The shadowy world of contract killers has always fired the public’s imagination.
The silent “hitman” is often the star of the show in books, games such as Hitman featuring Agent 47 or films like The Mechanic starring Jason Statham.
But the reality can be a long, long way from the fantasy.
A few years ago I was part of a team that carried out research about the reality of the British “hitman”.
We found that there were four types: novices, dilettantes, journeymen and – the most successful – the master hitman.
I used the description “hitman” as I could only discover one woman who had ever carried out a hit – a young Maori woman living in London who had degrees in maths and chemistry, called Te Rangimaria Ngarimu.
In 1992, despite seemingly being a committed Christian, she accepted a contract to kill a roofing contractor called Graeme Woodhatch.
Dressed as a man, and armed with a photograph of her target and a gun, she went to the Royal Free Hospital in London (where Graeme was receiving treatment) and shot him four times in the head and body.
For killing Graeme on behalf of his erstwhile business partners she received £1500, although she had been promised £7000 with which she was going to buy a mobile home. After the murder she fled back to New Zealand.
However, after visiting her local church in 1994, Ngarimu seemed to undergo some sort of religious epiphany and so decided to return to the UK and face the music.
Still no one is any the wiser as to why she agreed to kill Graeme – at her trial she said that “something just snapped and I did it”.
She has now served her sentence and once again returned to her native country.
I didn’t really think much more about the case until the beginning of this month when, through one of my former PhD students, I received the biography of a personal trainer, “T Ngarimu” from the Fit Futures Academy, which has offices in Auckland and Christchurch.
And there is “T” smiling happily for the camera and describing how “as far as she can remember I have always been active, whether it be playing bullrush at school or playing various sports socially or competitively”.
“T” says that the sports industry has allowed her to “grow and to be the person that I am today”.
Her favourite phrase is, she says, “Go Hard!”
No mention is made that she had served a sentence for murder. So should I think of this as a success story?
In other words, that this is how a convicted murderer can serve their sentence, turn their lives around and not be defined by the worst thing that they have ever done?
Or, should I continue to worry that we still don’t know what it was that “just snapped” when “T” pulled the trigger that killed Graeme?
Was her motivation really just the thought of being able to buy a mobile home, or were there psychological, rather than instrumental, reasons that led her to take the life of another human being?
I’m still not certain how to answer these questions and so all I can say with confidence is that “T” continues to make me confused.
Gunned down in cold blood for fake Gucci hat
The hitman research I was involved in also unearthed some other extraordinary findings.
This is not a “get rich quick” profession, as the average cost of a hit in the UK was £15,000 – the cost of a medium-sized family car – with £200 the lowest fee paid for a successful hit. That hitman, 15-year-old Santre Sanchez Gayle, gunned down 26-year-old mum Gulistan Subasi in 2011 and with his £200 bought a fake Gucci hat.
Nor were hits carried out in smoky bars and casinos – they were usually executed in the open, often on pavements, sometimes as the target was walking their dog or going shopping, with members of the public looking on in abject horror.
The motives for contracting a hit included disputes within gangs or more organised criminal networks, domestic disagreements or, as with Graeme Woodhatch, business colleagues falling out.
This banal background is a world away from Agent 47.
Murder on doorsteps
One other finding from this research continues to fascinate me – the doorstep is the preferred site for the master hitman to carry out his hit.
Think Jill Dando in London or two Scottish cases: Alistair Wilson in Nairn in 2004 and Frank McPhie in Maryhill, Glasgow, in 2000, who was killed by a single shot to the head at his front door – no more than 500 yards from Maryhill Police Station.
Why the doorstep? Well journalists know only too well that “door-stepping” an interviewee is one way of ensuring that they get their story.
