Hit Man: A technical manual for independent contractors | Hacker News Reader

Hit Man: A technical manual for independent contractors

en.wikipedia.org

155 pointsthunderbong65 comments

An interesting 'detail': Nancy Crampton-Brophy (the author) was recently convicted of killing her husband in Portland, Oregon. Seven years before her conviction, she also wrote an essay titled 'How to Murder Your Husband'.

So he was competiting in the Olympics of ignoring red flags. While she was competiting in the Olympics of least intelligent murderers. Even OJ managed to figure it out: verdict, then books.

> Even OJ managed to figure it out: verdict, then books.

As a thought experiment, let's begin with the assumption that OJ didn't kill Nicole Brown or Ron Goldman. If he really didn't do it, if he was innocent of the murders, how much would it fuck with him to have that prosecution against him? How much would it fuck with anyone to have that level of national vitriol?

_If_ he hadn't committed the murders but folks generally assumed he was guilty, it seems likely that it would mess him up. He could blame the prosecutors, blame the news media, blame the victims (that he didn't kill), blame society at large.

_If_ he hadn't committed the murders but folks generally assumed he was guilty, does it follow that he might make dark jokes about the murders, try to capitalize whatever he could financially from the murders, and generally engage in behaviors that seem reprehensible to the general society?

I'm not arguing that he's innocent -- but a false accusation can destroy anyone's life, so I'm arguing we shouldn't assume later behavior is evidence of guilt.

I am a true crime fan and I did a careful study of OJ material and I do indeed believe he is guilty. During the Ford Bronco chase OJ held a gun to his own head as AJ drove, which was not focused on during the trial. Clearly he was suicidal, and the “suicide note” discovered also shows unstable mental state.

I don’t believe anyone else had the motive to commit the crime, in contrast to OJ who was a documented serial wife beater and had a violent temper. It’s clear to me he did it.

Right, this totally makes sense. Every time I am accused falsely of something, I am making a deal with somebody to write and publish a book claiming I did that very thing, and then lie about writing it myself. That's what every falsely accused innocent person does in such a situation, right?

That was an online essay, not a book

One of the two great Portland Hitman murders that did not pan out in the last 15 years: https://www.wweek.com/news/2016/08/17/a-hit-man-came-to-kill...

> In the mudroom at the back of the house, Susan found a note by the microwave from her husband of almost 18 years, Mike. "Sue, haven't been sleeping. Had to get away—Went to the beach."

Wow. Tell me you definitely planned this murder without telling me you definitely planned this murder.

Do you have a source on this? (On the claim that she was the author)

Nancy Crampton-Brophy was the author of "How to Murder Your Husband", but not "Hit Man".

The author of Hit Man is also rumoured to be a woman, but her (?) real identity has never been disclosed.

Despite the title I was expecting a book about independent technical contractors with "hit man" used as an euphemism, but no it's an actual manual for contract killers. It's interesting that the book started out as fiction, but was then changed to a non-fiction format to fit the audience of the publisher, which ultimately led to the book's demise.

Dirty deeds, done dirt cheap.

Not shocked to see it was published by Paladin Press, also (in)famous for publishing The Anarchist Cookbook

I was expecting the same. It does seem like a good euphemism for a contractor that kills it (not literal killer).

It is. At a former employer, they brought in a contractor for a very targeted task and informally refered to it as hiring a "hit man."

I was expecting a book about the music industry with a cynical take on formulaic music - maybe a biography of someone like Bill Drummond.

Hit Parade would be a better title for such a book.

(KLF had a few hits and wasn't a solo act.)

Try "Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business" by Fredric Dannen

There's a site for freelancers called Gun.io, which uses a similar dysphemism.

I thought it was for home contractors and figured I should read it to better deal with them.

I could use that book

Oh wow, Paladin Press books from the used bookstore were such a big part of my adolescence. Maybe I shouldn't admit that, but how else is an 11 year old going to learn important things like the secrets of the ninja, or how to be a smuggler, or how to live off the land in a pre-internet era? Schools were sorely lacking in the important stuff.

Similarly, somehow a friend of mine had a Loompanics shopping catalogue. Lots of fun and eye-opening titles!

Loompanics was later bought by Paladin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loompanics

I was similarly going to mention Loopanics press which i used to collect. (principia discordia, lock-picking)

The titles were so radical. As a teenager, I never "dared" to order any of them. But they were always out there, advertising a radical life of a career in, well, for example, murdering people. Seeing such titles definitely left an impression. Of some strange sort..

Same here, just reading the catalog was eye opening. I still remember the disclaimer in the Loompanics books.”Not for sale to prisoners or Canadians”.

I loved that catalogue. Don't know why. Same thing that attracted me to the anarchy section on underground BBSes. I'll never forget the most chilling book title: "How To Kill".

Textiles of course has an obligatory copy: http://web.textfiles.com/destruction/hitman.txt

> It is not recommended that you take any contract that pays less than $30,000, and that is working mighty cheap. To work for any amount less would be amateurish. There are guys all over town who will kill a man for $50 to $5000. And the people who hire these thugs usually get exactly what they pay for.

Replace "kill a man" with "launch a product" and "thugs" with "devs" and you get some surprisingly familiar advice.

And note, that's $30k in c. 1983, which is ~$90k today according to www.usinflationcalculator.com.

Ahh text files. That takes me back. So many hours as an unsupervised youth reading there.

> In 1993, a triple murder was committed in Montgomery County by a man who was alleged to have used this book, Hit Man, as his guide. He was caught and convicted and sentenced to death. Wanting to profit from their loved one's murder, and realizing that the murderer himself was too poor to be worth suing, the family of those killed by the hit man sued Paladin Press, the publisher of the book Hit Man, saying Paladin Press "aided and abetted" the murder.

It's harsh to claim that the family "wanted to profit from their loved one's murder". They obviously wanted to hurt everyone who was involved in the murder of the victim. If the publisher thinks they were in the right, they should have blamed the legal system, not the family.

Lmao the files on that site are a crock of shit.

>To buy guns, go to a poor area and find a drug dealer. Ask him where you can buy a gun. Don't forget to keep the arms dealer's phone number so you can buy more ammo later

All of those files were written by middle class white children. There's literally nothing of value in them.

The full text of the book:

https://archive.org/stream/Hitman_A_Technical_Manual_for_Ind...

Other formats, including a scanned copy (which some publishers are currently attempting to force the Archive to discontinue): https://archive.org/details/Hitman_A_Technical_Manual_for_In...

Incase anyone's curious - no, there isn't much here that would be applicable to business consulting, startups, technical contracting etc. Many other much better places to read about that: Patio11's essays (http://kalzumeus.com), The Art of War are two that immediately come to mind.

This book, kinda like "Steal This Book" was more of a meme that it really was an actual guide.

Any actual truth, which might have been sparse to begin with, would have been rapidly picked and shared with cops; the M-O would have been clear. And that's assuming it was a real guide -- it was actually written by a housewife who later killed her husband and went to jail for it.

> it was actually written by a housewife who later killed her husband and went to jail for it.

You're getting this mixed up with the book "How To Murder Your Husband", whose author was convicted of killing her husband

> author was really a divorced mother-of-two who simply fabricated much of the material

O_O

jamesgill 44 minutes ago | unvote | next [–]

Please use links rather than copy-paste to refer to another post.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35514327

Links don’t get previewed. It’s why many people copy paste from external sources instead of / in addition to linking. This is a blessing (never have to click on slow external link) and a curse (rare to ever clicks on links they’re too slow). If I just linked then nobody would click on it and I’d not get my point across. And I did t just want to copy the message since it wasn’t mine, so in place attribution as HN comment makes sense.

It seems to have influenced Hollywood writers. The 1995 Stallone/Banderas Assassins film has a lot of details straight out of this book, for example.

These sorts of "forbidden knowledge" books (also including the Anarchist Cookbook, Poor Man's James Bond, etc.) exist in a sweet spot for bullshitters. The readers who can't understand the professional literature on e.g. making explosives and turn to your book are not competent to evaluate what they're reading. The few who attempt to follow the instructions and find them lacking are also unlikely to post verified reviews about how the explosive boobytrap did not kill the target as advertised. An author can mix together correct but partial information, speculation, and imagination as desired. It won't hurt sales if the instructions for homebrewed potassium cyanide don't work.

This reminds me of a story that happen long ago. I was working at a farm, I was with one of my mates and we were tasked with some general farm duties. One day we discovered a shed full of bags of Potassium Nitrate... I then recalled reading this recipe for a smoke bomb on the Anarchist Cookbook. Perfect! we though... all we need is sugar now...

We almost burned the whole place to the ground... for sure we did learn a valuable lesson that afternoon hahaha We did finish the job btw, and got the cost of replacing the lino deducted from our paychecks...

That sounds awfully familiar :-)

Just substitute me for you and your mates and the kitchen for the farm and, well, let's just say my aunt was not happy! At least the flames didn't quite reach the ceiling, so we still had a house to live in.

> The few who attempt to follow the instructions and find them lacking are also unlikely to post verified reviews about why the explosive boobytrap did not kill the target as advertised.

These days, who knows. We had Silk Road for a while.

Long ago, SWIM attempted some of the napalm recipes. It did create a flammable, gelatinous muck, but also ate holes in and leaked out of the storage containers the guide recommended.

At the time, there was no public forum in which to complain about this oversight, just a lot of "oh shit" heard echoing across the backyard when a test batch was ignited.

> SWIM

It's so funny to me how four simple letters can tell you so much about the kinds of communities someone has spent time around. IYKYK I suppose.

For those interested, there is a podcast about this book and some cases it's been relevant in: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hit-man/id1449636432

Curiously, the Illinois House just passed a law prohibiting the banning of library books. If this book were to exist in a library, and someone complained about it, it sure would make an interesting test case.

https://abc7chicago.com/book-bans-illinois-library-house-of-...

God how cool would it be if that were a federal law - if public right to access literature were a right?

And now this book is AI training material as all the others.

My my initial reactions to your comment:

1) Are you sure it is?

2) And, if so, so what?

Evidently, the reader who was caught did not read the section about fulfilling contracts discreetly.

Indeed, I believe the publishers actually used this argument in their defense: that although the killer had a copy of the book, he didn't really use it. He got caught because he did several things the book explicitly said not to do.

Honestly, not a bad defense I suppose! That's pretty funny

Not a very good manual, apparently. The guys who used it were caught speedily.

I’d imagine the authorities have read it more times than any prospective criminal entrepreneur.

I'd imagine the authorities are MUCH lazier than that. I recall an episode of "First 48" (a kind of reality TV show following homicide detectives) where the suspect was on the run and occasionally posting to Facebook. The homicide detectives never bothered contacting Facebook for tracking information and instead just waited a few months till police officers found the suspect (who went on to kill himself in the standoff).

Anyway, my point is that I think police detectives are less like the expert professionals of TV shows and films and more like any other government employees. The vast majority of them would be doing well if they read their official training manuals and nevermind more exotic research like this hitman guide.

The guys we know about

come on, i thought this is an insightful guide about consulting, with a catchy thread title

mildly disappointed

Get back to me when Agent 47 writes his book.

Probably not the best model to follow.

* Be androgynous, bald, and the same build as everyone else on the planet. Other people's clothing is the only access control governing access to secure areas.

* Nobody will ever think to look in closets or deep freezers.

* A white man in a turban or a giant crow costume will attract no attention anywhere.

* Nobody will ask questions when you show up to someone else's shift wearing their bloodstained, hole-riddled uniform.

* If you drop an obvious explosive device in a crowded area, a helpful security guard will always come along shortly to retrieve and deliver it to the nearest lost-and-found.

Thanks, I got a good laugh out of this. You're right, 47 would be a ridiculously bad hit man in real life.

>>A white man in a turban or a giant crow costume will attract no attention anywhere.

Funny you say that. There's an interview on YT with retired Delta Force Sergeant Major nicknamed "Shrek". He mentioned how he used to do solo reconnaissance missions in Afghanistan, dressed as a local. When asked how he pulled this off, being a large white man with a weak command of the local languages, he replied: "Pretend to be a retard, and just grunt/mumble responses when stopped at checkpoints. You'd be surprised how NOBODY wants to deeply interrogate and anger a retard carrying an AK-47."

dang, your comment just took me down an hours long rabbit hole of watching YTs of Sergeant Major John McPhee...

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