One Behind The Ear

For those among you considering a career in contract killing, the recent release of a paper entitled 'Becoming a Hitman' by the Centre for Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University, could provide some handy hacks...

The paper, which is published in the Howard Journal of Criminal Justice, 'discusses what might motivate someone to become a hitman'.

But before we get into any trouble with those nice Birmingham criminologists, we feel honour-bound to say that we're just kidding. We would in fact like to point out that this paper would be very little use to anyone looking to embark on such a questionable enterprise. It will probably come as disappointment to some people therefore that the paper's conclusions, at least according to the release highlighting its publishing, are altogether prosaic. Hitmen apparently succeed in contract killing where they successfully bury any feelings or emotions. To anyone who's ever watched 'The Sopranos' this is hardly 'Hold the Front Page' stuff.

What is marginally more interesting is the fact that the same sentence could equally hold true when 'hitmen' is substituted for 'banker' or 'venture capitalist' and 'contract killing' is replaced with 'banking' or 'M&A'. And sure enough, the research apparently bears this out; 'Hired killers who consider themselves strategists or businessman, doing 'just a job' as one hitman described it, can convince themselves they are dealing with a target rather than a person, says the Birmingham research.

It would seem that this study found notorious gangland enforcer Jimmy Moody to be its 'master' hitman. The reasons given for his selection as the ne plus ultra in Nemeses was that 'Moody reframed his victims as targets, seeing getting the job done as a normal business activity. These sorts of killers are akin to 'criminal undertakers', who have given themselves 'special liberty' to get things done in the name of business.'

Moody's resume in fairness makes colourful reading. Before he was out of his twenties he was already apparently a top enforcer with the Richardson mob with a nice line in freelancing. It was probably his quick thinking one night in March 1966 in Mr Smith's a club Catford Southeast London that earned him early and valuable respect. He was there with a number of others, including Eddie Richardson and Frankie Fraser, when a brawl broke out between them and members of the Hayward and Hennessey mobs. Moody used his Jag to get injured people out before the Police arrived on the scene. 

By 1967, he was facing manslaughter charges, along with his brother Richard, over the death at a party of ship steward, Bill Day. They both received six years. Moody was released in 1972, and some time later, became part of the notorious Chainsaw Gang, specialising in extreme violence on attacks on security vans and using chainsaws. Despite this fearsome reputation, Jim Moody was by all accounts a doting father and grandfather. All of which plays marvellously for any analysis that looks to illustrate the life of a highly compartmentalised sociopath.

While awaiting trial on three robbery charges involving around £930,000, Moody escaped from Brixton prison in 1980. While on remand he and an IRA prisoner in an adjoining cell, Gerard Tuite, struck up a friendship. When Moody and a fellow-robber Stanley Thompson organised their breakout in December 1980, they took Tuite with them. 

Tuite himself would seem to have quite an operator and he is alleged to have been involved in no less than eighteen bombing attacks in five British cities along with Brighton Bomber Patrick Magee. Wikipedia helpfully points out that now Tuite is a businessman in the south Cavan and north Meath region.

It's at this point that things get decidedly murkier. Moody's life on the run certainly involved a stint across the water and it's unlikely that his time in Troubles era Ireland was spent in bucolic bliss. A lot of speculation surrounds his activities in the 1980s and there have been allegations that he worked as a hired assassin for the Republican movement but these should probably be treated with some scepticism.

In December 2004, former Provisional Irish Republican Army volunteer, writer and historian Anthony McIntyre writing in 'The Blanket' had this to say in his review of Wensley Clarkson's biography, the eponymous 'Moody': 'Allegations that he was a hit man with the organisations’ [IRA] internal security department require a suspension of the reader’s critical faculties. The evidence is little more than an allusion here, an unnamed security source there. The IRA was hardly without its own large supply of ‘OBE’ (one behind the ear) practitioners that it had to rely on the services of an English gangland hit-man.' Interestingly, while McIntyre expresses scepticism at the claim, he does not dismiss it out hand. (But if one were to hypothesise that it was true; why would the IRA rely on an outsider for such sensitive work?)

Either way it seems Moody returned to London around 1990/91 and he may well have burnt a lot of bridges back in Ireland. His alleged connection with the death of gangland figure David Brindle in 1991 as part of a feud with the Turkish Cypriot Arif gang may have had something to do with his own demise two years some two years later. (For the record, the Brindle family deny David's role in any gang activities.)

Drinking in the Royal Hotel in Hackney on a rainy June evening in 1993, Moody was gunned down by a man using a 38. Webley. The man entered the pub, ordered a drink and shot Moody four times before leaving the bar with his pint of Fosters untouched. In the end, big Jimmy Moody met an even more professional operator but I guess that's just business.