The British Hitman: 1974-2013

The British Hitman: 1974–2013

DONAL MACINTYRE, DAVID WILSON,ELIZABETH YARDLEY and

LIAM BROLANDonal MacIntyre is Visiting Professor, David Wilson is Professor ofCriminology, Elizabeth Yardley is Director, Liam Brolan is Research

Assistant, Centre for Applied Criminology, Birmingham City University

Abstract: This exploratory article presents a typology of British ‘hitmen’ as identifiedwithin newspaper reports about contract killing. Demographic and criminological datarelated 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 ofuse to law enforcement.

Keywords: hitman/hitmen; contract killing; Britain; typology

Hitmen occupy a secret world, an underworld, where they make business transac-tions with others wishing to conduct themselves ‘beyond the pale’. (Calhoun 2002,p.9)

Calhoun’s observation, quoted above, that hitmen ‘occupy a secret world’poses a number of problems for any academic research about this type ofoffender and the circumstances in which they operate. Perhaps as a resultthere has been comparatively little academic research about hitmen, or thephenomenon of ‘contract killing’. That which does exist tends to be Ameri-can (Black 2000; Black and Cravens 2001), and is often focused on descrip-tive accounts of the murders of specific hitmen (Zugibe and Costello 1993;Joey 1974; Montefiore 1993). There have also been some useful scholarlycontributions about hitmen in Australia (Mouzos and Venditto 2003;Blackshaw 1996), with Mouzos and Venditto (2003) noting that there were‘less than five documented explorations of the dynamics of contractmurder worldwide’ (p.12).

More recently, using a similar research methodology to that which isadopted here, Cameron (2013) discussed the economics of contract killingwithin a British setting. He concluded that: ‘the majority of paid killingstake place for very small sums much lower than the economic value of lifeand lower too than what one would expect as compensation for efforts and

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The Howard Journal Vol 53 No 4. September 2014 DOI: 10.1111/hojo.12063ISSN 0265-5527, pp. 325–340

325© 2014 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons LtdPublished by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK

risks of the hiree’ (p.12). Of note, while Cameron’s interests were solelyconcerned with economics, he, too, was surprised by the lack of morecriminological interest in this phenomenon.

This dearth of scholarly interest is in marked contrast to popular atten-tion about the hitman who, as Spicer (2011, p.1) notes, has become such afamiliar figure in crime films, TV drama, popular fiction and videogamesthat the hitman is now literally ‘everywhere’. To take but two recentexamples, the Hollywood film The Iceman (2012, director: A Vromen),about the contract killer, Richard Kuklinski, appeared in cinemas in 2012and, in November of the same year, the latest videogame in the Hitmanseries, about the exploits of Agent 42 was released, called Hitman Abso-lution, developed by IO Interactive and published by Square Enix. Thistype of media portrayal often presents the hitman as a ‘professional’,acting on behalf of an organised criminal network, or, indeed, as part of agovernment agency. ‘Hits’ within these various fictional genre inevitablyseem to take place within smoky rooms, bars and casinos frequented bygangsters and are well hidden from everyday members of the public. Thismay, indeed, be true of some hitmen and of some contracts, but it does notseem to capture the wider reality being described in this nascent academicresearch that we have cited above, of who hitmen are and how they carryout their hits. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Schlesinger (2001) was forced todescribe contract killing and the people who carry out these killings as a‘poorly understood type of homicide’ (p.295).

In this exploratory research about British hitmen we employ a numberof different techniques to describe the broad contours of contract killing inthis country. Following Calhoun (2002), we define a hitman as a personwho accepts an order to kill another human being from someone who isnot publicly acknowledged as a legitimate authority regarding ‘just killing’.Using this definition allows us to avoid the important philosophicaldebates that exist about whether, for example, soldiers or state execution-ers should be considered as ‘hitmen’ (see Calhoun (2002) for an overview).These are important questions, for it is clear that the context in whichcontract killing occurs involves a ‘distance’ between the victim and theperpetrator – a distance, moreover, that is not present in conventionalhomicide (for an overview of murder in Britain, see Brookman (2005);D’Cruze, Walklate and Pegg (2006)). Throughout the article we use theterms ‘hit’, ‘contract killing’, and the gender specific ‘hitmen’, interchange-ably, despite the discovery of one ‘hitwoman’.

We also attempt to begin the process of testing the valuable, if rathermeagre, academic contributions that exist about this type of offender, tosee how, or indeed if, they apply in a British context. In particular, wecritically use Schlesinger’s (2001) pioneering typology that hitmen can bedivided into ‘amateurs’, ‘semi-professionals’ and ‘professionals’, based ondifferentiating patterns and characteristics of the hitman (see Table 1).However, here it is also important to acknowledge – as he himself does –that Schlesinger’s classifications were based on his analysis and case studyof just one hitman who had killed over 100 people in a 30-year period,prior to his eventual arrest.

The Howard Journal Vol 53 No 4. September 2014ISSN 0265-5527, pp. 325–340

326© 2014 The Howard League and John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Research Methodology

There are no official data collected about contract killings, although eth-nographic research about organised crime in this country has long estab-lished a link between violence and illegal trading networks (Hobbs 1988,1995, 2013; Winlow 2001; Winlow and Hall 2006). However, thereremains an ongoing debate as to whether this would include lethal vio-lence (Hopkins, Tilley and Gibson 2013). As a result, in order to generateour sample of British hitmen we searched Nexis using the fields: ‘hitmen’,‘contract killing’ and ‘United Kingdom’. Nexis is an electronic databasewhich houses all major British newspapers, including both national andregional titles, some 2,000 global newspapers, plus copy from newswiresand newsletters. Using newspapers as a primary source is not without itscompromises, although we feel that such compromises are justified giventhe exploratory nature of the article. One compromise – which we outlinein more detail below, is that we were not able to develop any academicinsight into the psychological state of those hitmen whom we were able toidentify. Our initial Nexis search produced 144 articles, which were thenreduced by removing those articles related to the murder of the TVpersonality, Jill Dando, in 1999 and the more recent murders of a Britishfamily in the French Alps in 2012. Both murders are unsolved and,perhaps as a result, some commentators have suggested that they werecontract killings. On the other hand, we have kept David Bieber within oursample, given the widespread speculation that he was, indeed, a hitman, orhad acted as such, although he was in fact convicted of the murder of PCIan Broadhurst and the attempted murders of PCs Neil Roper and JamesBanks in Leeds in December 2003.

So, too, this initial search produced general, opinion and editorialarticles about the phenomenon of contract killing more generally, butthese would often include the names of specific hitmen, or murders

TABLE 1Schlesinger’s Typology of Contract Murder

Amateur Semi-professional Professional

Method poorly planned/impulsive/disorganised

planned/orderly/systematic

highly planned/orderly/systematic

Crime scene some physicalevidence

little physicalevidence left

little physical evidenceleft/body disposed of,and/or ‘staged’

Typical target spouse/intimatepartner

business associate/criminal

a criminal and/or personassociated withorganised crime

Contractormotive

personal business related consistent with organisedcrime goals

Personality unstable less instability minimal overt disturbance

(Source: Schlesinger 2001.)



suspected of being ‘hits’, which allowed us to further refine our search,often using regional, or local newspapers to track down specific case detailswhich might not have been mentioned within national newspapers. Wealso concentrated on British cases, excluding those that applied to North-ern Ireland, given the complexities of the political situation during theperiod known as ‘the Troubles’ (for an overview, see McAuley and Spencer(2011)). Eventually, we produced a list of 27 cases of contract killingcommitted by a total of 36 hitmen (as a number of hitmen would work withan accomplice) who were active in Britain from 1974 to 2013. Thesehitmen are described in Table 2 and it should be noted that our sampleincludes one ‘hitwoman’ although, given the almost total gender imbal-ance, we have stuck with the label ‘hitmen’. This number was lower thanthe sample of hitmen produced by Cameron (2013), although as he doesnot reproduce the raw data about the personal and demographic details ofthese hitmen, it is difficult to compare his sample with our own. However,Cameron was solely interested in the economics of contract killing, ratherthan with the broader, criminological picture of British contract killingmore generally.

After having generated our sample, we searched for basic demographicand criminological data related to both those who carried out the contractkilling(s) and also those who had been the target(s) of the hit. Such dataincluded: age of the hitman/target; method used within the hit; the date,time and place of the hit; what was known about the possible motive for thecontract; how the hitman was caught; how the perpetrator(s) was dealtwith at court; whether the hitman was previously known to the criminaljustice system; and other details of the contract that could be determined– most obviously how much the hit had cost. At this stage of our researchwe also used Lexis to see if court transcripts of the trials of these hitmen,or of their appeals, could provide further demographic or criminologicaldetails. Lexis is an archive of all cases heard by the House of Lords, thePrivy Council, both divisions of the Court of Appeal and all divisions of theHigh Courts.

So, too, using our own extensive networks of offenders, ex-offenders,those who work as part of, or who have been employed within, thecriminal justice system, we also gained access to those who have, or whohad, direct knowledge of contract killings. We conducted a small numberof ‘off-the-record’ interviews with these informants, so as to provide ameans of triangulating the information gathered through our searches ofNexis and Lexis. However, given the ‘off-the-record’ nature of these inter-views, we do not use this material to any great extent within this explora-tory article. Finally, a number of ‘true crime’ accounts, which claimed tohave interviewed British hitmen were also consulted (see, especially,Thompson 2005).

All of these details have been gathered in the hope that our results maybe of some help to law enforcement, in that we have been able to identifypatterns and behaviours common to hits in Britain which might, in turn,contribute to better prevention and detection. However, for a number ofreasons, we were not able to establish whether this is a phenomenon which



is becoming more common – an issue which we discuss more fully below.We also acknowledge that our results relate to those hitmen who have beencaught and, of course, those hitmen who remain at large might present avery different profile from those whom we have described here. Finally,these demographic and criminological details have allowed us to criticallytest Schlesinger’s typology which, as we have described, was built on hiscase study of one hitman who had killed over 100 victims. Through

TABLE 2Cases of British Contract Killings 1974–2013

Name Age atconviction

(years)

Gender Numberof

victims

Year of hit(s) Sentence

Carlton Alveranga 20 male 1 2010 n/aRichard Austin 19 male 1 2010 n/aDavid Bieber 38 male 3 2003 lifeMichael Boyle 49 male 1 1995 lifeHector Cedeno 28 male 1 1999 lifeJohn Childs 58 male 6 1974; 1975; 1978 lifeTrevor Clouden 37 male 1 1997 –Terence Conaghan 54 male 1 2003 lifeMichael Crossley 45 male 1 1992 lifePaul Cryne 62 male 1 2007 lifeSantre Sanchez Gayle 16 male 1 2010 lifePaul Glen 33 male 2 2005 lifeHernando Guevara-

Jaramillo22 male 1 1999 life

David Harrison 63 male 1 2010 lifeSimeon Henderson 27 male 1 2009 lifeGary Holmes 31 male 1 1995 29 yearsBen Hope 39 male 1 2010 lifeKevin Lane 26 male 1 1994 lifeMatthew Lee 56 male 1 2000 lifeColin Meek 35 male 1 2003 lifeGary Nelson 33 male 1 1993 lifeTe Rangimaria Ngarimu 27 female 1 1992 lifeJohn O’Flynn 53 male 1 2003 lifePeter O’Toole 33 male 2 2002 lifeStephen James Playle 46 male 1 1992 lifePaul Ras 45 male 1 1995 lifeJason Richards 39 male 1 2010 lifeDavid Smith 33 male 1 2003 25 yearsLeyford Smith 42 male 1 2003 8.5 yearsStephen Smith 31 male 1 2003 6.5 yearsStanley Stewart 31 male 1 1995 29 yearsLoren Sundkvist 53 male 1 1995 lifeJames Tomkins 61 male 1 2006 lifeRoger Vincent 33 male 1 2003 lifeGraeme West 39 male 1 1993 lifeOrville Wright 26 male 1 1996 2.5 years

(Source: Nexis.)



critically testing Schlesinger’s work and analysing the patterns and behav-iours which we have discovered, we offer a typology of British hitmen.

Results

The average age of those responsible for carrying out a hit was 38 years,although the age range of British hitmen was 15 to 63 years. This resultand our results more generally, were broadly in line with those ofCameron (2013), although, given that similar research methodologieswere adopted, this is hardly surprising. The youngest hitman who weuncovered was North London teenager, Santre Sanchez Gayle, who was 15years old when he carried out his hit in March 2010 and 16 years old at thetime of his conviction. Gayle was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years inprison for the murder of 26-year-old Gulistan Subasi. He was paid just£200 to carry out the hit which, according to the senior investigatingofficer (SIO) attached to the case, was viewed at the time as being the workof a ‘professional’. Gayle was caught only because he bragged about themurder to his friends, who then reported him to the police (‘School boyhitman Santre Sanchez convicted of murder’, Mail Online, 24 August2011). The oldest hitman in our sample was 63-year-old David Harrison.In July 2010, Harrison shot and killed 27-year-old Richard Deakin, theowner of a skip-hire business. Mr Deakin was a father of two children andwas shot in his home in Staffordshire, England. The police, acting on localintelligence, would eventually arrest Harrison for the hit, especially afterthey discovered him to be in possession of £26,000 in cash (‘RichardDeakin murder trial: hired hitman blasted dad as he lay in bed, court told’,Birmingham Mail, 15 November 2012).

The average age of the victim of a hit was 36 years but, as with thehitmen, the ages of victims ranged from 10 to 63 years. This only childvictim of a hit was killed by John Childs, who, in 1975, not only murderedhis intended target but also his target’s son, from fear that the boy wouldbe able to identify Childs as the killer.

All but one of the hitmen was male. The only case of a female hitwomanthat we encountered was that of Te Rangimaria Ngarimu, who was respon-sible for the murder of Graham Woodhatch in May 1992. Ngarimu, a27-year-old Maori living in London, was contracted to murder Mr Wood-hatch, a roofing contractor, by Paul Tubbs and Deith Bridges. She was paid£7,000 and shot Mr Woodhatch while he was attending the Royal FreeHospital in North London following an operation. In fact, Ngarimu hadtried to complete the hit the previous day but, having failed, returned tothe hospital the following day, disguised as a man and, on this occasion,was successful. Immediately after the shooting, Ngarimu fled to NewZealand, which aroused the police’s suspicions at the time. However, theydid not arrest her. It was seemingly only after a visit to her local church inNew Zealand and, against the advice of her lawyer, that Ngarimu returnedto Britain to confess to her role in the murder. In 1994, she was sentencedto life imprisonment (‘Hit woman’s motives leave police baffled’, Independ-



ent, 18 December 1994). As far as we are aware, Ngarimu is the only femalecontract killer to have operated within this country.

The average cost of a hit in our sample was £15,180, with £100,000 beingthe highest amount offered. This latter figure is reported to have been paidto Kevin Lane for the murder of Robert Magil, who was killed in October1994 whilst out walking his dog and in front of at least two witnesses.However, there remains some doubt as to the guilt of Lane for the murderof Mr Magil, and so, too, it is therefore difficult to be confident that he had,indeed, been paid £100,000 (see http://www.justiceforkevinlane.com (accessed18 January 2014) ). These calculations do not take inflation into account.Cameron (2013) concluded that the mean payment in his sample was justunder £3,500 (p.3). Santre Sanchez Gayle who, despite being promised£2,000, received just £200 for the completion of his contract – the lowestamount that we uncovered that had been paid for a hit.

Our findings show that Tuesday is the most common day of the weekfor a hit to occur, although this finding is not statistically significant, andthat March, May and July were the most common months for a hit to takeplace. However, as with our result for the most common day of the week,this result was not statistically significant.

Within our sample, the vast majority of hits were carried out using agun – a not insignificant finding in itself, given the tight controls on theavailability of firearms that exist within this country (Malcolm 2002) andthis finding was statistically significant. Out of an overall total of 35 victims,25 were shot. Perhaps the most alarming use of a firearm can be foundwithin the murder of David King. Mr King was shot five times by hitmanRoger Vincent (33 years) and his accomplice David Smith (33 years). Theweapon used in this hit is noteworthy as it was the first time that an AK-47assault rifle – seemingly originally belonging to the Hungarian PrisonService – had been used on the streets of Britain (‘Murder of muscles’,Mirror, 24 August 2005). Of the ten remaining victims in our sample, threewere stabbed, five were beaten to death and two were strangled.

It was difficult to be precise as to what might have motivated these hitswithin our sample, although where this was commented upon, the major-ity seemed to have been the result of a business dispute of some kind. Onecommon form that such a dispute might take would be to contract a hitto remove a successful rival. Graeme West, for example, seems to havemurdered Donald Urquhart in January 1993 after the failure of a businessdeal. Mr Urquhart, a 55-year-old, millionaire, residential property dealerwas murdered on his way home after an evening out with his girlfriend.West pulled up alongside him on a 250cc Yamaha motorcycle and firedtwo shots from a revolver at point-blank range. Before leaving the scene,West fired another shot into the back of Mr Urquhart’s head to ensure thathe had been killed (‘Hitman blamed for the killing of London business-man’, Independent, 4 January 1993). The motivations that we could discernfor the remaining hits included: disputes within gangs or more formally-organised criminal networks; domestic disagreements between divorcinghusbands and wives; cases of mistaken identity; or, more broadly, the hitsrelated to ‘honour killings’.



http://www.justiceforkevinlane.com

The most prolific hitman in our sample was John Childs although, aswith some serial killers, he has become ‘unseen’ (Wilson et al. 2010). Inshort, very few people have ever heard about him. Even so, between 1974and 1978, Childs carried out six murders. The first of his victims was Terry‘Teddy’ Eve, who was killed in August 1974. Childs first beat Eve with apipe and then with an axe before finally strangling him to death. Thefollowing January, Robert Brown became Childs’s second victim. Brownwas shot three times before being attacked with an axe and then stabbedwith both a knife and a sword. In November 1975, Childs lured his nextvictim to his death. George Brett had arranged to meet Childs at a localfactory. Unaware of what was to come, Brett was accompanied by histen-year-old son, Terry. Childs shot both victims in the head. Three yearslater, Childs killed again. Freddie Sherwood was also shot in the head inJuly 1978 and then in October, Childs claimed his sixth and final victim. Ina fashion similar to his previous murders, Childs shot Ronald Andrews inthe head. Here it is interesting to note that, unlike the majority of thevictims in our sample, the bodies of Childs’s victims were never found, andwe therefore only have his account of how these hits were carried out.Childs would take his victims to his house in London, dismember and thenfinally burn them. In 1980, he was sentenced to life imprisonment (‘Evilhitman John Childs boasts of his crimes to penfriend’, The People, 2 March1997).

Two surprising findings from analysing our results were the number ofhitmen who were conducting a hit for the first time – an issue we discussmore fully below – and the fact that many of these hits took place withinsuburban neighbourhoods of our towns and cities. Far from the mediaportrayal of hits being conducted inside smoky rooms, frequented bymembers of an organised crime gang, British hits were more usuallycarried out in the open, on pavements, sometimes as the target was outwalking their dog, or going shopping, with passers-by watching on inabject horror. British hits emerged from, and took place within, thesuburbs, not the criminal ‘underworld’ beloved by fiction. Often the victimand the hitman lived in the same locality and, indeed, this lack of geo-graphic mobility on the part of the hitman was one of the most commonreasons why they were brought to justice. In short, as with Gayle, there wasusually local intelligence about who had conducted the hit that would thenget passed on to law enforcement.

A Typology of British Hitmen

After gathering the details listed above about all the cases that we uncov-ered, we attempted to apply what we had learned about British hitmen toSchlesinger’s typology. However, it was soon clear that the newspaperarticles which we had used as our main source were an inadequate basis onwhich to build up a psychological profile of the hitman, as Schlesinger haddone in his case study. As such, we could not come to any conclusions as towhat Schlesinger describes as ‘personality organization’. So, too, it was



often difficult to establish how Schlesinger differentiated between his threecategories of ‘amateur’, ‘semi-professional’ and ‘professional’. Indeed, thedescription ‘amateur’ implies that these hitmen were, in fact, unpaid forhaving carried out the hit – something which we did not discover in ourresearch. There would also appear to be ‘seepage’ between those patternsor characteristics which Schlesinger uses to differentiate between the‘semi-professional’ and the ‘professional’. For example, he does not effec-tively identify how crime scene behaviours might differ between these twocategories, other than to suggest that the ‘professional’ might ‘stage’ a bodyafter the hit had been completed. This same criticism can also be appliedin relation to the lack of difference he identifies within the categories‘typical target’ and ‘contractor’s motive’. Nor were we convinced thatSchlesinger’s typology would be of great practical use to law enforcement.

We do not mean to be unduly critical of Schlesinger’s typology, whichwas clearly groundbreaking at the time of its publication, but, in discussinghow it related to the British hitmen who we had uncovered, it becameincreasingly clear that we needed to establish a new typology that betterreflected the examples that had been identified. As such, our typologydescribes four different types of hitmen whom, after much deliberation,we call: the ‘Novice’; the ‘Dilettante’; the ‘Journeyman’; and, finally, the‘Master’. We gave these labels considerable thought as we wanted tocapture accurately the skills and experience shown by the different hitmenwho we uncovered, although we also accept that some might see thesedescriptions – especially that of being a ‘Master’ – as too affirming ofsomeone who commits murder. That is not our intention. We outline ourtypology in Table 3.

Here it is acknowledged that we did not, in fact, uncover someonewithin this last category – the ‘Master’ – whom we suspect is probablyclosest to Schlesinger’s ‘professional’, who was the basis of his case study.We would suggest that the ‘Master’ hitman is not likely to be easily caught.However, we can glimpse how a ‘Master’ hitman operates when carryingout a hit, in such cases as the hit executed on Frank McPhee in Scotland inMay 2000. McPhee, popularly described as a ‘gangland boss’, was killed bya single shot to the head from a .22 rifle with a telescopic sight outside hishouse in Guthrie Street, Maryhill – just 500 yards from the Maryhill PoliceStation. It was widely believed that McPhee was killed by a hitman toprevent him from becoming involved with the sale of drugs in NorthernIreland (Observer, 13 August 2000). McPhee’s killer has never beenbrought to justice. We use cases of this kind, which we suggest were carriedout by a ‘Master’ hitman, to throw further light on the characteristics andpatterns of behaviours associated with our other three types. In thisrespect, we considered issues not discussed by Schlesinger, such as whetherthe hitman was geographically mobile and the way in which, if applicable,they were apprehended by the police.

These descriptions of method, crime scene, typical target, motive, howcaught and what was known about the hitman’s occupation, capture thedetails of the hits that we uncovered. So, too, the labels that we havegiven to these hitmen are being used as they express the patterns and



characteristics of the different types of hits that took place. For example, asmany of the cases that were reported upon involved someone carrying outa hit for the first time, we use the description ‘Novice’. By this we meanthat the hitman was a trainee, or a beginner. However, this should not beinterpreted as implying that the hitman was unable to plan the hit, or carryit out successfully. As discussed with Gayle, the police believed that theperson who had carried out this hit was a ‘professional’ – someone, to useSchlesinger’s description, who had planned the hit, and had left no physi-cal evidence at the crime scene. Indeed, Gayle was only captured becausehe had bragged about what he had done locally. In short, ‘Novices’ – evenvery young novices – can make successful hitmen. The case of Te Rangi-maria Ngarimu, which was described above, also provides another goodexample of the ‘Novice’ contract killer who was still, nonetheless, also ableto plan her hit. After all, she left little forensic evidence that was of any useto the police and was only caught because she decided to confess to themurder.

On the other hand, the ‘Dilettante’, who can often be much older thanthe ‘Novice’ when he attempts, or indeed carries out, the hit, seems to havedecided to do so for a range of reasons. By using the label ‘Dilettante’ weare implying that this type of hitman does not necessarily come from anoffending background and only seems to have decided to accept a contract

TABLE 3A Typology of British Hitmen

Novice Dilettante Journeyman Master

Method shooting varied; shooting/stabbing/strangulation/beating

shooting shooting/other(poison)

Crime scene organised/someforensicevidence

disorganised organised/someforensicevidence

highly organised/little or noforensicevidence

Typical target varied domestic business variedContractor

motivepersonal/

businesspersonal/

businessorganised

criminalactivity

organisedcriminalactivity

How caught localintelligence

varied;confession/forensicevidence/localintelligence

local intelligence/geographicallystable

unapprehended/geographicallymobile

Occupation unemployed/casual work/petty crime

varied ex-military/occupationsinvolvingfirearms/crime

ex-military/crime

(Source: Nexis.)



as a way of resolving some form of personal crisis. More often than not thispersonal crisis was financial. As such, the ‘Dilettante’ dabbles and dips intothe culture of contract killing, but not necessarily with any enthusiasm, or,indeed, with much skill.

The case of Orville Wright perhaps best illustrates the ‘Dilettante’.Wright (26 years), who had previously worked as a legal clerk in Jamaica,was offered £5,000 to carry out the murder of 36-year-old Theresa Pitkin.So, in December 1996, Wright broke into Ms Pitkin’s flat in North Londonwearing a balaclava and brandishing a knife. However, after speaking tohis intended victim, Wright decided he could not go through with the taskof killing her. Described by Judge David Murchie as ‘a hitman who lost hisnerve’ (‘Hit-man who took pity on female victim gets two years in prison’,Independent, 9 May 1998), Wright’s inability to complete the hit displayedthe incompetent and disorganised nature of his involvement in contractmurder. This also helps to explain why Wright was only jailed for 2.5years. However, from the details of the case described above, we can alsopresume that Wright’s intention was to use a knife against his victim. This,again, displays a difference in technique as often the ‘Dilettante’, ratherthan the other hitmen in our sample, could not gain access to firearms.

Like Wright, Paul Cryne (62 years) was also a ‘Dilettante’ hitman. Cryne– the second oldest hitman in our sample, seemingly still holds the Guin-ness world record for the longest 24-hour underwater swim, but in 2010was jailed for life for the murder of Sharon Birchwood. Cryne had had alucrative lifestyle in Thailand throughout the 1990s, after receiving a£500,000 insurance pay out. However, his excessive spending eventuallycaught up with him and, whilst also being on bail for suspicion of carryingout another contract murder, Cryne managed to accumulate a debt of£11,000. Thereafter, he seems to have met up with Sharon Birchwood’sex-husband, Graham Birchwood, through the expatriate community inThailand and accepted the contract to kill Sharon. Cryne flew back to theUnited Kingdom to carry out the murder and it would later emerge thatMrs Birchwood’s death would allow her ex-husband to inherit £475,000.Contracted for £30,000, Cryne strangled Mrs Birchwood in her home inSurrey, and left her ‘cruelly trussed-up with parcel tape and electricalcord’. Cryne was apprehended after leaving forensic evidence at the sceneof the crime which the police were able to match with his DNA sample,which had been taken after his arrest for a crime he had committed manyyears earlier (‘World record holder turned hitman jailed for murder’,Guardian, 11 August 2010).

Finally, the case of Richard Austin (19 years) and Carlton Alveranga (20years) throws further light onto ‘Dilettante’ hitmen. Contracted by gangboss, Ian McLeod (43 years) and on the instructions of ‘gangster’, BobbySpeirs, Austin and Alveranga were hired to carry out the murder of DavidTotton and Aaron Travers. In March 2006, Austin and Alveranga weredriven to the Brass Handles pub in Salford, Manchester, where theirintended targets were watching a football match. A witness would laterdescribe the pair as ‘appearing reluctant to go inside’, although theycontinued into the pub, each armed with a handgun. According to the



Manchester Evening News, Austin fired six bullets, five of which hit their twointended targets. However, during the hit, one of the guns jammed andthe crowd inside the pub disarmed the pair and then fired back at them.As a result, Austin and Alveranga ‘staggered outside and collapsed’, andlater died of their gunshot wounds (‘Unsolved murder; Richard Austinand Carlton Alveranga, both shot dead in Salford’, Manchester EveningNews, 7 June 2011). Each of these three cases of the ‘Dilettante’ hitmanillustrates the lack of success with this particular type of hitman. Often theyfail to kill their intended target; they may use different methods from thenorm to attempt the hit, because they are unable to source a firearm; ifthey do gain access to firearms, their weaponry malfunctions; they get‘cold feet’; and they are always caught.

Our description of the ‘Journeyman’ – someone who is capable, expe-rienced and reliable but not an especially exceptional performer, not onlyfits someone like Childs, whom we have described above, but also thehitman ‘team’ of Roger Vincent and David Smith. Vincent and Smith weresentenced to a minimum of 30 and 25 years respectively in 2005 for themurder of 32-year-old David King. Known as ‘Rolex Dave’, King wasdescribed as being a ‘well-known underworld figure with many enemies’(‘Hoddesdon gym victim’s past revealed’, London Evening Standard, 10October 2003). Displaying some of the most obvious characteristics of‘Journeymen’ hitmen, the hit executed by Vincent and Smith was organ-ised and well planned. So, too, the police believe that the motive behindthe murder was related to organised criminal activity. It was assumed byhis killers that King had become a police informant, after a case heldagainst him for importing 14kg of heroin had been dropped in 2002(‘Drive by murder’, This is local London, 27 August 2005). When King lefthis local gym on the morning of 3 October 2003, Vincent and Smith werewaiting outside in a stolen Peugeot Boxer van and ambushed him. Vincentfired in excess of 25 rounds from an AK-47 Kalashnikov machine gun andkilled King instantly. After the shooting, Vincent and Smith fled the scene,burned the van and then proceeded to escape in another prearrangedvehicle. It was during this change in getaway vehicle that Vincent andSmith made the mistake that would ultimately lead to their apprehensionand prevent them from being labelled as ‘Master’ hitmen. Police found aplastic glove and were able to identify Smith via a palm print. From thisthey were able to track more than 100,000 mobile phone calls and col-lected over 1,200 witness statements. During their sentencing, Mr JusticeWilkie stated that the hit was ‘a thoroughly planned, ruthless and brutallyexecuted assassination’ (‘Two jailed for life for AK-47 drive-by murder ofgangster’, Guardian, 24 August 2005).

There are several characteristics in this case that identify Vincent andSmith as ‘Journeymen’. First, a gun was used to shoot their victim, albeit amuch more dangerous and unpredictable weapon than that used by anyother hitman in our sample. In other words, they were able to source aweapon. Second, the crime scene was organised, in that the hitmen knewwhere their intended victim would be and they ensured that they wereable to get away from the hit leaving as little forensic evidence as possible.



Their target, David King, was well known to criminal networks in the areaand thus the contractor’s motives undoubtedly had its roots in organisedcrime. So, too, we should note that Vincent and Smith were apprehendeddue to local intelligence; the discovery of a glove with a palm print; and,finally, as a result of eyewitness testimony. The final characteristic of beinga ‘Journeyman’ is that Vincent and Smith were generally involved incriminal activity, prior to engaging in contract murder.

Our final example of the ‘Journeyman’ is 63-year-old David Harrison,the oldest contract killer whom we have discovered through our research.On the morning of 5 July 2010, Harrison travelled to the Staffordshirehome of father-of-two, Richard Deakin, where he proceeded to shoot theskip-hire boss in the chest and leg while he slept. Described as a ‘bull-necked, toothless, career criminal’, Harrison was soon under police sus-picion for the murder. Harrison made a number of fundamental mistakesthat led to his conviction. These mistakes include mobile phone recordsthat placed him at, or near, the murder scene on three mornings prior tothe hit; police discovered £26,000 in banknotes at his second home, all ofwhich were dated within two weeks of the murder; and, in a further searchof his home, police uncovered newspaper cuttings about the murder. Afterbeing sentenced to life imprisonment, Anamarie Coomansigh, a caseworklawyer from the West Midlands Crown Prosecution Service’s complexcasework unit stated that: ‘This has been an important prosecution wherea professional hitman and his driver have been convicted of a cold andcalculated murder, depriving two very young children of their father’(‘Richard Deakin murder trial: inside the mind of the merciless hitman’,Birmingham Mail, 23 December 2012).

Harrison’s case, like that of Vincent and Smith, demonstrates many ofthe characteristics that we would expect from the ‘Journeyman’. First, hismethod of executing the hit is consistent with our expectation that hewould use a gun. Indeed, the sawn-off shotgun that he used to kill MrDeakin was never recovered. Second, the crime scene was organised, withlittle or no forensic evidence found. It is unclear as to why this hit had beencontracted and police were unable to establish a clear motive at the time.However, local intelligence triggered by the case being featured on theBBC1 series Crimewatch, led to Harrison’s eventual apprehension. Thefinal characteristic of the ‘Journeyman’ hitman is the fact that Harrison wasalready involved in crime and, quite apart from this hit, he was suspectedof having used a crossbow bolt to kill another target.

Discussion

In our development of this typology of British hitmen, we have clearly notdiscussed at any length the ‘Master’ hitman. As we have indicated, this typeof hitman is probably closest to Schlesinger’s case study of his ‘professional’who conducted over 100 hits. From discussions with our network ofinformants, it was clear that such ‘Masters’ do, indeed, exist and itwas alleged that they would often come from military or paramilitary



backgrounds. However, this is impossible to verify with any certainty.These ‘Masters’, by virtue of evading justice, exist in the shadows – almostlike ghosts – and it has, therefore, been impossible to build up any concretepicture of them as individuals, as opposed to the picture that we have beenable to present of the types of hits that they might execute. However, itwould appear that one of the major reasons that they evade justice is thatthese ‘Masters’ travel into the community where the hit is to take place andthen leave that community shortly afterwards. As such, local intelligenceabout the hit and the hitman is minimal. This is an important considera-tion, for it was local intelligence which, by and large, brought most of theBritish hitmen in our sample to justice.

Here we should acknowledge that, in many respects, our typology is,therefore, based on failure. In other words, the hitmen who we candescribe are those who have been apprehended and then prosecuted. Towhat extent, therefore, can we say that these hitmen are characteristic ofthose hitmen who evade justice? How might their methods as hitmendiffer from those whom we have been able to describe? Indeed, might it bethe case that there are some hitmen who are so adept as killers that thedeaths of their victims does not even raise suspicion and are, instead,simply thought to be the result of natural causes? This is, of course, animpossible question to answer, but the likelihood of this being even theo-retically possible makes it extremely difficult to determine whether or notthe incidence of contract killing is stable, getting worse, or, indeed, falling.

We acknowledge these weaknesses but do not necessarily believe themto undermine the overall thrust of our research. After all, for example, theoriginal typology about serial killers developed by the FBI in the 1980s wasbased on interviews conducted with 36 convicted serial killers (Holmes andDeBurger 1988; Holmes and Holmes 1998). As has been pointed out by anumber of scholars, those serial killers who therefore have evaded capturemight differ quite markedly from those who are eventually brought tojustice (see, for example, Wilson 2009). Even so, this has not stopped anumber of law enforcement agencies using this typology, which has there-after been developed and refined over time, to help them to look forpatterns and trends in a linked series of crimes and to develop theirinvestigatory techniques accordingly (see Egger 1984, 1998; Fergusonet al. 2003; Canter and Wentink 2004). We suggest that the typology beingoffered here might also be of similar use to law enforcement.

Conclusion

The dearth of academic research about hitmen is to be regretted, nomatter the all-too-real difficulties of researching this particular form ofviolent crime. Even so, this exploratory article has only attempted tosketch in the broad contours of the phenomenon and in doing so we hopeto prompt greater interest in this subject area, and its various cultures andsubcultures. 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 otherswill test our suggested typology and our broader conclusions that Britishhitmen do not exist solely or perhaps even primarily, within some secret,criminal underworld. Rather they are usually part of that community inwhich their hits takes place. Indeed, this simple reality is one of the majorreasons why they are eventually apprehended.

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

Finally, the sites of British hits were not usually bars, clubs, or casinosbut were far more likely to be the shopping centre, or the suburb in whichthe intended target lived. As a result, members of the public were all toooften witnesses to a hit. Hits in this respect were not unusual and extraor-dinary, but rather commonplace and ordinary. So, too, the motives for ahit being contracted were mundane. Frankly, the motivations to pay ahitman the relatively small amount to carry out a murder were depress-ingly banal. Husbands and wives fell out with each other, or wanted to gainearly access to life assurance policies; business partners decided to go, orwanted to go, their separate ways; business deals fell apart; and younggang members wanted to impress other, older, gang members with theirbravado. All of this is far removed from the media portrayal of the fictionalhitman who, on the evidence presented here, has little, or no connection,to his British reality.

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Date submitted: December 2013Date accepted: January 2014



The British Hitman: 1974-2013

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