If you have watched any movie about contract killers, you know everything there is to know about the profession.
On-screen, a professional hitman, agrees to kill a person on behalf of someone else, sometimes for a ridiculous amount of money.
The killer often asks for half of the total payment up front and the rest when the job is done.
To avoid watchful eyes, the killing is usually made in public using a long-range sniper rifle from a reasonable distance.
In real life, it is pretty much the same thing. However, unlike in movies, some real-life contract killers as surprisingly affordable, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology.
In the United States, one of the most famous cases of contract killing took place in San Antonio, Texas, in 1979.
The victim was Judge John H. Wood, a federal judge on his way to preside over the trial of Jamiel Chagra, an essential member of the Dixie Mafia, in a drug smuggling case.
Charles Harrelson was the contract killer paid to do the job. He was eventually arrested and sentenced to life imprisonment.
10 /10 Maximum John
Federal Judge John H. Wood was famously known as “Maximum John” for his tendency to impose harsh sentences on drug criminals.
He presided over the pre-trial hearing of Jamiel Chagra in a drug smuggling case, where the judge denied no fewer than 20 defense motions.
At the end of the hearing, Jamiel and his attorney and brother Joseph Chagra determined he would never have a chance to get a fair trial. They then both agreed to have the judge killed instead.
9 /10 Not An Isolated Case
The trial was set for May 29, 1979. On the same day before the test, Judge John H. Wood was shot in the back of the head outside his house in San Antonio, Texas.
The bullet from a high-powered rifle lodged near the upper part of his chest. At that time, he was the only federal judge to have been assassinated.
Still, investigators thought the killing was related to the attempted murder of Assistant U.S. Attorney James Kerr six months earlier. There was no physical evidence to draw a direct connection between the cases, however.