You have been erased.
I will say this; I know someone who is in the program. They are safe. Obviously, they’ve only given me minimal details on it, but … Well, they’re safe. Far away from danger and reprisal.
Sure it would. The witness, the authorities, and the DOJ (and maybe some of the witness’ family) are the only people who know the truth.
People move around in America all the time. Usually chasing work, or something. And America is so big it’s not difficult to hide yourself from what you need to get away from.
But you also need to cut yourself from all your relatives and former associates. Even your sports and hobbies, in case you meet someone from your old life (just about guaranteed, in my case, as wherever I pursued my sport I’d certainly meet someone who had known me sooner or later). That’s more hard for people to accept
For the vast majority of low-rate thugs that commit the type of killings described in The Inquirer article, commercial air travel is likely difficult and, unlike perhaps Russia, there simply aren’t any large crime syndicate organizations with broad contacts across the nation in operation anymore. For 90% of the people in the program, it would probably be sufficient to live openly 1,000 miles away, but of course returning to the neighborhood where the people that are trying to kill you have a fairly intact organiztion makes carrying out their killing enormously logistically easier.
I don’t mean to minimize the stress and difficulty of moving half-way across the country where you have no friends and no contacts, or to avoid coming home for family emergencies.
The people who would’ve paid the bounty on Hill are long dead.
According to the guy in the Maxim article, the Marshals don’t really do much to help you out in your new life. Basically, they gave him a drivers license with his new name, a plane ticket to another city, and some money to rent an apartment once he got there. That was pretty much it. They didn’t arrange a new job; he had to find one himself, and since his resume was totally fake (listing schools he’d never attended and jobs he’s never held) that wasn’t easy.
It was especially sad because he wasn’t a bad guy himself. He owned a pizza parlor in New York, and his place became the favorite hangout of a bunch of Mafia goons. He eventually decided to tell the police about everything he’d heard, and then he entered the WPP. Nothing ever came of his testimony, either. The guy flat-out said that if he could do it all over again, he would have kept his mouth shut.
Actually, they are required by law to find at least one reasonable job opportunity for non-incarcerated protected witnesses. Go check out the Howstuffworks article if you haven’t yet–it’s interesting stuff.
This recent Guardian article, prompted by the convictions in the Securitas robbery case last week, discusses the equivalent British programme.
One of the cases mentioned is that of Martin McGartland, the former IRA supergrass, who was shot, presumably by his old colleagues, despite having been relocated with a new identity in England. Though by that time his new identity had been seriously compromised and the shooting happened just after he gave an interview to the BBC. McGartland survived and the whole process had to be gone through again.
Why would it be difficult? I just hit southwest.com, and I can get a round trip Philly to Orlando for less than $250 this week. The issue isn’t that the people who want you dead can’t get to where you are, it’s that they have no idea where you are. That’s why you have to get a new identity and cut off all contact with your past - if word gets back to the old neighborhood that you’re hiding out in Florida, it’s not revenge driven gangsters will say “Florida? How could we possibly get to Florida? Damn the luck!”
Okay, so you’ve got to buy a plane ticket. Do these folks have credit cards or do you think they like to run a cash-based business? Once you’ve got the plane-ticket, a lot of people that want to kill people have outstanding warrants, and even if you don’t have outstanding warrants, they are likely to have some sort of parole which they may or may not comply with, but purchasing a plane ticket and having to provide a governement issued ID that doesn’t raise red-flags for a parole violation is going to be slightly challenging.
Do you check your murder weapon or acquire one in Florida? If you check it, do you have a $500 Pelican case laying around, or do you have to go buy one? If you acquire one in Florida, do you think that there are a lot of fast, easy, or cheap means of acquiring a weapon if you have no connections and you’re from out of state?
Add in the costs of a rental car and accomodations.
Once you’ve committed your murder, how long will it be until your detected? And when the local police say, “hmmm, who brutally killed this woman in her living-room, could it possibly be, I don’t know, the member of the crime organization she’s scheduled to testify against in two months in another homicide case and now I’m looking at flights rosters from Orlando to Philadelphia and I see two known members of this gang travelling on these dates proximal to the murder?” Let’s hope it’s a little while, because police are probably going to figure things out sufficiently fast enough that it could complicate your return trip home, and wouldn’t it sort of suck if the police in Florida somehow had the technology to contact the police in Philadelphia so that they could be waiting for you as you deboard the plane?
And how about all the incidental logistics that come with murdering people that are complicated by interstate travel? Do you dispose of your murder weapon in Florida (now I guess you can write off your $500 illegally purchased weapon as a business loss on your tax return) or did you check it again on the plane?
Maybe it would be easier to just contract for someone in Florida to do this for you. Good thing the contract killers you find in the YellowPages never turn out to be police stings and they operate for reasonable rates.
In short, yes, travelling by commercial air to kill people presents logistical complexities beyond those present for people wanting a weekend at the beach. Most people with the wherewithal to pull it off successfully probably aren’t hustling Eight Balls on street corners for $30.
Especially since anyone who would take $30 is a dolt of the highest order, or is selling stuff that’s 75% vitamin B-12. 
Or you could drive to Florida, kill the witness with something you brought, and drive back. Your buddies alibi you. It’s not real credible, sure, but you only need reasonable doubt.
threemae,
Point 1 - you can still pay for tickets with cash, and credit cards aren’t that hard to come by.
Point 2 - AFAIK, neither airlines nor the TSA runs your state issued ID against a database of outstanding warrants or parolees who cannot leave the state when you check in for a flight. If you think they do, please provide a cite.
Point 3 - Weapon - fair enough. Of course, you could just buy a knife or a baseball bat in FL, and kill them that way.
Point 4 - Detection & flight rosters. Again, fair enough. I’d submit though, that a lot of criminals don’t think quite that far ahead.
Point 5 - As applecider said, you could drive to FL and avoid points 1, 2, 3, & 4.
I stand by my statement - if someone wanted you dead, and knew where in the USA you were, distance just isn’t a factor. The reason they move you far away from home is to reduce/eliminate chance encounters with people who could recognize you, not because distance is some absolute bar to your potential killers.
I agree, it sounds a bit too much like “No true Scotsman would have broken the Marshals Service’s rules.”
Sailboat