The Murder Project: "Doing the Big Job"

Part of our goal with The Murder Project series is to assess how hitman prices have changed over time. Our assumption going in is that these prices shift according to the certainty (or lack thereof) of capture, and so more lawless epochs will be marked by lower murder-for-hire fees. A logical guess, perhaps, but does the evidence bear it out?

Today we start in the most obvious place for historical data of this nature: Luc Sante's classic Low Life, the preeminent non-fiction account of New York's