This week’s graphs illustrate data on hired killings in the United States (U.S.) and Australia. Specifically, the graphs show the sex of the solicitors, killers, and victims involved in these crimes, sometimes also called “contract killings” or “murders-for-hire.”
Data on hired killings are not widely reported in the U.S. Thus, hired killings in the U.S. are difficult to describe in a precise and contemporary way. The data from the U.S. that are presented below are from a Master’s thesis published in 1998. The author examined 30 hired killings that were attempted or completed in the state of Tennessee. In this study, the attempted and completed killings were combined into one category.
The data from Australia that are presented below come from the Australian Institute of Criminology and represent all known attempted or completed hired killings in Australia between 1989 and 2002. The Australian Institute of Criminology separated the data by whether the killing was attempted versus completed. The Australian Institute of Criminology also combined the solicitors and killers into one category called “offenders.” (Note, some of the attempted and completed hired killings in the dataset involved multiple victims.)
United States
Solicitors: Approximately half of the solicitors of hired killings were men (53%) and half were women (47%).
Killers: All but one of the hired killers was a man (97%). The type of relationship between the solicitor and killer varied: paramour or sexual relationship (21%), stranger (31%), friend (24%), kin (21%), or acquaintance (3%).
Victims: The majority of victims of the hired killings were men (70%). The type of relationship between the solicitor and victim varied: marriage (66%), paramour or sexual relationship (3%), friend (10%), kin (10%), or acquaintance (14%).
Source: Corsaro NM, “Murder for Hire: Event Characteristics and Causal Implications.” Master’s Thesis, University of Tennessee, 1998.
Australia
Offenders: The majority of offenders of completed (81%) and attempted (76%) hired killings in Australia between 1989 and 2002 were males. Of the 12 female offenders, eight were the instigators of the hired killing, whereas four were accomplices.
Victims: The majority of victims of completed (94%) and attempted (67%) hired killings in Australia between 1989 and 2002 were males.
The most common motive for the attempted and completed hired killings in Australia between 1989 and 2002 was “dissolution of a relationship,” usually an intimate relationship (12% of cases).
The amount of money offered for these hired killings ranged from $2,000 to $50,000 (AUD).
Source: Australian Institute of Criminology. Contract Killings in Australia. 2003.
Bonus Commentary
These data on hired killings represent another source of information dispelling the narrative around “gender-based violence,” which says that women are more likely to be the victims of violence, particularly within intimate partner contexts. First, men are more likely than women to be murdered via a hired killing. Hired killings of men then contribute to the homicide total across all homicide types, with men comprising approximately 75% of homicide victims in the U.S. and Australia.
Second, relationship dissolution is a main motive of hired killings. In the U.S. dataset, 66% of the relationships between the solicitor and victim were that of current or former husband and wife. Moreover, 21% of the U.S. cases involved a relationship of paramour or sexual partner between the solicitor and killer, suggesting that the wife was soliciting the services of her new lover to kill her current or ex-husband. Nevertheless, sometimes the ex-wife hires a friend, stranger, or acquaintance to “do the dirty work.” One famous example of this is Patrizia Reggiani, who hired a hitman to kill her husband Maurizio Gucci.
Finally, the Australian Institute of Criminology explained the various scenarios that lead relationship dissolution to feature commonly as a motive for hired killings: “Typically, the services of a contract killer are sought by a current or former intimate partner in order to prevent him/her from pursuing a relationship with someone else or in revenge for having done so. Other cases involved a lover who incited or solicited a hit man to eliminate their current partner so that they can be with their lover. Other cases are a result of custody issues associated with the dissolution of the relationship. In such cases where custody of the child or children is contested, then the intimate partner hires the services of a contract killer to kill their ex-partner so that they may gain sole custody of the children.”
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This is a heartfelt short video about a woman's father who killed his wife and was tried last year. The death was in a situation often repeated where the wife was violent towards him and others. https://www.msn.com/en-gb/video/news/daughter-forgives-dad-for-killing-her-abusive-mum-men-can-be-victims-too/ The daughter is in fact making a plea for men to be treated as human beings too. Yet even here there is a subtle difference. In that her father accepts responsibility for his conviction and there is little no bleating about things in the way that is familiar from cases of women, even those who planned and prepared their supposed accidental killing of their husband or partner. As this daughter points out men can't point to their trauma as mitigation, because we (society) presume they aren't human beings.https://www.msn.com/en-gb/video/health/daughter-forgives-dad-for-killing-her-abusive-mum-men-can-be-victims-too/vi-AA1IWzDG
Thank you, James. I always tell the women that claim that more men are murdering their wives than the reverse, that women hire hit men to kill their husbands, so their hands stay clean that way.