Priests Hire Hitmen- To Kill Themselves!

[+ Lucky]

Just when you think you might have heard it all:

 

2 Catholic priests in Bogota, Colombia hired a pair of hit men to kill them, a Colombian prosecutor is saying today. They apparently had planned to hurl themselves off of a cliff, but lacked the nerve.

The NY Daily News is reporting: Rev. Rafael Reatiga asked his parishioners to pray for him and gave the choirmaster a list of songs for his funeral just before he was found shot to death together with another Roman Catholic priest, a Colombian prosecutor said Tuesday.

 

Authorities initially suspected robbery when Reatiga's body was found along with that of Rev. Richard Piffano, 37, in a car in southern Bogota on Jan. 27, 2011.

 

But on Tuesday prosecutor Ana Patricia Larrota said investigators had determined that it was suicide by hitmen: the two priests hired gunmen to kill them after Reatiga discovered he had AIDS...In addition to AIDS, Reatiga had syphilis and witness testimony indicated he was a regular visitor to places frequented by gays in central Bogota," the prosecutor said.

 

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/colombian-priests-hire-hitmen-kill-article-1.1022707#ixzz1mQNpKC9W

[+ Lucky]

Well, Anton, nobody is claiming that these priests handled the matter wisely. Just because they didn't hire the hit men the way you would does not mean they didn't hire them.

towleroad.com has more, including this: Investigators tracked down calls made by the two priests in the hours before they were shot. They came to a gang of hitmen and arrested two of its members, who were formally charged with the crimes Tuesday.

 

Read more:http://www.towleroad.com/2012/02/priests.html

[MsGuy]

 

This makes me wonder if the prosecutor really knows how criminals work. Bottom line, criminals want to make good money, most often regardless of how.

 

If anyone would hire a hitman, then most often the agreement is that you pay half of the agreed amount before, and the other half afterwards.

 

However, if "the customer" was an ordinary guy and not part of the underworld itself, then the hitman would just take the first half of the money and then do nothing. That's really easy money isn't it? What is it that the "ordinary" guy would do against the hitman to make sure that the job would actually be done?

 

Besides, if the job was to kill the priests themselves, then how would the hitman get the second half of the agreed money?

 

Me, me, me, call on me, Mr. Anton!

 

http://images.wikia.com/harrypotter/images/0/0b/HermioneHandUp.jpg

 

OK, so the gang cons the priests into bringing all the money to an isolated spot; then they rob the priests; then they shoot them to eliminate the witnesses to the robbery!

 

Do I get extra credit for knowing the answer?

[Lookin]

Sad as this story is, the responses do point out the need for a hit man review site where potential clients can weed out the scam artists, those who take the money and run, no shows, poor shots, non-professionals, and time-wasters.

 

Hit men who show up on time, look like their pictures, and perform the agreed upon services would get the highest number of positive reviews, written by -

 

Ooops! Never mind. http://i113.photobucket.com/albums/n237/XQuietThunderX/Emoticons/shy5F81.gif

[+ Lucky]

Are we not factoring in that this happened in Colombia? I think hit men standards there might be lower, but I have not seen the reviews!

[MsGuy]

Are we not factoring in that this happened in Colombia? I think hit men standards there might be lower, but I have not seen the reviews!

 

LOL, good point!

[adriano46]

It is also NOT unknown (say in Columbia, but also in many fomer Communist countries, and even Italy) for the underworld to single out clergymen/priests who perhaps rattle them by preaching against gangs, mafia etc... They try to silence them one way or the other, and the most effective final solution is to murder them and then stage it (even with the complicity often of police and prosecutors) with innuendos of homosexual or heterosexual proclivities to destroy completely the name of the dead priest.

 

This was a ploy often used to great effect in Poland against clergy who fought Communism, in Germany against clergymen who fought against Nazisim, in Italy against the poor village pastor who condemned the Mafia or the Cosa Nostra etc... Columbia with its heavy gang wars and drugs (and Mexicoor Brazil for that matter) often use this sort of ruse to silence a priest, and if it does not work, he finds himself dead... and his name forever blackened. Just adding something to think about as I also concur with Anton in this, having seen how this works often in Europe and Latin America.

 

Russia uses this even today against priests/clergymen who get in their way. Some years back, two foreign priests were brutally murdered in their apartment (days apart and by the same murderer supposedly, who coincidentally was a male escort, who was supposedly meeting one of them, but never the other...). They thought by throwing it out this way, the case would go quickly. It was discovered to have been staged, but the two priests were dead. Mexican gang lords use this ruse often to scare off a priest who is interferring in their recruitment of young new members.

[+ FreshFluff]

 

However, if "the customer" was an ordinary guy and not part of the underworld itself, then the hitman would just take the first half of the money and then do nothing. That's really easy money isn't it? What is it that the "ordinary" guy would do against the hitman to make sure that the job would actually be done?

 

But how does an ordinary guy get a hitman's name unless he's a good friend of someone in the underworld? Hitmen aren't exactly listed in the yellow pages, and there's no "Underworld Information Hotline"; you have to know someone. So "part of the underworld" is really a continuum.

 

It's a repeated game: The heavy underworld types might not kill the hitman for stiffing their friend, but they're unlikely to keep recommending him to others if he doesn't follow through. So I'm guessing they follow through most of the time.