Obviously I need to get out more, but as I was working on something last night that did not require full engagement of my brain, I began thinking about this question. We’ve seen the tradecraft over and over again in the movies: some anonymous-looking guy in a trenchcoat and hat puts two .22 shells in the back of some poor schlub’s head, or a guy is taken out to a cornfield where he digs the hole he’s gonna end up in shortly, or some other guy gets to go swimming with a chain wrapped around him.
The thing is, how common are mob-style robouts, really? I know ther’s a humungous number of murders each year in the USA, but I have the impression that nearly all are so-called “crimes of passion”, and in the majority of cases killer and victim know each other. So, if anybody knows, what’s the, er, Straight Dope?
To start with some reasonable estimate, I think you’d have to get a reliable count of the mob-related individuals who’ve been found dead under mysterious (unsolved) circumstances and multiply that number by some factor (no idea how big) to account for those bodies that never will be found.
If you consider the first-person accounts of hitmen who have shared their exploits with TV interviewers (David Susskind had a fascinating show with an executioner wearing a hood like the hangmen wore) or authors, a sizeable percentage of those hits are followed up with near-perfect destruction of the corpse.
Any official number would be too low – by a significant amount.
16,765 (in a population of 275,264,999) in the year 2000, according to the CDC. (About 1 out of 16K for those of you keeping track–much worse than I expected.)
My police contacts agree with the “killer and victim know each other” part but the “crimes of passion” part is less clear. How many spouse murders are over the drug money? Ditto for insurance money? When a dealer with “contacts” kills a junkie who is about to fink to the fuzz, is that a “mob hit”?
It partly depends on what you consider “the mob” to be. The Sicilian/South Italian Mafia has lost most of its influence over the last twenty-five years or so, mostly due to rather inept bosses. Paul Castellano was the last capo to preside over a thriving family, but the Genoveses largely collapsed after his death in '85.
However, the Russian and various Asian organized crime groups are growing quite steadily, especially with the wane of Sicilian influence. Murders by these groups, as well as Jamaican “posses” in the Miami area are increasing as a percentage of murders.
As an aside, I find it interesting (and bizarre) that the CDC tracks homicides… they aren’t exactly disease related.