commentary by Patrick H. Moore
Murder-for-hire was always a staple of the cold-blooded world of organized crime. Many a swinging dick has made decent money working as a hit man for the mob. Some of these buddy boys may have met a fate more or less identical to what they dished out. But, in a sense, these shenanigans were accepted as par for the course – just another seamy element of the gangland lifestyle.
Where we don’t expect murders-for hire is within the nuclear family. Say, for example, I decided to whack my sister Constance (I don’t really have a sister named Constance). I would be honor bound to off her and dispose of her body quickly and seamlessly, no easy task as we’ve seen so often.
But suppose you decide that you want to kill either Bro or Sis, or both of them, and suppose you throw in your parents for good measure. That’s a lot of killing for one man to attend to.
So what do you do? Fool that you are, you hire a hitman, and thus – you sign your life away. Why? I’m not sure why… But for some reason, the minute you shake hands with Mr. Hit Man and give him a retainer, you are doomed. Of course there can be some peculiar wrinkles along the way. That was certainly the case with 36-year-old Ryan Champion, who for still unknown reasons, allegedly hired a hitman to take out his parents and sister. Since we don’t know what his motive was, all we can do is cleave close to the shore and stick to the alleged “facts” as best we can.
Dylan Lovan of the Associated Press writes:
Vito Reservato
Ryan Champion, 36, was indicted in Trigg County Wednesday on the murder count, three counts of complicity to commit murder and complicity to commit kidnapping.
Along with Ryan Champion’s family members, the body of 22-year-old Vito Riservato was found last month at the family’s home in Cadiz, which is about 80 miles northwest of Nashville, Tennessee, in western Kentucky. All four died of gunshot wounds.
(This is why Kentucky has always been known as “the dark and bloody ground.” Once upon a time it was settlers and Native Americans. Now you just keep it in the family.)
The upshot of this is that the prosecutor (known as Commonwealth’s Attorney G.L. Ovey) believes that Champion hired Reservato to “take out” his family, and then killed him himself. Now it’s not hard to come up with motivation for killing the hitman. Eliminating this cog in the wheel means you probably won’t have to pay him in full and he’s certainly not going to make like a canary and sing a “dark and bloody tale”. Rather, he’ll be part of the “dark and bloody tale”.
Ovey, who is considered the top prosecutor in Trigg County, believes it started out as a murder-for-hire scheme, but “it didn’t end up that way.”
“In a murder for hire, he would’ve got paid, but … he was murdered,” Ovey said. Ovey is not well-disposed toward Champion and has vowed to seek the death penalty.
Although Ovey is convinced that Champion was behind the scheme and whacked Riservato, up till now, he has chosen not to speculate on what the mastermind’s motives were.
The victims are Champion’s parents, Lindsey and Joy Champion, and his 31-year-old sister, Emily Champion. Emily was employed as a veterinarian in Louisiana. Champion’s mother Joy taught for 30 years at schools in Trigg County.
Now lest we think Champion was a complete and utter idiot (in addition to allegedly being a stone-cold killer), he did apparently have a somewhat grandiose plan to deflect any unwanted suspicion away for him. During the period after the bodies were discovered, he adopted what might be termed the Big Lie approach, appearing on TV and radio proclaiming that he had “turned the tables” on Riservato, who according to Champion had barged into the house and started shooting.
It’s unclear if the police ever really thought Champion was innocent, but “Riservato was reported to be the lone perpetrator in the slayings until Champion was arrested Oct. 31.”
Champion – who has that “Wise Blood” look (those of you from the South may know what Wise Blood is) – had plenty of nerve. After the killings, he played Mr. Down-and-Out, posting updates on FB saying he had survived and was recuperating. He also posted that he was in need of money and looking for odd jobs to pay for bills and gas after the tragedy.
Poor Emily Champion was only in Cadiz for a short visit. If she hadn’t been there, Champion would at least have a sister to write him letters as he runs through his appeals on Death Row.
During the murders Big BRO and Vito certainly didn’t do her any favors, at least not according to Prosecutor Ovey, who says she was retrained by duct tape during the murderous assault.
Champion will be back in court in four weeks for arraignment. In the meantime, he is cooling his heels in Christian County Jail on a $5 million bond.
So let this be a lesson to you, Friendos. If you want to whack somebody in the family (or even the whole family), you must eschew all hitmen. You gotta do the dark and bloody deed yourself. That’s the only was you’re going to get away with it, but even with that time-honored approach, your chances of getting away with it are slim indeed.