This ‘Hired Gun’ Takes Aim at Murder Plots

It’s got to look like a suicide, the voice on the telephone told George Forsythe.

“I got no problem with that,” Forsythe replied.

Push her off a bridge and make it look like she jumped, the voice said.

“Yeah, whatever,” Forsythe said.

All the while, Forsythe’s tape recorder rolled, collecting enough evidence to arrest the caller for soliciting his wife’s murder.

Forsythe is a Maryland state trooper with a specialty: He’s the one authorities send in when they learn someone is looking to hire a hit man.

Forsythe, a talkative, baby-faced lawman who agreed to be interviewed on condition his age and a more detailed physical description not be disclosed, poses as a killer to cheating spouses, spurned lovers, angry business partners and anyone else who wants to have a problem “eliminated.”

“Usually it’s husbands or wives who want to kill the other over child custody or alimony,” he said. “Sometimes it’s about insurance money.”

Forsythe has handled dozens of murder-for-hire cases in eight years, 20 of which resulted in arrests. All of those, he said, ended in convictions or guilty pleas. His two predecessors in the department were involved in more than 200 cases in a decade.

Forsythe tries to win clients’ confidence by acting “like a guy who’s crazy enough to do just about anything for money.”

If someone suggests a murder method that isn’t credible, he says so.

One woman in rural Maryland who wanted her husband killed asked Forsythe to stage a drive-by shooting. Too unusual for the quiet area, Forsythe said. He recommended a carjacking in which the husband would be shot apparently because he wouldn’t give up his beloved Cadillac.

One jilted lover offered Forsythe $75 to hide a mercury-soaked rag under the front seat of his rival’s car. The man thought the fumes would eventually kill the driver.

“I told him that for $75, all I’d do was hit the guy on the head with a baseball bat,” Forsythe said.

Then there was the computer programmer who tried to arrange his girlfriend’s murder from jail, where he was being held for stalking her. Forsythe was called in after the man’s cellmate complained he wouldn’t stop talking about killing the woman.

“I think you know what I want,” the man told Forsythe from a jail pay phone.

Forsythe coaxed him into saying he wanted the woman “eliminated,” and closed another case.

Around the country, police departments are increasingly training officers to pose as hit men. Forsythe is a 13-year trooper who is an undercover agent in the State Police’s Bureau of Drug and Criminal Enforcement.

The people seeking Forsythe’s supposed services seem as ordinary as the guy next door, he said. Some are wealthy professionals; others can barely scrape together $100. Most are from the suburbs, since street gangs and mobsters don’t turn to outsiders for help.

Informants play a key role in foiling murder-for-hire. Often, an ex-convict or someone who brags of knowing thugs is approached by someone who wants another person eliminated. For some reason, the ex-con contacts authorities instead of finding a hit man. That’s when Forsythe is sent in.

Forsythe’s job is to play along until he has enough evidence to go to court.

When he can’t gather enough to prove someone is soliciting murder, he gives the person a warning: If any harm comes to the targeted victim, you will be the prime suspect.

“Before I make an arrest, I have to be absolutely certain this person was going to have someone killed,” Forsythe said. “I don’t want to make a mistake with someone who’s just having a bad day.”