An execution-style murder, also known as execution-style killing, a "gang style", or "kill shot" is an act of criminal

murder Murder is the unlawful killing of another human without justification or valid excuse, especially the unlawful killing of another human with malice aforethought. ("The killing of another person without justification or excuse, especially the ...

where the perpetrator kills at close range a conscious victim who is under the complete physical control of the assailant and who has been left with no course of resistance or escape. Its name comes from such murders being similar to the usual meaning of

execution Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to conclude that ...

, which is the taking of life by

due process of law Due process of law is application by state of all legal rules and principles pertaining to the case so all legal rights that are owed to the person are respected. Due process balances the power of law of the land and protects the individual pers ...

. Execution-style killing is most often a live bullet to the brain or heart, and victims are sometimes killed while kneeling. The terminology may derive from the process of binding the victim and killing them at close range while conscious. Some

thrill killing A thrill kill is premeditated or random murder that is motivated by the sheer excitement of the act. While there have been attempts to categorize multiple murders, such as identifying "thrill killing" as a type of "hedonistic mass killing", ac ...

s have variously been described as execution-style murders.

United States

An example of an execution-style murder was the 1929 St. Valentine's Day massacre in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

, where a number of assailants posed as police officers. Color of authority, however, is not a defining component of the event, as the crimes of

Stanley Williams Stanley Tookie Williams III (December 29, 1953 – December 13, 2005) was an American gang member and spree killer who co-founded and led the Crips gang in Los Angeles. He and Raymond Washington formed an alliance in 1971 that established th ...

and

Dennis Rader Dennis Lynn Rader (born March 9, 1945) is an American serial killer known as BTK (an abbreviation he gave himself, for "bind, torture, kill"), the BTK Strangler or the BTK Killer. Between 1974 and 1991, he killed ten people in Wichita and Pa ...

also fall into this category. The weapon involved is often a

handgun A handgun is a short-barrelled gun, typically a firearm, that is designed to be usable with only one hand. It is distinguished from a long gun (i.e. rifle, shotgun or machine gun, etc.), which needs to be held by both hands and also braced ag ...

Long gun A long gun is a category of firearms with long barrels. In small arms, a ''long gun'' or longarm is generally designed to be held by both hands and braced against the shoulder, in contrast to a handgun, which can be fired being held with a single ...

blunt instrument A blunt instrument is any solid object used as a weapon, which damages its target by applying direct mechanical force, and has no penetrating point or edge, or is wielded so that the point or edge is not the part of the weapon that inflicts the i ...

bomb A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-transmitted mechan ...

s, and bladed weapons have also been used in killings labeled as execution-style, such as the 1993

murder of Bobby Kent Bobby Kent (né Khayam; May 12, 1973 – July 14, 1993) was an Iranian-American man who was murdered by seven people, including his best friend, Martin Joseph "Marty" Puccio, Jr (born March 21, 1973). in Weston, Florida. The murder would be ada ...

Hollywood, Florida Hollywood is a city in southern Broward County, Florida, United States, located between Fort Lauderdale and Miami. As of July 1, 2019, Hollywood had a population of 154,817. Founded in 1925, the city grew rapidly in the 1950s and 1960s, and is no ...

, where Derek Kaufman delivered the fatal blow with an iron club.

References

Killings by type Terrorism tactics {{crime-stub

United States

See also

References