Murder for Hire

Historical Stages

Given the paucity of factual data about murder for hire, whether it is on the increase is open to speculation. It has gone through roughly a three-stage metamorphosis in America. First, in entrepreneurial murder for hire, those who solicited the services of a hired killer did so primarily for a mixture of racial and economic reasons. Even when hired by those motivated by personal reasons, “hired guns” tended to work independently of any organizational representation.

As the American economy stabilized around industrial activities, employment became more legitimized, [Page 322]and the racial violence following slavery subsided, the need for independently contracted hired guns dissipated. Spurred by the rising tide of immigration, urbanization, and the emergence of underworld criminal organizations, by the early part of the 20th century, murder for hire had become equated with the business of the underworld. This second stage assumed more of a professional/independent quality.

The reliance on violence as a means of internal organizational control, as well as protection from outside interference by “Mob” bosses, called for Mob-based hit men to carry out contract killings to maintain control within and between mobster organizations and to extract revenge as part of the ongoing and more highly organized nature of crime as a business enterprise. The professional hit man of the underworld came to overshadow the independent hired guns of previous eras. Gradually, as underworld business dealings assumed global proportions, there was an increased demand for assassins and terrorists. Images of hired guns or hit men as unknown assassins continue to shape conventional wisdom about murder for hire in contemporary America and other countries around the world.

There is no clear evidence to determine whether this stage of murder for hire is on the wane; however, there are signs that a new stage in murder for hire is emerging that is embedded in interpersonal and domestic relationships existing outside the realm of organized and professional crime activities. The ascendancy of a more personalized murder for hire resembles its predecessors in only a few core ways. The professional/independent hit man contracted to kill by a Mob boss is being supplanted by a “backdoor man,” who is more friendly, casual, and amateurish. Solicitors, too, are changing. Propelled by demands for solving personal problems arising out of more intimate and informal interpersonal relationships, solicitors are prodded by expressive motives more reflective of excessive self-centeredness and self-preservation than by large-scale economic and ideological concerns or protection of Mob-based criminal enterprises.

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