Hitmen are easy to find in movies. Real life is a different story.
It's a scene as old as celluloid: a shadowy figure named Luca Brasi or John Wick or Barry Berkman who lurks in the darkness, equipped with sinister intentions and handy weapons, effortlessly committing murder for money, hostility or cold political calculations.
Whether they're called hitmen, hitmen, or assassins, figures who kill for a living are a staple of Hollywood thrillers — and, by extension, the public imagination.
But law enforcement and international espionage experts say contract killings are notoriously difficult to successfully arrange, let alone get away with.
Take, for example, what prosecutors say was a recently foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist in New York City that U.S. intelligence officials believe was ordered by the Indian government. Once the plot reached the point where the alleged conspirators had to employ an assassin, things got complicated: the would-be assassin turned out to be an undercover agent working for the U.S. government.
Robert Baer, a former CIA agent and author of several books, including “The Perfect Kill: 21 Laws for Assassins,” says he has known many bad guys during his decades in law enforcement and espionage. But even he says finding a real killer would fool him.
“I couldn't find you a hit man,” he said. “And I know a lot of murderers.”
Dennis Kenney, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, agreed, calling the public perception of a slick, skilled hitman “pretty much a myth,” adding that a hitman is usually “nothing more than a thug who offers or agree to a one-time payday.”
“That's why they get caught,” Mr. Kenney said.
According to the FBI, only about half of all murders in the United States are solved or solved each year, making it difficult to say definitively how many people specifically are murdered by hitmen. While there are also no useful statistics on how many assassination attempts fail, experts and indictments indicate that many are marred by amateurism and incompetence.
Yet the non-hits keep coming.
“There is no really efficient, high-quality hit service like in the movies,” he said Michael C. Farkasa lawyer who has worked as a homicide prosecutor in New York City.
There are assassination plots that unfortunately succeed – as Canadian officials believe was the case in June with the killing of another Sikh separatist, Hardeep Singh Nijjar, in British Columbia, although it is not known whether assassins were involved. The case has cooled relations between Canada and India and raised suspicions about Narendra Modi, India's conservative prime minister and a Hindu nationalist.
Law enforcement officers and academics who study hitmen put them in different big buckets. There are civilians involved in everyday murder plots, which often end in a messy or tragic way.
There are also mafia hitmen, the enforcers who work internally to illegally police the criminal underworld. These killers, perhaps the source of most urban knowledge about the illegal profession, have been luridly overexposed in shows like “The Sopranos” and films like “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas.”
So-called sicarioswhich has been used by drug cartels horribly productive sometimes. And of course there are also the professionals employed by government intelligence services, suspected of assassinations in London and elsewhere.
Yet even in these efforts with James Bond-esque overtones, law enforcement has proven adept at thwarting some of these crimes, as exemplified by the foiled murder plot against the Sikh separatist in New York.
For the average person looking to hire a hitman, the dangers of purchasing such a service are numerous, especially in cases involving inexperienced killers, many of whom are hampered by basic logistics such as keeping quiet about their plans.
“It's more complicated than it seems,” said David Carter, a criminal justice professor at Michigan State University. “And sometimes these aren't the smartest people.”
Failed attempts on the lives of loved ones – or, more specifically, former lovers – are perhaps the most common Ordinarysay experts, and many have been stopped by the Police. In other grim cases, there were also targets children And family members.
A typical real-life murder plot involves a bar, sinister banter and poor decision-making, said Gary Jenkins, a former police investigator from Kansas City, Mo., who now hosts the “Gangland Wire” podcast.
“They'll say, 'I'd like her to be taken care of,'” Mr. Jenkins said. “So the bartender, or the local fixer, or whatever quasi-criminal is out there, will go to his friendly ATF agent or the FBI and say, 'Hey, this person is talking about the death of his spouse.' And then the police will go in and be the hit man.
There is also an ever-expanding web of forensic tools and electronic trip wires used by police, including cell phone tracking and text messages. These tools play a prominent role in many cases, including that of a former beauty queen, Lindsay shiverswho is awaiting trial on attempted charges to have her estranged husband murdered in the Bahamas. Ms Shiver allegedly sent text messages to her bartender boyfriend and an alleged hit man before her arrest, along with a photo of her husband.
“Kill him,” Mrs. Shiver reportedly wrote.
There is also, of course, the Internet, which has emerged as a source of so many problems: in November, for example, a Louisiana woman was sentenced to 18 months in prison for trying to use a parody website, Rentahitman.com. hire someone to kill a romantic rival.
That site, which advertises a “point and click solution” to problems, was linked to an FBI crime complaint center, and may also have recently ensnared a Tennessee Air National Guardsman, whom federal prosecutors charged sign up to become an assassin even Send CV.
Such sites, experts say, are often linked to law enforcement, even those on the dark web. “You've got all these beautiful honey traps, and the ads for people saying, 'Oh, I can do this. No act is too immoral!'” said David Shapiro, a John Jay professor and former FBI special agent. “And a lot of them are sponsored by the FBI.”
Mr. Shapiro added that some of those involved in deadly plots also have a peculiar cheap quality, with their interest in seeking cheap liquidations of those they hate.
“It's expensive,” he said, adding: “You get people who really can't afford to do it right.” There is a lot of distrust in the planning of these crimes, which creates its own problems. For example, would-be killers accept payment for a hit – and then disappear.
“With every potential contact, you face risk every step of the way,” says Sean Patrick Griffin, a criminal justice professor at the Citadel in South Carolina, adding that, like many shady activities — including money laundering — only a small number people are known to earn their living by killing.
“It's a very niche, very unique thing,” he added. “There aren't that many people, as crazy as it sounds, with the talents available for that kind of commodity.”
Statistics from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services show that there were only seven arrests for murder-for-hire statewide in 2022. which the state considers premeditated murder. And that was a banner year for arrests for such wickedness, matching the total for the previous five years combined. So is murder for hire a federal crimewith penalties ranging from fines and long prison sentences for failed attempts to life imprisonment or the death penalty 'if death results'.
Despite the failure rates and high penalties, people – and governments – continue to try to have other people killed, whether they are misled by fictional images of slick killers or because they have given in to the fantasy of operating outside the law with impunity. , according to those who have studied these potential killers.
“The appeal of Hollywood is the suspense, the intrigue, the secrecy, the 'super-person' appearance of the hitmen they portray,” Mr. Shapiro said. “And on the layman's side, I mean, who among us hasn't wished for someone else's death at some point? But because we got our hands dirty, we refused to do it.”
Even among professional killers, plots often unravel, said Mr. Baer, the former CIA agent. Three former senior U.S. officials recently described what they said was a foiled Russian plot to kill an informant in Florida.
“Political assassinations rarely work,” Mr. Baer said. “They are a tactic of desperation or madness. You can't get away with murder.”