Inside the WILD real

Release time：2024-05-22 00:44:40 Source：Earth Encounters news portal

An upcoming movie is set to unravel the true story of a fake hitman who was responsible for more than 60 arrests over a 10-year career.

To many, Gary Johnson, from Houston, Texas, was a strait-laced professor at a local community college - but there was much more to his story.

Because, for more than a decade, he moonlighted as a fake assassin - working as a decoy for police and turning in potential clients who had been trying to hire a trained killer.

His life is set to be the basis of Netflix's new comedy film titled Hit Man - starring Glen Powell - but here, FEMAIL has explored the true details of the case ahead of its release.

To many, Gary Johnson, from Texas, was a strait-laced professor at a local community college - but there was much more to him. Pictured is Glen Powell as Gary

Gary's full story was first laid bare in a long-form piece in Texas Monthly from 2001, which chronicled his work.

The piece detailed that the then 54-year-old had lived alone - in the company of two cats, named Edo and Id, and a handful of goldfish in a garden pond.

His neighbors believed that the unassuming bachelor, who had been married and divorced three times, had worked in 'human resources at a company downtown' and described him as 'always polite.'

But most reported that he kept largely to himself.

Unbeknownst to his acquaintances, Gary, who tragically died last year, had a black telephone next to his bed.

It was on this line that he would be contacted about potential new clients - whose desperation arose out of anything from turbulent marriages to failed business partnerships.

Gary would then use disguises to assume the identities of various assassins with aliases including Mike Caine, Jody Eagle and Chris Buck.

He would also offer a range of methods depending on the client with anything from car bombings, drive-by shootings and burglaries-gone-wrong on the table. 

For more than a decade, he moonlighted as a fake assassin - working as a decoy for police and turning in potential clients who had been trying to hire a killer. Pictured is Glen Powell as Gary

Gary would then use disguises to assume the identities of various assassins with aliases including Mike Caine, Jody Eagle and Chris Buck. Pictured is Glen as Gary

The informant was billed as 'the greatest professional hit man in Houston,' but he was actually a staff investigator for the Harris County district attorney's office who was constantly on call to play the role of a hitman day and night.

He was responsible for getting more than 60 people arrested over a 10-year period.

Gary, who would be constantly wired for sound to record murderous declarations of intent by the client, was described as 'the Laurence Olivier of the field' and the 'perfect chameleon.'

Speaking about his adaptability to appeal to a whole range of clients, the outlet gushed at the time: 'In law enforcement circles, he is considered to be one of the greatest actors of his generation, so talented that he can perform on any stage and with any kind of script.'

In one of his biggest stings, Gary was approached by Lynn Kilroy, then 38, who was the former vice president of the Houstonaires Republican Women.

She had been married to husband Billy Kilroy, who was an investment banker and heir to an impressive oil fortune, for a little over a year, but the relationship was already failing.

Lynn had been afraid to divorce him over fears he would try to get full custody of their infant and instead began telling friends that she wished him dead.

He ate lunch at the same Mexican spot every day taught courses at a community colleges two nights a week. Glenis pictured in the movie Hit Man

Gary, who was raised in Louisiana by his carpenter father and housewife mother, spent most of his days working with the video and audio recordings he had taped during his operations. Pictured is a still from the movie

The socialite was put in contact with Gary a short time later and the pair met up in a hotel where she handed over $200,000 in jewelry - including her wedding ring and engagement ring - as a down payment.

Lynn was arrested the very next day and later pleaded no contest to a charge of solicitating murder before being sentenced to five years' probation.

But Gary's methods had previously been brought into question.

In the past, attorneys argued that he would intimidate or bamboozle his potential clients into 'saying things they don't really mean or that he cleverly twists the conversation to make it appear they are asking him to commit murder.'

However, the taped conversations seemed to suggest otherwise with Gary giving people the chance to reconsider their blood-thirsty requests. 

Discussing his unusual career with the Texas Monthly interviewer Skip Hollandsworth, he said: 'What I'm really there to do is assist people in their communication skills. 

'That's all my job is — to help people open up, to get them to say what they really want, to reveal to me their deepest desires.'

He added that most people who approached him were not ex-cons. 

'If ex-cons want somebody dead, they know what to do. My people have spent their lives living within the law. A lot of them have never even gotten a traffic ticket,' he said.

'Yet they have developed such a frustration with their place in the world that they think they have no other option but to eliminate whoever is causing their frustration. They are all looking for the quick fix, which has become the American way. 

'Today people can pay to get their televisions fixed and their garbage picked up, so why can't they pay me, a hit man, to fix their lives?' 

He also said that the health of the economy was intrinsically linked to the number of people looking for a hitman.

'When the economy is good... people don't get so frantic,' Gary shared. 

'But when it starts going bad... everyone gets a little bit crazier and starts thinking about knocking someone else off.'

Gary, who was raised in Louisiana by his carpenter father and housewife mother, spent most of his days working with the video and audio recordings he had taped during his operations in preparation for trial. 

He ate lunch at the same Mexican spot every day taught courses at a community colleges two nights a week - one on human sexuality and the other general psychology.

But Gary was acutely aware that his days as a fake hitman would not last forever - referencing the increasing chances of being recognized as well as the long-term psychological effects of being at the center of a 'rather depressing outlook on the human condition.'

Elaborating on why he had not been able to settle down in a stable relationship, he candidly shared: 'I think it would be fair to say that I don't let many people get too close.'

Netflix's Hit Man is set to be released on June 7.

Related articles