The British Hitman: 1974–2013

The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice
Early View (Online Version of Record published before inclusion in an issue)
DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12063

Donal MacIntyre, Visiting Professor
David Wilson, Professor of Criminology
Elizabeth Yardley, Director
Liam Brolan, Research Assistant

Centre for Applied Criminology, Birmingham City University

Abstract

This exploratory article presents a typology of British ‘hitmen’ as identified within newspaper reports about contract killing. Demographic and criminological data related to these hitmen and their victims are analysed and, on the basis of this analysis, a typology of British hitmen is developed. Our typology suggests that British hitmen are: ‘Novices’; ‘Dilettantes’; ‘Journeymen’; or ‘Masters’. It is hoped that this typology will be of use to law enforcement.

Conclusion

The dearth of academic research about hitmen is to be regretted, no matter the all-too-real difficulties of researching this particular form of violent crime. Even so, this exploratory article has only attempted to sketch in the broad contours of the phenomenon and in doing so we hope to prompt greater interest in this subject area, and its various cultures and subcultures. Further research is clearly needed and, if it were possible, these broad contours would benefit from the finer detail that might come through interviews with hitmen themselves. So, too, we hope that others will test our suggested typology and our broader conclusions that British hitmen do not exist solely or perhaps even primarily, within some secret, criminal underworld. Rather they are usually part of that community in which their hits takes place. Indeed, this simple reality is one of the major reasons why they are eventually apprehended.

Nor were all of the hits in our sample particularly professionally carried out. ‘Dilettante’ British hitmen, in particular, changed their minds; they got cold feet and could, in extreme circumstances, become the victims of their intended targets themselves. Even so, the ‘Journeyman’ hitman could be successful over a long period of time, although he was, thankfully, eventually caught – largely due to the intelligence that was built up about his activities and through developments in forensic science. Here, too, the importance of police informants cannot be underestimated.

Finally, the sites of British hits were not usually bars, clubs, or casinos but were far more likely to be the shopping centre, or the suburb in which the intended target lived. As a result, members of the public were all too often witnesses to a hit. Hits in this respect were not unusual and extraordinary, but rather commonplace and ordinary. So, too, the motives for a hit being contracted were mundane. Frankly, the motivations to pay a hitman the relatively small amount to carry out a murder were depressingly banal. Husbands and wives fell out with each other, or wanted to gain early access to life assurance policies; business partners decided to go, or wanted to go, their separate ways; business deals fell apart; and young gang members wanted to impress other, older, gang members with their bravado. All of this is far removed from the media portrayal of the fictional hitman who, on the evidence presented here, has little, or no connection, to his British reality.

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/enhanced/doi/10.1111/hojo.12063/