How often (in, say, the last 20 years) do you think corporations have had individual citizens killed?

[chappachula]

@Kimstu

And there were corporate-sponsored “hits” in pre-modern-era America, too. The Pinkertons, as you note, and the Wyoming Stock Growers Association hiring assassins to eliminate alleged “rustlers” in the 1890s,

And beyond the 1890’s. During the Depression, the railroads used gangs of thugs to chase away hobos and freeloaders. As did the big agricultural companies who used Oakies and migrant labor (as in Steinbeck’s books).They used gangs of thugs to prevent union organizers from helping the workers.

[Kimstu]

Very true, but I think we’re talking here about actual targeted assassinations of identified individuals, paid for on the company’s dime. Were the Depression-era company goons of whom you speak ever hired specifically to commit such a murder? (I mean, I wouldn’t find that at all implausible, but I don’t know of an instance.)

[Horatius]

@Kimstu

Were the Depression-era company goons of whom you speak ever hired specifically to commit such a murder?

Yes, it’s the dividing line thing. If you squint hard enough, you can justify using thugs to chase away hobos as “security guards”. No one would dispute that you need security guards, and maybe they go just a bit too far. But telling the guards to just go out and kill the hobos? That’s a pretty big dividing line, and no amount of squinting will make it look okay. This would require a deliberate act of criminality on the part of everyone involved.

[Slow_Moving_Vehicle]

@Kimstu

And there were corporate-sponsored “hits” in pre-modern-era America, too. The Pinkertons, as you note, and the Wyoming Stock Growers Association hiring assassins to eliminate alleged “rustlers” in the 1890s, for example.

IIRC, this is what brought William “Billy the Kid” Bonney to notoriety; he was a cowboy in a range war in Arizona, in the employ of a rancher.

[griffin1977]

Not in the last 20 years, but there is a pretty good case that Frank Little was ordered killed by the Anaconda Mining Company (and TIL possibly by the novelist Dashiell Hammett, which is WTF moment for me!):

Frank Little (unionist) | Lynching

But again the details are fairly well known (or at least suspected). This was a huge deal at the time (10000s of people attended his funeral) and the company was widely blamed. Even if no one was prosecuted they didn’t successfully cover it up either.

[CaveMike]

@griffin1977

and TIL possibly by the novelist Dashiell Hammett

That isn’t my takeaway from the wiki article at all.

Although no one was apprehended or prosecuted for Little’s lynching, a number of people have speculated about his murder. The author Dashiell Hammett was working as a strikebreaker in Butte for Pinkerton’s, and (allegedly) turned down an offer of $5,000 to assassinate Little.[6] Hammett later made use of his experiences in Butte to write Red Harvest. Rory Carroll writes, “In her memoirs Lillian Hellman, Hammett’s companion, said he told her about the offer to murder Little. ‘Through the years he was to repeat that bribe offer so many times that I came to believe … that it was a kind of key to his life. He had given a man the right to think he would commit murder.’”[7] William Nolan, one of Hammett’s biographers, thinks that “the fact that someone even asked him, thinking that he would be that kind of person, and that he was that deep into the thing made him feel guilty. He never got over and it always haunted him.”[7]

[Slithy_Tove]

Does this have any source besides Lillian Hellman?

[griffin1977]

@CaveMike

That isn’t my takeaway from the wiki article at all

I didn’t say Hammett likely killed him. But he was part of the same violent anti-union gang, that likely killed him. In the same town at the time he was killed. He admits to being offered 5000 bucks to kill him, but he says he turned it down though was haunted by the guilt of it the rest of his life

So, yeah, there is a possibility it was Hammett that killed him. The whole story is completely batshiat I had no idea any of it happened.

[Chronos]

@griffin1977

But it wasn’t covered up, right, all the details are right there in that article.

Well, obviously nobody is going to cite any cases that were successfully covered up. The point is, it was in fact done.

[Peter_Morris]

@bob_2

@Mangetout

individuals comprising the board of the corporation, sitting around the board table on company premises, in company time, raising an item in ‘Any Other Business’ comprising ‘hey why don’t we just kill that guy?’,

More like the Chairman saying sotto voce - Who will rid me of this ***?

That would be needlessly ambiguous.

Mitchell & Webb - Needlessly ambiguous terms

[Der_Trihs]

It seems likely that Deutsche Bank has had people killed, although there seems little interest in investigating the issue.

However unlike most corporations it’s involved with plenty of other criminals, and can probably just pay to have it done. Most corporations wouldn’t have the same contacts.

[Horatius]

@Der_Trihs

Deutsche Bank

For when you don’t need a criminal bank, you need a criminal bank.

[griffin1977]

@Chronos

Well, obviously nobody is going to cite any cases that were successfully covered up. The point is, it was in fact done

Yeah but the OP was how often have cooperations had individuals kill, if it was how often have senior executives carried out terrible sexual abuse, the answer would be conservatively, daily?

[smithsb]

I believe we’re just looking at large corporations. An L.L.C might be just a couple of folks. Heck, our daughter has three of them. I’d say it’s probable that an owner murdered or hired a murderer at the low level I’m talking. The amount of gun violence in the US is staggering. I don’t have the desire or resources to dig into every one of the hundreds per week but the probability is high.

Note that my daughter has never murdered anyone, that I know of. A couple of tenants were on thin ice though.

[TriPolar]

An LLC is a good idea if you’re going to be killing people. IIRC Murder Inc. was a pioneer in limited liability.

[msmith537]

@smithsb

I believe we’re just looking at large corporations. An L.L.C might be just a couple of folks. Heck, our daughter has three of them. I’d say it’s probable that an owner murdered or hired a murderer at the low level I’m talking. The amount of gun violence in the US is staggering. I don’t have the desire or resources to dig into every one of the hundreds per week but the probability is high.

Note that my daughter has never murdered anyone, that I know of. A couple of tenants were on thin ice though.

I have no doubt there have been plenty of people murdered over disputes between business partners and whatnot.

Large corporations OTOH, that’s a different story. Particularly if they were some how “mandated” by corporate leadership “Michael Clayton” style.

• Are there private contractors corporations can hire for these sort of things?
• How are these decisions made? Does the CEO call a meeting with the VP of “Special Projects” or something?
• Corporations, especially banks, are highly regulated and monitored. So you can’t just send an email or pull a couple $100k out of petty cash without there being some sort of record of it.
• Murdering someone who is actually in a position to threaten a major corporation like Deutsch Bank will likely bring a lot of unwanted scrutiny towards the corporation.

That isn’t to say there haven’t been a few suspicious cases over the years of whistleblowers and others being murdered or disappearing. The case of Karen Silkwood comes to mind (made famous by the Meryl Streep movie Silkwood).

[Measure_for_Measure]

The banker Roberto Calvi died by hanging in 1982 underneath Blackfriars Bridge in London. The authorities declared it a murder. Mr. Calvi had fled Rome and traveled to London via Zurich. Suspects include officials in the Vatican Bank, but also the Mafia and a specific Freemason lodge. Five were acquitted of charges in Italy.

Roberto Calvi

[Kimstu]

@Kimstu

And there were corporate-sponsored “hits” in pre-modern-era America, too. The Pinkertons, as you note, and the Wyoming Stock Growers Association hiring assassins to eliminate alleged “rustlers” in the 1890s, for example.

Pardon my bump, but this very incident came up today in Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American substack!

In our own history, the big ranchers in Johnson County, Wyoming, organized as the Wyoming Stock Growers’ Association, decided in 1892 to clear out the smaller cattlemen pushing their animals onto the federal land and the railroad land the ranchers considered their own. They hired 50 gunmen in Texas to kill their competitors, and they gave them a written list of the men they wanted dead.

The gunmen killed four of the smaller cattlemen after cornering them in a cabin, but outraged settlers surrounded the gunmen and threatened to hang them all. Local law enforcement sided with the small cattlemen, and the Wyoming Stock Grower’s Association appealed to the governor for help in restoring order. The governor, in turn, appealed to President Benjamin Harrison, who sent troops to rescue the stock growers’ men from the angry settlers and lawmen. The expense of keeping the stock growers’ men imprisoned nearly broke the state.

Witnesses became mum, and the cases against the Texas gunmen fell apart. The stock growers had first intimidated and then killed those who tried to challenge their monopoly on the Wyoming cattle industry. Then, thwarted by local lawmen, they called in the federal government, and those stock growers involved in the Johnson County War actually got away with murder.