Contract killing is a form of murder or assassination in which one party hires another party to kill a targeted person or people. It involves an agreement which includes some form of compensation, monetary or otherwise. It is an illegal agreement. Either party may be a person, group, or organization. Contract killing has been associated with organized crime, government conspiracies, dictatorships, and vendettas. For example, in the United States, the Italian- and Jewish-American organized crime gang Murder, Inc. committed hundreds of murders on behalf of the National Crime Syndicate during the 1930s and 1940s.
Bobby Kent was a 20-year-old American man who was murdered by seven people, including his best friend, Martin Joseph "Marty" Puccio Jr in Weston, Florida. The murder was adapted into the 2001 film Bully.
Nicodemo Domenico Scarfo Sr. also known as "Little Nicky", was an American mobster who served as boss of the Philadelphia crime family from 1981 to 1990. Infamously known for his murderous reputation, Scarfo led the family through its bloodiest period until his conviction in 1988.
Janice Winblad Nicolich was an American woman who was killed in a car accident by a drunk driver. During the trial Nicolich's daughter wrote that she had forgiven the drunk driver and urged that the court do likewise. The subsequent court case led to a Nebraska Supreme Court decision on the issue of leniency in drunk driving deaths. The story was part of an The Oprah Winfrey Show and the book The Road To Forgiveness: Hearts Shattered by Tragedy, Transformed by Love.
The Colombo crime family is an Italian-American Mafia crime family and the youngest of the "Five Families" that dominate organized crime activities in New York City within the criminal organization known as the American Mafia. It was during Lucky Luciano's organization of the American Mafia after the Castellammarese War, following the assassinations of "Joe the Boss" Masseria and Salvatore Maranzano, that the gang run by Joseph Profaci became recognized as the Profaci crime family.
The murders of Julie and Robin Kerry occurred on April 5, 1991, on the Chain of Rocks Bridge over the Mississippi River in St. Louis, Missouri. The two sisters were raped and then murdered by a group of four males, who also attempted to murder the sisters' cousin.
Mary Jo Buttafuoco is an American author and motivational speaker. In 1992, she was shot in the face by Amy Fisher, a teenager with whom her husband had an affair.
The Mahmudiyah rape and killings were a series of war crimes committed by five U.S. Army soldiers during the U.S. occupation of Iraq, involving the gang-rape and murder of 14-year-old Iraqi girl Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi and the murder of her family on March 12, 2006. It occurred in the family's house to the southwest of Yusufiyah, a village to the west of the town of Al-Mahmudiyah, Iraq. Other members of al-Janabi's family murdered by American soldiers included her 34-year-old mother Fakhriyah Taha Muhasen, 45-year-old father Qassim Hamza Raheem, and 6-year-old sister Hadeel Qassim Hamza al-Janabi. The two remaining survivors of the family, 9-year-old brother Ahmed and 11-year-old brother Mohammed, were at school during the massacre and orphaned by the event.
Keith Hunter Jesperson is a Canadian-American serial killer who murdered at least eight women in the United States during the early 1990s. He was known as the Happy Face Killer because he drew smiley faces on his many letters to the media and authorities. Many of Jesperson's victims were sex workers and transients who had no connection to him. Strangulation was his preferred method of murdering, the same method he often used to kill animals as a child.
This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.
The Kansas City crime family, also known as the Civella crime family, the Kansas City Mafia or the Clique, is an Italian-American Mafia crime family based in Kansas City, Missouri.
Robert Lee Willie was an American serial killer who killed at least three people in Louisiana from the late 1970s to 1980. He was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of 18-year-old Faith Hathaway and was executed in 1984.
Judith Maryanne Moran is the matriarch of the Moran criminal family of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, involved in the Melbourne gangland killings.
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle is the first novel by American author David Wroblewski. It became a New York Times Best Seller on June 29, 2008, and Oprah Winfrey chose it for her book club on September 19, 2008. Winfrey also included the book as one of the few tangible gifts in her recession-themed thrifty Oprah's Favorite Things that year. The same year, it was a finalist for the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction.
Mother Warriors: A Nation of Parents Healing Autism Against All Odds is the fifth book published by New York Times bestselling author, activist and television personality Jenny McCarthy. Her previous book, Louder Than Words, reached #3 on the New York Times bestseller list, and has more than 200,000 hardcovers in print after five printings. Many of McCarthy's assertions within the book, such as that she cured her son's autism and the benefits of chelation are highly disputed within the medical and scientific community, as chelation therapy has been fatal in at least one instance. The foreword was written by her son's pediatrician, Jay Gordon.
Michael J. Coppola, also known as "Mikey Cigars", is an American mobster and captain in the Genovese crime family active in their New Jersey faction. He made national headlines when he went into hiding for 11 years to avoid a possible murder conviction. He should not be confused with Michael "Trigger Mike" Coppola (1900–1966), also a member of the Genovese family.
Kenneth Bishop is a Canadian truck driver who was a hitman for the Musitano crime family of Hamilton, Ontario. In 1998, Murdock was convicted of three mob hits, sentenced to life imprisonment, but later released on parole in 2011 after he served 13 years in prison.
Thomas Bartlett Whitaker is an American convicted under the Texas law of parties of murdering two family members as a 23-year-old. Whitaker was convicted on December 10, 2003, for the murders of his mother and 19-year-old brother; he was sentenced to death in March 2007. He spent years on death row at the Polunsky Unit near Livingston, Texas, before the commutation of his sentence.
The Luppino crime family, also known as the Luppino-Violi crime family, is an 'Ndrangheta organized crime family based and founded in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, in the 1950s by Giacomo Luppino. The Luppino family is one of three centralized Mafia organizations in Hamilton, with the other two being the Musitano crime family and the Papalia crime family. The Luppinos have had strong connections with the Buffalo crime family of Buffalo, New York.
Jarvis Jay Masters is an American author and death row inmate at California's San Quentin State Prison.
