Short Stories Volume 2

The Unknown Hitman pt. 1

Since the first crime ever recorded in history, society has always been fascinated with who the greatest criminal was. Of course no one really knows because otherwise they wouldn't be called the greatest criminal. However, criminal is too broad of a category. There are varying degrees of crime. You've got your robbers, murderers, hackers, arsonists, forgers, rapists etc.

Yes they're all supposed to be bad but let's be honest here. No one cringed at the list until I said the last group. Even then within those groups they all have their own subcategories that differ from the rest.

So why don't be just stick with just one specific category. Murder but not just any type but an Assassin. If you look up the definition of assassin or assassination it's really not that descriptive. It just says the act of assassinating someone. Like no shit bruv. But if you word the question differently such as the difference between murder and assassination then you get a better description.

In fact the example that Google gives is that if someone kills your dog then it's not an assassination but a murder. Unless your dog was running for mayor. The definition of the difference is "A murder is the unjust, illegal killing of someone. An assassination is a type of of murder in which the victim is someone well known, usually in the world of politics."

It goes on to reference John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King are assassinations because their purpose was to destabilize the government by hurting the civil rights movements, respectively.

Hehe, I don't know why but I always laugh at that last part. Respectfully. As if there were a polite way to destroy civil rights.

So here is where I always got confused when I was younger. I fully understand this explanation and definition, however I thought that assassination also included the paying of someone to kill someone. Not trying to sound like those movies or anything but essentially putting out a hit on somebody. Technically that also falls under assassination but in a subcategory known as contract killing.

Now that's the one I am talking about. Who is the world's greatest assassin aka contract killer? That is a very debatable topic. Let's just name a few of the top dogs before we get to the one who deserves the crown.

First up is Julio Santana. He was a notorious Brazilian hitman considered by the international media as the deadliest hitman in history with having a total of 492 people officially. Unofficially his count is thought to be more than 500. This is considered the highest number of fatal victims killed by a single hitman.

Second runner up but here on the web says number one so you decide is Richard Kuklinski. It's said that his career span ran over decades. Now I couldn't find much more detail on Julio but here Richard's nickname was the Iceman. He got it from his habit of freezing the bodies but he also used guns, knives, cyanide, tire irons and his bare hands to carry out these murders for the five families of new york.

I wont mention the ones who killed the two great men of our history because if you ask me, they aren't really noteworthy. Yes they changed the nation even in the smallest degree but they were political and I guess for lack of a better term, one hit wonders. Men like Julio and Richard and many others are just on a whole other level.

This brings me to the one I truly believes hold the crown. I don't want to call them "The Unknown Hitman" because that's lame and not catchy at all like Iceman. But I truly don't know anything about them. No one does. Not the world or any government.

Before I go any further I want to make it clear that this isn't some big conspiracy or coverup. The fact is that this hitman has truly gone unnoticed because all of their crimes have looked like legitimately like accidents. An even bigger twist is that from what I have gone through and reviewed, they'ove done the same method twice. Some will be similar but there will be at least one different variable.

The only reason I have caught their trail is because of a certain amount of money that is transferred. I work as an accountant and for a while I worked for the IRS. I was bored looking at people who didn't pay their taxes or tried to commit insurance fraud. One little breadcrumb from this irrelevant company that was paying for some "renovations" of a new building.

The amount I shit you not was $123,456,789.00. Literally just counting up the numbers with I'm assuming the cents being zeros would be 10.

Of course you could call it paranoia or me looking for things that aren't there. Depending on the renovations the prices will change with all the materials and such. But that number stuck out to my like two flamingos walking alongside ducks. I didn't want to flag it right away but I did't just move on. I set a program to run through various banks, money loans, transfers etc. Any time that particular amount is wired anywhere, then I would be notified right away.

It took another year before I would get the notification. I followed where that money had come from and to who it went to. The first part was easy. Many of them were highly profitable businesses, though some were just wealthy ass people that probably wiped themselves with Benjamins.

I was about to go to my boss with the two cases when I started getting more notifications to previous transactions. It went as far back as twenty years. By the end of my shift I was left with 675 different files were this exact amount was moved.

When I dug deeper, discreetly of course, I found that in each case where the money had come from there was a high profiled death. Yes, there you could use the paranoia clause again but when you look at each high profiled case you narrow it down to the day that the money moved. Their link to the family or the business varied but that was too much of a coincidence to ignore.

My curiosity made me ignore all rational thought or self preservation. Each death was not elaborate or mind blowing in itself but the simplicity of them were astonishing. I think that's where they made their signature. Not by tagging the body, branding it, leaving a calling card or anything like that.

It was the fact that this hitman used whatever daily routine you had to kill you. This wasn't some movie or tv show where it was all a heart attack or car crash. No this person was meticulous and thought out everything.

So much so that I didn't realize that they had their own program set to notify them if anyone looked into them.