The novice, the dilettante, the journeyman and the master: Revealed, the four types of HIT MAN, according to criminologists

The study has been done by criminologists at Birmingham City University

They interviewed criminals, police and studied newspaper reports of hits

They have come up with a framework of four types of hitmen to explain who gets involved in the profession and why



In the land of Hollywood, contract killers are pretty cool customers.

Be it Jean Reno's ultimate professional in Leon or John Cusack's slick everyman in Grosse Pointe Blank, film after book after video game has painted the hitman as a righteous (if amoral) dark avenger.

But how close it that to reality? When someone is gunned down, does the person pulling the trigger really fit this super-cool stereotype?

Santre Sanchez Gayle, left, was a 'novice' hitman, while Roger Vincent, right, was an experienced 'journeyman'



Professor David Wilson, who led the team of criminologists who conducted the research for the new study

This is the question asked and answered by a group of criminologists at Birmingham City University.

Professor David Wilson, who led the team of four researchers, said: 'All these images are Holllywood-ised. The hitman seems like quite an attractive image that people are responding too. It’s stylised, fetishized. They are all very professional, very competent, hyper masculine - but the reality is the 16-year-old boy who is getting paid £200 and is very successful.

'In the movies the hits usually take place in smokey bars and casinos but in reality they are taking place in the suburbs, in Middle England when people are walking their dogs or are on their way back from the shops or a meal or the gym. The hits were not in the underworld, they were in the overworld and usually with passers by as witnesses looking on in abject horror.'



The researchers pored over newspaper reports of contract kills, transcripts of court cases and conducted their own interviews with policeman, prison guards and convicted criminals.

The study, published in The Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, lays out a four category framework to explain the different types of people who become hitmen.

The first type is the 'novice'. As the name suggests, this is someone at the beginning of their killing career, possibly having just picked up their first contract.

Professor Wilson said: 'Often the novice is much younger but they tend to come from an offending background. With the novice there is a sense that they are trying to establish themselves within a gang network and therefore will gain kudos from committing the hit.'

WHO'S WHO OF ON SCREEN HITMEN

Novice - Colin Farrell's Ray in the 2008 film In Bruges is a good example of a novice. Hiding out in the Belgian town after his first hit went tragically wrong, Ray is wracked with guilt. Despite having little similar experience behind him Ray had envisioned the start of a underworld career but inexperience and immaturity meant it was not to be. Dilettente - Poor old Jesse Pinkman. The character for hit TV show Breaking Bad never set out to kill anyone but faced with a life or death choice at the end of the show's third series he feels forced into murdering a rival. Feeling like he stumbled into such an act of violence, nothing is ever quite the same again. Journeyman - 1997's Grosse Pointe Blank saw John Cusack's CIA-operative turned hitman return to his hometown for a high school reunion. Calm, collected and definitely not a man to be trifled with, Blank has carved himself a successful career in wet work but a slight reliance on luck stops him from stepping up to the next level. Master - Objective to a fault, (almost) nothing and no-one gets between The Professional and his target. The film's opening sequence shows how effective Leon can be and his strict rules, ruthless training regimen and under-the-radar lifestyle makes him the ultimate Hollywood assassin. Professor Wilson said: 'I've never met a master hitman so I can't really say, but I certainly imagine that is the sort of world they would exist in'.

The study flags up 16-year-old Santre Sanchez Gayle as an example of a novice. The teen shot Gulistan Subasi, 26, in London in 2010, in exchange for £200 - money he used to buy a fake Gucci hat. The hit itself was successful but Gayle was brought to justice because of his inability to stop bragging about what he had done.

The second category is the 'dilettante'. This is the only type that can be considered to have 'fallen into being a hitman' Professor Wilson explains. The dilettante is usually someone older, without a criminal background, who sees the quick fix money of a contract kill as their only way out of a crisis.

Professor WIlson said: 'It’s almost like they fell into becoming a hitman because someone offered them three grand to take out an ex-wife or a business rival. There is no sense therefore the dilitente wants to move through a hierarchy like the novice, they just want to overcome their crisis.'

The dilettante example used by the study is Orville Wright, a former legal clerk who accepted £5,000 in 1996 to kill Theresa Pitkin, 30, in London. However, Wright struck up a conversation with his intended victim and lost his nerve, unable to go through with the hit.

Due to their lack of criminal background, the dilettante is also the only type of hitman who is unlikely to be able to obtain a gun.



Category three is the 'journeyman' - an experienced, reliable, career criminal. Professor Wilson said that while this type of hitman will often have completed a greater number of contracts than any of the others, it's their connection to a specific area's criminal underworld that leads to their downfall.

He said: 'The journeyman hitman was often caught because of local intelligence, he was part of the community and often after he committed the hit, there was enough local intelligence that can be given to the police to bring them to justice.'

The study's example of a journeyman is the pairing of Roger Vincent and David Smith in 2003. The duo executed David King - a criminal who underworld bosses suspected had become a police informant.

The hit itself was meticulous. They gunned King down as he came out of his gym and then fled the scene in a van, which they dumped and brunt before switching to another vehicle. However, one mistake brought it all crashing down. Smith left one of his gloves at the site of the vehicle switch, which gave police the evidence they needed to track the pair.

The final category - the master - still has a level of mystery around it. For all their research, Professor Wilson and his team were not able to find any records of a master hitman being caught. They did, however, identify the gruesome work of such an operator.

The killing of gangland boss Frank McPhee in Glasgow in 2000 is a master's hit. McPhee was assassinated with a sniper rifle outside his home while his son watched. Professor Wilson described it as 'the most professional hit committed in Britain'.

As no master has ever been caught, it's difficult for the researchers to draw up a complete profile of what this type of hitman might be like.



Professor Wilson explained: 'You can’t really interview these people so it’s difficult to build a psychological profile but it became pretty clear to us that with the journeyman and the masters had a paramilitary or military background which meant they could gain access to weapons, were comfortable around weapons and be able to dispose of evidence after the hit, so were forensically aware.'

He is still trying to take his research further into the last two categories of hitman and is working with a group of PhD students to do so but it's slow going.