Before i continue with this topic ( a documentary which aired on Britain's Channel Four on June 20 of this year between 10 pm and 12.05) I should make the point that no matter how tempted you might be to hire a "hitman"- my advice is ON'T. If you don't get scammed (esp on the "dark web") your putative killer is likely to be an undercover cop. No matter what personal grievance or injustice you might have towards someone, just remember the Biblical phrase "Vengeance is mine: I shall repayeth, saith the Lord!"
That said, I know myself well enough to recognize that of all types of criminal, the one who has intrigued me most of all is the so-called "hitman". I not only have the biography of Richard "The Iceman" Kuklinski by Philip Carlo but the 2012 film that it inspired as well as my personal favourites dealing with this topic "The Mechanic" (the 1972 original starring Charles Bronson as opposed to the 2011 remake starring Jason Statham, Hit Lady" starring Yvette Mimieux and James Woods in " Best Seller" J ohn Cusack in "Grosse Pointe Blank"and of course Frederick Forsythe's anonymous anti-hero i n "The Day of The Jackal"
Why do they do it?- even terrorists have their causes, the unity and freedom of Ireland, the class struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, the "jihad" against the "infidel" by the proponents of the one true faith, but hit men don't even have that excuse- they just kill because they are getting well paid for it! Of course as Colonel Marc Rodin, Operations chief of the OAS(Secret Army Organization) notes in Forsythe's novel "such men are not easy to find; they do not advertise themselves or their services!" Of course for organized crime groups( La Cosa Nostra, Triads, Yakuza, Russian vor y zakone- "thieves in law" or outlaw biker gangs such as say the Hells Angels, Outlaws, Mongols et al) finding such an ind ividuals is fairly easy enough, but thankfully for the rest of us, such individuals do NOT accept"contracts" from outsiders!
Last but not least are those individuals who kill not on behalf a criminal organization but for given governmental agency(The Soviets were probably the most well known i n this respect , dating back to the days of the original Bolshevik secret police agency, the Cheka, and continuing down to the present day as we saw with the polonium poisoning of defector Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 and the Novichok attack on Sergei and Yulia Skripal in 2018, but other intelligence services are either known or widely suspected of engaging in what the "Company" (CIA) coyly terms "termination with extreme prejudice"- Britain's MI6/SIS( Ian Fleming's "James Bond" would have lacked any point had he not been based at least partially on reality, the Israeli Mossad(yes I KNOW Israel is or claims to be in a state of war with its Arab neighbours who have been known to threaten to finish what Hitler started, the French SDECE but I find assassination to be discomfiting even in wartime, although there is precedent for targeted killing dating back to WWII with the assassination of SS functionary Reinhard Heydrich in 1942 and that of Japanese naval strategist Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto the following year, reportedly on the then President's personal orders , and of course the alleged "shoot to kill" policy followed by British troops and RUC officers during the NI "Troubles").
"It takes a very special person to pick up the tab for that kind of lifestyle" Bronson's character Arthur Bishop laconically observes in "The Mechanic" and for those who try to do so may very find that it's beyond their means to pay- if not now then in the hereafter!
ON'T. If you don't get scammed (esp on the "dark web") your putative killer is likely to be an undercover cop. No matter what personal grievance or injustice you might have towards someone, just remember the Biblical phrase "Vengeance is mine: I shall repayeth, saith the Lord!"
