The NYT considers the prevalence of hitmen in movies, and why it's hard to find one in real life.
Hit Men Are Easy to Find in the Movies. Real Life Is Another Story. By Jesse McKinley
"experts in law enforcement and international espionage say that murders-for-hire are notoriously difficult to successfully arrange, let alone get away with.
"Take, for example, what prosecutors say was a recent foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist in New York City, which American intelligence officials believe was ordered by the Indian government. Once the plot reached the point where the alleged conspirators needed to employ a killer, things got complicated: The would-be hit man turned out to be an undercover agent working for the U.S. government.
...
"Law enforcement officials and academics who study killers-for-hire put them into several large buckets. There are the civilians engaged in everyday murder plots, which often end in sloppy or tragic fashion.
"There are also hit men for the mob, the enforcers working in-house to illegally police the criminal underworld. These killers, perhaps the source of most urban lore about the illicit profession, have been luridly overexposed in shows like “The Sopranos” and films like “The Godfather” and “Goodfellas.”
"Employed in a similar fashion are so-called sicarios, whose use by drug cartels has been heinously prolific at times. And of course there are also the professionals employed by government intelligence agencies, who have been suspected in assassinations in London and elsewhere.
...
"Statistics from the New York State Division of Criminal Justice Services show that in 2022 there were only seven arrests statewide for contract killing, which the state considers first-degree murder. And that was a banner year for arrests for such badness, matching the total for the five previous years combined. Murder for hire is also a federal crime, with penalties ranging from fines and lengthy prison time for failed attempts to life imprisonment or the death penalty “if death results.”
HT: Jlateh Vincent Jappah
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