Successful contract killers are people who are able to see what they do purely as a job, according to a new study published by researchers at England’s Birmingham City University.
According to the study’s findings, hitmen tend to operate best when they’re able to compartmentalize and detach themselves from their victims’ humanity, regarding killing as simply a means to a profitable end.
The researchers behind the study, leading criminologists Professor David Wilson and Mohammed Rahman, point to the Irish Republican Army’s infamous hired gun Jimmy Moody as a paragon of the profession.
Moody, despite having no political affiliation to the militant group, succeeded in large part, Rahman argues, because he was able to separate his grisly work from other aspects of his life.
“Moody reframed his victims as targets, seeing getting the job done as a normal business activity,” said Rahman. “These sorts of killers are akin to ‘criminal undertakers’, who have given themselves ‘special liberty’ to get things done in the name of business.”
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