How Do Hitmen Operate?

This article by Ryan Jacobs originally appeared on The Pacific Standard on 1/28/14, and will be of particular interest to authors of crime, military and espionage thrillers.

British criminologists claim that hitmen are more boring than we make them out to be, but their analysis can’t account for the behavior of “Master” killers.

If a hitman excels at his craft, he’ll operate quietly and without incident. In theory, the whispered meetings will be held in secret, the job will be executed with precision and grace, and no one will witness the escape.

For those reasons, the few criminologists who do attempt to study these misdeeds acknowledge the thorny methodological problems associated with examining “a secret world” to which they have no access. Of course, that hasn’t exactly stifled their ambitions.

A group of researchers at the Center for Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University in the U.K. has recently analyzed newspaper articles, court records, and a series of “off-the-record” interviews with informants “who have, or who had, direct knowledge of contract killings” in order to construct what they term a “typology” of British hitmen. For the record, these social scientists “define a hitman as a person who accepts an order to kill another human being from someone who is not publicly acknowledged as a legitimate authority regarding ‘just killing’.” The results of their detailed search of British cases that matched this description in the period between 1974 and 2013 only turned up 27 contracted hits or attempted hits “committed by a total of 36 hitmen” (there was only a single “hitwoman”), but the researchers used the sample to tease out the details and profiles of typical killers-for-hire.

The main thrust of the paper, which will be published in the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, is that hitmen do not operate with the drama, professionalism, or glamour that mob films and spy novels afford them. In actuality, the majority of killers select jejune settings for their crimes, have occasionally bumbling performances, and are often hired by contractors with lame motivations.

Here’s the profile of an average British hitman, who seems more confined by the boxy restraints of reality than the undulating arcs of fiction:

 

Click here to read the full article on The Pacific Standard.

 

Dr. Katherine Ramsland: Confessions of a Female Serial Killer

This post by Dr. Katherine Ramsland originally appeared on The Graveyard Shift blog on 2/19/14. As a forensic psychologist, Dr. Ramsland can offer informed insights to the breaking “Craigslist Killer” case. This post will be of particular interest to crime thriller and true crime genre authors.

With sudden dramatic confessors, it’s best to verify before you buy

I wrote about Miranda Barbour last week, here, concerning the murder that she and her new husband, Elytte, had committed together last November. For kicks, they’d lured a man to his death with a Craigslist ad. I used their case to describe how two (or more) people can develop a sixth sense about each other for violence. They have a “mur-dar” radar.

Troy LeFerrara, 42, responded to the ad. They picked him up and Elytte used a cord to incapacitate him while Miranda repeatedly stabbed him. They dumped him, cleaned the van and went to a strip club to celebrate Elytte’s birthday. Their phone call to the victim led police to them, and they’ve been awaiting trial.

Over the past weekend, Miranda, 19, said that not only was she guilty of the LeFarrara murder but she’d been killing with a satanic group since she was 13. Supposedly, she’s “lost count after 22.” If let out, she would kill again. Needless to say, this confession has created a flurry of media reports about this “female serial killer.”

But let’s keep in mind that, at this time, Barbour has admitted guilt for one murder for which there is evidence. She’s not yet a confirmed serial killer. Given the brutality of it, we can accept that she’s killed before and perhaps her stories will be validated soon, as law enforcement works with whatever she gives them. However, until then, we should remember the lessons from past cases.

 

Click here to read the full post on The Graveyard Shift.