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Comment by XorNot | Hacker News Reader

Contrary to popular belief, there is not a readily and highly available supply of assassins and hitmen in the world.

The problem with this whole "he totally didn't kill himself" thing is...okay, so how did they kill him? Because you can't just put a gun in the hand of an unwilling person and force them to shoot themselves without leaving evidence.

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You are talking about a company that participated in CIA kidnappings. Surely they can find a way.

https://www.aclu.org/press-releases/aclu-sues-boeing-subsidi...

The CIA and NED are way to interested in the wellbeing of Americans to do something so heinous. /s

While the CIA have done a variety of coup like overseas operations I think they'd be reluctant to kill people to meddle with a domestic factory safety hearing.

I think you heavily under estimate what normal people motivated by money are capable of doing.

In my friends highschool, some businesses guy was paying highschool kids (16 - 17 ish) to strangle car owners and steal their cars. They were later caught.

Also, watch or read Killers of The Flowers Moon.

The problem with planned murder is that it is all hidden, and the details are fuzzy. So there is alot of reasonable doubt.

But trust me, there is alot do planned killing going on out there.

Out of interest do you have an article on the case at your friend's school?

> normal people motivated by money… strangle car owners and steal their cars…

Those are not in any way normal people. If someone makes it to 16-17 y/o without acquiring that fundamental moral lesson, I would not characterize them as normal, whatever the cause of that failure.

I think what I meant was that they "looked normal".

They were just attending classes like their class mates.

It's not like they had a horns on thier head or walked around with pitchforks that made them obviously seem like killers.

Agree, not normal. Then again, what percentage of high level executives or contractors with companies like Boeing are "normal"?

"Normal" means common here, and the fact that common people happily commit heinous acts is nothing new. E.g. the holocaust was comitted by "normal" people.

Moral grandstanding won't change the fact that civilization is rather thinly veiling the violent ape in most of us

>Moral grandstanding won't change the fact that civilization is rather thinly veiling the violent ape in most of us

I don’t think civilization is a panacea here.

To my mind, civilization is not exactly a strict synonym of peaceful generous enlightened humanism. Of course as a phenomenon it can encompass this kind of behavior, but just as well as it can help foster genocides, war and torture.

Holocaust didn’t happen despite civilized minds, it happened specifically through a civilizational scheme.

All There is to Know About Adolph Eichmann by Leonard Cohen

EYES:……………………………………Medium

HAIR:……………………………………Medium

WEIGHT:………………………………Medium

HEIGHT:………………………………Medium

DISTINGUISHING FEATURES…None

NUMBER OF FINGERS:………..Ten

NUMBER OF TOES………………Ten

INTELLIGENCE…………………….Medium

What did you expect?

Talons?

Oversize incisors?

Green saliva?

Madness?

Back in Finland I saw an incredible play: https://www.tinfo.fi/en/NPfF-Plays/48/I-Am-Adolf-Eichmann - the utter banality of the thing, how the convicted mastermind behind the genocide was "merely solving ongoing logistical problems". And how the trial turned into a massive media circus, likely letting a number of equally culpable war criminals off the hook.

Turns out there is currently a fresh play in works that may have some of the same undertones: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-trial-of-eichmann-world-pre...

Go watch the recent movie "The zone of interest".

https://youtu.be/GFNtVaAuVYY?si=jiQlDA9Z1EKnPZ0Z

About 3% of the male population has Antisocial Personality Disorder (ie, sociopathy). That could be described as normal - we're talking 1 person in 33. You'd probably meet one at a party. Nature no doubt builds some people to be killers.

Now most of them aren't going to kill anyone because that would be dumb. But that is a pretty decent pool of people who would consider the idea for money.

Boeing has about 150,000 employees (from the 2022 company report). US workforce is 23% women.

What if one of the 3465 males had its job at risk because of Barnett?

150,000 * (1-23%) * 3% = 3465

3% strikes me as a pretty extreme minority, which makes it seem like the opposite of ‘normal.’ They might be more common than most people think (IE, 1 in 33), but that isn’t something that makes them normal.

3% is 3465 Boeing employees. That doesn't seem so minor.

150,000 * (1-23%) * 3% = 3465

Can you provide non-anecdotal evidences for your first statement?

Because it's fairly easy to do so for the opposite statement. e.g. https://assassination.globalinitiative.net/monitor/

No but do you know what your average medical examiner makes? Professional hitmen might be rare af but bribing or otherwise pressuring local officials is pretty pedestrian.

One of the richest men in Norway cultivated a relationship with a torpedo and used his services on several occasions. It happens.

As a fellow Norwegian now living in the UK: That term is so archaic and unusual in English that odds are quite a few people won't know it at all (In 24 years in the UK I don't think I've ever heard it used)

For the non-Norwegians: "Torpedo" in Norwegian has adopted the 1920s US slang for a hit man / hired gun, and in Norwegian it's in common, contemporary use, though more often for threats and violence than outright murder.

Okay that was making me think of the guy who had intimate relations with unexploded WWII artillery shell a few years ago (https://www.businessinsider.com/france-man-had-wwi-shell-lod...) and wondering how a that would work physically considering the size of a torpedo, and how it related to hitmen. Thing are much clearer now.

Thanks, I hadn't heard that before.

The good news is that you only need one assassin. It's not like you're trying to mass-produce dead people...

> Contrary to popular belief, there is not a readily and highly available supply of assassins and hitmen in the world.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assassinations_by_th...

This is just a bunch of conspiracy theories. As in, a list of various government factions conspiring on various assassination campaigns. It's a good theory mind you. I would love to see evidence for the opposing theory.

You put the gun in their hands after you shoot them, as in every movie ever.

Firing a gun leaves residue on your hands etc. They can tell whether you fired it

Sure, they can tell, if they look.

But people with well-developed career instincts might not want to look. I think you overestimate how much the regular policeman, coroner etc. cares about truth for its own sake. Do you really want to pick a fight with Boeing?

It's very easy to play Nelson and turn the blind eye. Making up a coherent narrative in a lie is hard. But the lie "I didn't notice anything suspect" is very safe.

They can tell whether you fired A gun, not necessarily that you fired that specific gun into your specific body. It's circumstantial evidence at best.

Better evidence would be signs of a struggle or calculating bullet velocity to see if it came from the gun in that position. However, there are ways of doing this without actually causing a struggle. Wait for them to go to sleep; you could even give them some melatonin or something to make them drowsy. If it's in a car, put some nitrogen canisters on the A/C intake to make them pass out.

If it is nefarious, there will be evidence somewhere. Whether you care to look for that evidence, know where to look for it or have the technology to find it ... that's another matter altogether.

I think you got my point backwards. If you are found with a gunshot wound in your head, holding a gun, but you don't have gunpowder residue on your hand, it's pretty safe to say you didn't shoot yourself.

Of course there are ways to get around that but the killer has to actually perform that workaround.

I got your point, but I was making that point that even then, it doesn’t mean anything. Maybe they went to a shooting range that afternoon. Maybe the killer does something to ensure the residue is there. Maybe the killer manipulates them in their sleep. Who knows.

No you still don't seem to get the point. I'm saying the *absence* of gunpowder residue means something, I'm not saying the presence of it means anything.

withinboredom seems to be making the similar but tangential point that, in the same way that absence of gunpowder is evidence [of something] while presence of gunpowder isn't evidence of anything, it's possible to demonstrate that a death was not by suicide, but it isn't possible to demonstrate that a death was by suicide. Same idea, but reversing "which part of the sentence is the variable".

I understand what they're saying, I just don't know why they keep explaining it when its irrelevant to what I'm saying.

I'm not "keeping explaining." I made a counter-point, and you redirected me to your point; I acknowledged that I got your point and explained I was making a counter-point, and you reiterated your point. I upvoted your final reiteration to ack that the conversation was over.

If you fire a gun inside a car, both people and the car would be full of gun powder residue, not just the hand that shot - I think.

... and that should be the same residue.

I'm not a trained killer, but I have watched some movies. To account for residue, just place the firearm in the corpse's hand, point in a random upward trajectory and pull back on the dead person's trigger finger. Optionally, replace the spent bullet in the gun's magazine.

I feel you would have come up with this same solution had you needed to.

My guess is that Hollywood is as inaccurate with regard to homicide and secret assassinations as it is with hacking and programming.

It is far, far easier to just carry a small phial or swab of cordite residues and copper fines that you then apply to the back of the hand between thumb and forefinger, where swabs are taken. No screwing around.

Perhaps that is why so many suicides, such as that of Gary Webb, involve two bullets from the same gun

Most shots don't kill instantly, unless you go straight through the brain.

I’m guessing that’s a solved problem by now.

There is a case where a woman "stabbed her self" 17 or so times, including in the back of the head and it was ruled a "suicide"

It does not take much for a motivated medical examiner to rule a death a suicide, their are plenty of examples where clearly not suicide was been rule suicide in history.

Then there is always the movie "The Shooter" where they had an arm contraption purpose built to force someone to "commit suicide", The device itself is plausible

> Contrary to popular belief, there is not a readily and highly available supply of assassins and hitmen in the world.

See: Lake City Quiet Pills

LCQP has been conclusively proven to be some random guy inventing a character.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHWYTwY0hiw

Yeah where’s your evidence for this?

> Contrary to popular belief, there is not a readily and highly available supply of assassins and hitmen in the world

What? There certainly are killers for hire in existence.

Citation needed for your first statement, certainly doesn’t rhyme true with what I hear in the UK.

As for mocking suicide… I think you’d have to talk to a professional about what they do it. Given David Kelly, Epstein, and many other high profile cases, it does seem to be as difficult as you imagine.

The more "interesting" case in the UK was GCHQ analyst seconded to the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS/MI6) who supposedly killed himself by stuffing himself in a bag padlocked from outside, placed in a bathtub, and suffocating himself in a Security Service safe house.

The inquest concluded his death was "unnatural and likely to have been criminally mediated" though with to little evidence to outright state it was an unlawful killing. The police eventually decided he'd likely locked himself in, despite the lack of fingerprints on both the bath and the padlock having made it a rather extraordinary feat for him to get into the bag and lock the padlock.

Which to me goes to show that whether or not you get away with faking a suicide likely has relatively little to do with how well - or plausible - you fake the suicide vs. how well you sufficiently prevent a link to yourself and the power you have to prevent a proper investigation.

At least in the case of David Kelly the circumstances were plausible.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Gareth_Williams

Haven’t you ever played Assassin’s Creed?

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