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Do high profile contract killings like in fiction actually ever happen? (self.asklemmy)

submitted 1 year ago by whaleross to c/[email protected]

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You know the type. High security, weeks or months of stakeout, sniper three blocks away...

The hitman sorta things I recall from the news are either planned and executed by national intelligence agents or some savage gunning and running from hired brutes, but never the variant with sophistication and private sector.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The private sector, like corporations? It happens to a degree but you'll find connections to both intelligence agencies and organized crime pretty quickly. Just look into Coca Cola's assassinations of union leaders in Colombia if you want an example.

There is a fairly significant amount of planning that goes in to these, but it doesn't have the "cool" of fiction. Killing in reality is brutish and horrific.

[–] whaleross 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I was thinking just anything outside national intelligence basically.

Oh yeah, the Coca Cola murders! Looking it up now I'm surprised it was in the 90s and even 00s and today nobody cares. For some reason it would make sense if it was in the seventies. Oil and mining industries come to mind as well for murdering unionists. I'd imagine it still happens in poor countries and never reaches the international news, while the murders being of the most brutal massacre sort imaginable.

You're absolutely right. I'd never expect real life murder to be cool. Even less it to be a business that is supposedly covert and underground but where everyone is hot and flashy with charming eccentric quirks and everybody knows everybody.

At best I'd assume a couple of paranoid individuals with antisocial traits carefully exchange information and experiences over a quiet drink at some anonymous hotel bar,. While keeping a close eye on each other, because why would an independent professional murderer trust an elite competitor or even a colleague, regardless either of them being in it for the thrill or the money.