murder, suspecting assassination masked as a suicide is embarrassingly speculative to say the least.
Those kinds of assassins are pretty much a Hollywood creation. There is a grain of truth to it, Murder Incorporated (Wiki Link) was involved in the death of between 400-1,000 people between 1929 and 1941. These folks were just regular mobsters who happened to make a little extra scratch by acting as contract killers and rather than being a single, high skilled assassin it was many people.
I’d expect that mafia organizations have guys that they trust to do such work - but, in most cases, probably not as their exclusive job with the organization.
I could imagine former military people who could do such work but, should you try to reach out to one, the most likely respondent would be an FBI agent, posing as a hitman.
The only way that I can see you getting a person who does this sort of work on a regular basis would be if there was some murder-inclined billionaire who (for example) served in the military and knew someone of the right type from that, convinced them to do it once, they actually succeeded and didn’t turn their boss in, and is now their personal “guy” for that work. But that would be a fairly close-knit partnership and the billionaire would probably prefer that the guy not do any outside work since, the more times he killed, the more chance that he’d be caught, and come to finger his regular employer.
It’s loosely based on a real life undercover cop (Gary Johnson) who posed as a hit man to catch people who wanted to hire a hit man. The article about Johnson that was the inspiration for the movie was in the Texas Monthly magazine:
Here’s a somewhat hilarious example of what happens when someone tries to hire a hit man in real life.
TL;DR: a businessman in China hired a guy to kill a rival businessman. The supposed hit man decided to subcontract the job and hired hit man #2. Hit man #2 had the same idea and hired hit man #3 to do the job. The obvious happened, and hit man #3 hired hit man #4, who hired hit man #5, who finally decided to actually do something besides subcontracting the job. But instead of killing the target, he approached the target with a plan to fake his death and split the money with him. The target went to the police, and all five hit men plus the hiring businessman were arrested and convicted of attempted murder.
The folks who used to be Army Special Forces or Navy SEALs certainly have those sorts of skills. At least as to the actual face-to-face encounter if not as to how best to plan a good crime they’ll get away with. And there are thousands of such people. Plus of course all the former special operators from all the other countries of the world. Including Russian emigres.
A number of whom work for themselves, or for private firms, that provide security to fatcats. To pick a relatively uncontroversial name, somebody like Bill Gates has at least couple of these dudes on the roster of his “family office”. Somebody more in the public eye might have a small army of such folks surrounding them, clearing rooms ahead of visits, checking kitchens, etc. The whole presidential Secret Service routine, just on a smaller scale & less overt.
All these folks work under serious NDAs and would be blackballed in that industry if they ever broke silence. They also come from a tradition of both secrecy and violence. It would be fairly trivial for the fatcat to tell his head of security he needs a killing & get it paid for clandestinely. There’s plenty of unaudited money sloshing around in their “wallets” and they have plenty of access to hidden bank accounts and hidden money conduits.
Now will one of their henchmen actually do it as opposed to just being readily capable of doing it? Does the head of security know somebody who knows somebody who … ? That is the tall pole in this tent.
My bottom line:
I strongly doubt there’s anyone outside organized crime who makes a career out of killing for hire. The odds may favor pulling one uncaught job per lifetime; they don’t favor pulling one uncaught job per month. But can one fatcat hire one former SF guy one time? My bet is a strong yes.
Contract killers do exist, but are a lot more rare than Hollywood implies. One such was Charles Voyde Harrelson, but I’ll just point out that he was caught and sent to prison for life, and his list of “targets” isn’t nearly as extensive as what we see with Hollywood killers. He might well have other victims than those listed in the link, but clearly his career as a killer was limited.
I’m thinking the more killing you do the more likely you are to be caught.
That’s always been my understanding; in part because even with professional criminals, there’s normally just not enough work to support a Hollywood style “professional hit man” who does that and nothing else. The goal is generally to make money, not kill people after all.
So you’ve got “Bob who’s willing to kill people”, not “Bob who does nothing but kill people”, because Bob needs to eat and his boss isn’t going to pay him for sitting around doing nothing most of the time.
There was a book published in 1974 titled “Killer, by Joey”, that claimed to be written by an actual Mafia hit man. Assuming that to be true, although he claimed over 35 murders, he was involved in far more criminal activities than murder. Also, he pointed out that he would never do a killing for someone not involved in organized crime, since “civilians”, as he called them, would be very likely to confess under police interrogation.
I have also wondered if there were actual secret organizations similar to those described in James Bond novels and movies, the Man from UNCLE, Get Smart, and Kill Bill. Unlikely, I think, but who knows?
It’s OK to tell stories related to the question now, right?
So, I was in a meeting with a client representative of a big utility company. He had driven about 150 miles to meet with us at our office. Nobody really liked him very much as he was an odd character, but he was in charge of an important part of operations and the bills got paid.
He got a call during the meeting and had to leave the meeting room for a few minutes. He came back and asked us to cancel the meeting as he had to drive back to his office immediately. Turns out that the State Police needed to talk with him. While he was on his business trip to see us, his wife had solicited his murder from an undercover officer. LE wanted to make sure they got hold of him to discuss the issue before he went home.
While I now know lots more detail, I never have learned exactly how much she was offering for the hit. And it probably says something about what kind of a person he was that none of us were particularly surprised.
Mostly the " how best to plan a good crime they’ll get away with." Do most Special Forces/SEALs have the knowledge/training to cover their tracks in regards to forensics/criminal investigations? And why would the military need to teach them such skills to begin with?
Evidently you misunderstood the very part of my post that you quoted. I’m sorry to have been unclear.
That sentence is intended to convey:
The folks who used to be Army Special Forces or Navy SEALs certainly have the sorts of skills necessary to skillfully & quickly kill somebody face-to-face.
But, on the other hand, they (probably) lack the skills as to how best to plan a good crime they’ll get away with.