It was a professional hit job given the description here...the killer was wearing gloves, a mask, had an empty suitcase and rode the elevator with the victim to his apartment.

The hitman was likely doing a deed for someone who paid for his service...

Not sure why everybody is suggesting a professional hitman based on the fact the murderer used a mask, gloves and a suitcase. I suppose you get that idea after watching an arbitrary crime movie. All it proves is intention.

How could it not be professional? What would it be otherwise?

The other clue is from the articles I've read is that there was no blood. No average person with a bone saw is going to be able to pull that off. Sorry.

> What would it be otherwise?

A guy with a plan and a regular job?

I don’t know why you think it’s less conspiratorial to believe this was just a regular joe vs a professional hit man. He had an electric saw and empty suitcase. left no blood and few clues.

didn’t take anything from the apartment either.

a regular joe who wanted to do this would’ve just shot him.

The story very much reads like a hit for sure. It sounds like he was interrupted because the neighbor called from hearing the screams and loud noises. I would imagine if he had another hour the body would have left the scene in the man's suitcase and the apartment would have looked spotless.

It surely means it's highly premeditated, but doesn't necessarily mean it's a hitman. The Stephen McDaniel case is an example of a boring-seeming law student showing similar levels of planning when murdering and dismembering a woman he was stalking.

The fact that there were screams loud enough to concern neighbors could suggest it wasn't quite so professional. If it were a professional hitman, why not use something guaranteed to instantly and silently incapacitate him, first, then focus on cleaning up the evidence? Or did they try to, but it didn't go as planned?

One possible explanation would be that the goal was to send a message (to him before his death, and others after it), not to try to make him disappear without a trace. Though, either way, it doesn't necessarily mean it was a professional hitman.

This is a professional hit. The hitman cut up the body in order to dispose of it. Presumably, he had to flee the scene early. This wasn't a crime of passion, this was an organized hit carried out on behalf of someone powerful. The hitman is probably a professional who was just carrying out a contract.

Why, in the middle of a ban on international travel, would somebody smuggle a killer across the Atlantic when there are plenty of perfectly capable killers in the extremely violent United States?

I don't know what you responded to, it's deleted now, so I can only address your question directly:

Reputation. If you know a reliable killer across the Atlantic but don't know one in America, it makes sense to smuggle your known reliable killer in rather than risk talking to a police officer posing as a contract killer. Even in "extremely violent America", if you start asking around for contract killers most people will get weirded out and tell the cops to take a look at you.

(The comment had suggested that his killer was likely brought from Nigeria.)

The "ban on international travel" is a rather pertinent part of that question, oddly enough. The kind of people that are capable of magicking someone across two closed borders and an entire ocean tend to not lack contacts in either country.

Having criminal contacts in both countries doesn't necessarily mean somebody trusts their criminal compatriots in both countries. Particularly when you're talking about a crime that's more severe (murder) than what they're normally trusting somebody with (smuggling perhaps.) I'd guess there are a lot of informants in organized crime. It seems the sort of business where the least trusting survive the longest.

If somebody took the risk to find a contract killer once and didn't get caught, it makes sense to me that they'd try to avoid taking the risk a second time by using the same killer.

Keep American jobs for Americans! ;)

However, perhaps they just couldn't get the right killer at the right price? Or maybe they're scarcer than you think? We keep hearing immigrants are taking American jobs, but in reality they're taking the jobs no American would take in the first place, so this may be more simple supply/demand...