The Hack | 1

Speaker 4 Wandry Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of KO List early and ad-free.

Speaker 7 Join Wandry Plus in the Wandry app or on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 9 Hey, it's Carl here.

Speaker 5 I'm the presenter of the show.

Speaker 10 I just wanted to let you know that this episode contains references to suicide.

Speaker 9 We've put some links with the resources in the episode notes in case you're affected by the things we talk about in the show.

Speaker 14 Everything was quiet when Detective Randy McAllister drove down the dark, tree-lined road to the old winehouse.

Speaker 17 There aren't really any street lights for the most part,

Speaker 17 but I could see flashing emergency lights down the road.

Speaker 19 It was around 8 p.m.

Speaker 15 on November 13th, 2016.

Speaker 21 McAllister pulled down the gravel drive.

Speaker 1 It was after harvest time and crops were turning brown in the fields.

Speaker 17 There were a lot of police cars there, you know, a lot of police officers. I saw Stephen Alwine and their son standing out on the road.

Speaker 23 Detective McAllister approached the house, an open-planned one-story building with solar panels on the roof.

Speaker 18 The door to the garage was open, and light from inside spilled out, casting shadows on the neatly cut grass.

Speaker 17 I went through the access door in the garage inside the house.

Speaker 17 As you step through that door, you're in a mudroom, a couple of dog kennels there.

Speaker 28 The first thing he noticed was the comforting smell of a suburban family home.

Speaker 17 There was a pumpkin being roasted in a big roaster on the countertop in the kitchen. It felt kind of warm and homey.
There were pictures of the family on the walls in the living room.

Speaker 17 I just got a sense that this was a normal family and they seemed to love each other. They seemed to be very involved in each other's lives.

Speaker 30 Detective McAllister made his way down the hall towards the master bedroom.

Speaker 31 He stepped through the doorway.

Speaker 6 There was a body on the floor next to the bed.

Speaker 32 It was Amy Alwine, Stephen's wife.

Speaker 13 In the crook of her left arm was a gun.

Speaker 13 It looked like a suicide, but Detective McAllister needed to be certain.

Speaker 22 He told one of the other officers on the scene to go and ask Stephen if Amy was right or left-handed.

Speaker 17 And he indicated that she was right-handed, which would explain the wound in the right side of her head if it was suicide.

Speaker 29 Except, the gun wasn't in her right hand.

Speaker 17 I've seen weapons in suicides do weird things and seemingly defy physics sometimes, but the gun was found on the left side of her body.

Speaker 16 That was enough to make McAllister pause.

Speaker 22 He taped off the scene, got a search warrant, and called in a a forensics team to come down and take a look, just to be cautious.

Speaker 11 They sprayed the house down with luminol, a chemical that glows a pale blue in the presence of blood.

Speaker 17 When they luminoled the scene, there were bloody footprints throughout the house. From the master bedroom on back to the mudroom next to the garage,

Speaker 17 there was evidence of a large blood pool right outside the master bedroom.

Speaker 17 This is going to be a big case.

Speaker 29 Holy cow.

Speaker 37 Detective McAllister was right.

Speaker 38 It was going to be a big case.

Speaker 29 Not just for him, but for me.

Speaker 25 Bigger than I ever could have imagined.

Speaker 40 What began there with Amy would catapult me into the darkest reaches of the internet.

Speaker 39 It would involve hundreds of murder plots across dozens of countries, a dark web cybercrime empire, the FBI, Interpol, and me and a small team of journalists, investigators, and hackers having to make life and death decisions we never thought would be in our hands.

Speaker 21 And it all centered around one document,

Speaker 29 the kill list.

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Speaker 23 From Wandery and Novel, I'm Carl Miller.

Speaker 29 This is Kill List, episode one: The Hack.

Speaker 3 In June 2020, I was at home in my flat in West London, one of the places in the UK hit earliest and hardest by the pandemic.

Speaker 16 It was lockdown, and outside, the roads were silent, apart from the sound of ambulances.

Speaker 20 All right, Chris, what's been going on?

Speaker 47 Way too much, way too much.

Speaker 38 A cascade of things. Well, two things.

Speaker 25 I was on a video call with a man called Chris Montero.

Speaker 49 Chris has a short beard and long dark hair pulled back into a ponytail, greying a little at the temples.

Speaker 44 His pale face appeared almost white against the gloom of his flat, and he looked at me with dark rings under his eyes.

Speaker 50 He was an IT specialist by day, but a hacker by night.

Speaker 4 Chris had called me and said we needed to speak urgently.

Speaker 13 All right, well, Chris, tell us about this case.

Speaker 11 Is it

Speaker 11 the first serious one? One minute, I'll go into it just a sec.

Speaker 29 So, what has happened?

Speaker 34 I'm a technology researcher at a think tank and an author.

Speaker 41 I first met Chris while researching a book about how power is being transformed in the digital age. Chris's work had fascinated me for a long time, and I thought it might make a good podcast.

Speaker 29 At that time, my world revolved around writing and papers, talks, a bit of travel.

Speaker 41 It was comfortable, normal.

Speaker 4 But everything changed when my life collided with everything you're about to hear.

Speaker 31 And it all began with what Chris had to show me.

Speaker 11 A document filled with strange usernames and messages.

Speaker 52 I would like to order a killing by stabbing using a tactic on life.

Speaker 53 I'm wondering if a mugging gone wrong might be an option. Maybe use something like heroin or fentanyl.

Speaker 3 Chris was doing what he often did, investigating the myths and rumors that swirl around about the darknet.

Speaker 42 He was looking at a Hitman for Hire website, a place where people go to try and hire assassins.

Speaker 36 Chris was poking around, probing it, seeing what he could learn.

Speaker 29 And then, he almost stumbled over something momentous, a vulnerability, a little opening in how the website worked.

Speaker 11 And he could squeeze through that gap and into the back end of the website.

Speaker 55 He could see what the administrators could see and that included the kill orders that were being made.

Speaker 27 Every single one of them.

Speaker 53 Kill him and make it look like a car accident on the road.

Speaker 13 Right now, all over the world there are hundreds of people going about their lives with no idea that somebody wants them dead.

Speaker 54 This person needs to go away, not only silenced, but disposed of without a trace, never to be found again.

Speaker 40 Someone Someone in these people's lives filled with hatred, jealousy, or rage, has paid to have them killed.

Speaker 57 Need target killed, make look like an accident.

Speaker 56 Seeking out to be burned down with occupants inside. No survivors.

Speaker 49 Chris took me through the list.

Speaker 33 Along with the messages, there were names of what appeared to be real people being targeted.

Speaker 7 Photos, descriptions of their habits, their addresses.

Speaker 11 And one of the names on the the list was Amy Alwine.

Speaker 23 Amy lived in a sleepy little Minneapolis suburb called Cottage Grove.

Speaker 30 It's the kind of place you'd move to to get away from the action.

Speaker 1 It's all green lawns and neat clapboard houses.

Speaker 48 The highlight of the social calendar is the annual Strawberry Fest with its grand parade, pet show, and a strawberry pie-eating contest.

Speaker 50 It was late May 2016 when Amy Alwine's phone rang.

Speaker 27 Two police officers were outside her house, one from Cottage Grove Police Department, the other from the FBI.

Speaker 1 It was not a call Amy expected to receive.

Speaker 55 43 years old, a mother and professional dog trainer, She and her husband Stephen were devoted churchgoers who'd been together since they met in college.

Speaker 44 Run-ins with the law were not a part of her day-to-day life.

Speaker 21 Amy wasn't at home when the officers called, so she went down to the local police station the next day.

Speaker 11 When she arrived, an FBI agent sat her down in an interview room.

Speaker 36 They had something to tell her.

Speaker 1 Someone had made what they described as a death threat against her on the internet.

Speaker 29 They asked Amy who she thought could be behind the threat.

Speaker 11 Amy didn't know.

Speaker 29 She couldn't think of a single enemy.

Speaker 11 At a loss, Amy gave the agent some names: friends, people she knew from a dog training business. And in the weeks after, the FBI did some searches on people's electronic devices.

Speaker 29 They asked questions.

Speaker 29 Nothing.

Speaker 11 Amy and her husband installed a security alarm on their house.

Speaker 3 They bought a gun for protection and stored it in a cabinet by their bed.

Speaker 50 Almost two months later, in late July, Amy received two strange emails.

Speaker 53 I am still watching you and your family.

Speaker 56 I expect to see your obituary in the paper in the next couple of weeks.

Speaker 1 The emails told Amy to kill herself and threatened her friends and family if she didn't.

Speaker 33 She contacted the FBI.

Speaker 51 Whoever it was that had it in for her was still out there.

Speaker 20 According to the local police, the FBI told Amy that the emails actually seemed like a de-escalation compared to the threat they found online.

Speaker 41 They would keep investigating.

Speaker 49 For a while, Amy didn't tell her family about the death threat, but holding it in was torture.

Speaker 23 Late one evening that August, after Amy's son had gone to bed, she sat out on the deck with her sister Julie. The two of them had always been close.

Speaker 23 When Julie went to college, Amy wrote her a letter every single week so she wouldn't get homesick.

Speaker 23 Sitting in the warm night air, Amy's voice shook as she told Julie she feared that the person who wanted her dead might hurt her family.

Speaker 23 How hard it had been to pass names to the FBI, possibly casting suspicion on innocent friends.

Speaker 23 She desperately wished that she could just apologise to whoever was behind the threat for whatever she had done to anger them.

Speaker 44 Then, a few months later, on November 13th, at 7 p.m.,

Speaker 36 Minneapolis 911 Dispatch received a call.

Speaker 1 It's pretty distressing to listen to.

Speaker 63 911, what's the address of the emergency?

Speaker 8 There's blood all over her.

Speaker 63 Okay, what is your address, sir?

Speaker 4 It's Stephen Orwine, Amy's husband.

Speaker 55 He told the operator he'd come home to find his wife on the bedroom floor with a gunshot wound to the head.

Speaker 63 Does she still have the gun, sir?

Speaker 62 Sir?

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 37 Detective Randy McAllister had examined the scene and he wasn't sure this was a suicide.

Speaker 60 I mean at this point we know at least somebody cleaned up the scene.

Speaker 12 And there was another reason why Detective McAllister was suspicious.

Speaker 49 Back in May he'd been contacted by the FBI who said they were looking into a threat against Amy.

Speaker 27 According to McAllister, the FBI FBI had only told Cottage Grove Police about a vague internet threat and asked for help making contact with Amy.

Speaker 4 They didn't provide any more details.

Speaker 21 Now he asked the FBI for any information they could give him about their investigation.

Speaker 17 When we finally got the reports was when we fully understood that, okay, somebody actually spent what we estimated to be $12,000 to $13,000 on Bitcoin to have her murdered.

Speaker 17 That's the first time we really truly understood that.

Speaker 31 Sifting through the FBI reports, McAllister realized what this so-called internet threat had really been.

Speaker 29 Nine months earlier, someone had gone onto the darknet and paid for Amy to be murdered on the very Murder for Hire website that Chris Montero had broken into.

Speaker 32 They went by the username Dog Day God.

Speaker 17 I am looking to hire you for a hit.

Speaker 61 What is the price in Bitcoin for a hit and ideally making it look like an accident?

Speaker 34 The site administrator replied.

Speaker 35 Regarding the price, normal killing by gunshot is $5,000. That is 13 Bitcoin.
A killing by a gunshot is the easiest and cheapest.

Speaker 26 Dog Day God uploaded a picture of Amy, a broad smile across her face as she leans against the railing of a ship.

Speaker 67 They gave her address and a detailed breakdown of her movements.

Speaker 61 The target will be traveling out of town to Moline, Illinois, can

Speaker 60 On the 6th of March, Dog Day God made a payment of over $5,000 in Bitcoin to the assassins.

Speaker 61 For reasons that are too personal and would give away my identity, I need this bitch dead. So please help me.
Thanks.

Speaker 68 The FBI told Detective McAllister they'd found an internet threat.

Speaker 29 But this wasn't just a threat.

Speaker 34 Someone was planning Amy's murder in secret.

Speaker 58 Dog Day God spent weeks messaging the Hitman for Higher Site Administrator, a shadowy figure who is often anonymous, but sometimes goes by the name Eura.

Speaker 9 They discussed the logistics of the killing, the price of the hit, the location, the best way to buy Bitcoin.

Speaker 12 But then, Dog Day God started getting frustrated.

Speaker 61 It does not look like anything has happened yet, and I still have no evidence that she's even being trapped.

Speaker 35 yura the site administrator replied you're right this has been dragging quite a long time and needs to be completed asap i will explain a bit why this has been so chaotic even if maybe you don't want to hear excuses

Speaker 35 yura offered a solution we can assign a great team with experts that have military training if you can add eight bitcoin to your account

Speaker 13 dog day god was willing to try again but then

Speaker 61 we are halfway through our current window and i have not heard anything yet. I just talked with her, which means that it's not done yet.
Not good.

Speaker 36 Still no sign of a hitman.

Speaker 61 Just requested a refund.

Speaker 52 You guys have not been able to get this done.

Speaker 17 My gut feeling upon first looking at it was it was a scam.

Speaker 60 Detective McAllister realized that the site's administrator had no intention of delivering on the hit.

Speaker 49 They were just taking the money and stringing Dog Day God along.

Speaker 33 But even if if there were no hitmen, Dog Day God was clearly deadly serious.

Speaker 58 They wanted Amy dead and soon.

Speaker 33 Detective McAllister believed these messages could lead him to Amy's killer.

Speaker 17 Dog Day God had a lot of details that only somebody very close to Amy would have, even down to the level of describing where Amy was traveling to.

Speaker 48 McAllister handed the order details to a computer forensics team.

Speaker 33 While they worked on tracing the hit payment, McAllister dug into the people closest to Amy.

Speaker 1 He started with her husband, Stephen Orwine.

Speaker 5 Stephen was the one who had reported Amy's death to the police. They'd been married for 20 years.

Speaker 1 At the local church, Stephen was one of the respected elders.

Speaker 9 He gave sermons, held couples counselling, and even filmed dance tutorials for the church with Amy, waltzing across their living room.

Speaker 33 After Amy's death, Stephen was staying with Amy's parents.

Speaker 12 But there were a few details that made Detective McAllister curious.

Speaker 33 Three days after Amy's death, Stephen was brought in for an interview at the police station.

Speaker 17 When he came in for the interview, he came in with his attorney. Now, under our legal system in the U.S., that's perfectly acceptable.

Speaker 69 That's his right.

Speaker 17 But in my entire career, I've never had a loved one of a suicide victim talk to us with an attorney.

Speaker 29 During the interview, Stephen seemed distant, even a bit cold. That That didn't prove anything.

Speaker 14 I mean, people can react in all sorts of ways to traumatic events.

Speaker 29 But Detective McAllister was looking for leads, and his next stop was to get a warrant to search Stephen's phone and computers.

Speaker 13 Stephen had been messaging women on multiple dating websites.

Speaker 17 Ashley Madison was one of them, which is a well-known website for men to cheat on with other women.

Speaker 29 On his phone, the police found a strange contact.

Speaker 17 Specifically, a female name and a phone number. No last name.
He apparently was having an affair with her.

Speaker 3 Stephen had even met up with women on trips he'd take to give sermons at churches out of state.

Speaker 17 You almost feel disappointed because, on the one hand, there's this perception that they're just a great family. Then you start realizing, okay, he's not so great.

Speaker 55 From those digital contacts, the next step for Randy McCannister was Stephen's finances.

Speaker 17 He had sold a bunch of silver bullion to a local pawn shop for cash.

Speaker 17 He immediately took cash from his second transaction, I think it was, at this pawn shop and purchased Bitcoin in person

Speaker 17 from a private seller at a restaurant in Minneapolis.

Speaker 26 And it was only two days later that Dog Day Gods made a payment of $5,000 to the website for Amy's murder.

Speaker 52 I need this bitch dead.

Speaker 36 McAllister was building a case against Stephen, but so far the evidence was mostly circumstantial.

Speaker 33 He needed hard proof.

Speaker 44 On December 12th, 2016, McAllister got a phone call.

Speaker 60 It was from a detective from the digital forensics team who'd been looking into the order.

Speaker 17 He said, I found the Bitcoin address on Stephen Alwine's computer.

Speaker 49 The payment that had been made to the assassination site came from a Bitcoin wallet, and that wallet was linked to Stephen.

Speaker 17 That was as good as a fingerprint, in my opinion, because you really can't recreate by chance a Bitcoin address. That was the best direct evidence we could have gotten.

Speaker 29 Stephen was Dog Day God.

Speaker 3 In February of 2016, he signed up to the Hitman for Hire website and tried to place a hit on his wife.

Speaker 61 It looks like she will be home tomorrow from 12 to 1pm and Thursday from 12 to 1pm. Let me know the plan so I can be somewhere else public.

Speaker 26 In May, after four months of messaging on the site, Dog Day God goes silent.

Speaker 32 Presumably, Stephen had given up on hiring a hitman.

Speaker 6 But then he popped up somewhere else.

Speaker 49 The police found posts from the same Dog Day God username on a different DarkWeb forum, trying to buy an anti-nausea drug called scopolamine.

Speaker 11 An overdose of scopolamine can make you disorientated and compliant.

Speaker 29 When the police ran another autopsy, they found large quantities of the drug in Amy's blood and stomach.

Speaker 14 Detective McAllister now had enough information to act.

Speaker 4 On January 17th, 2017, The Cottage Grove Police pulled Stephen's car over at a traffic stop near his home and arrested him.

Speaker 22 Stephen was charged with first-degree murder.

Speaker 21 Just over a year later, Stephen was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Speaker 36 When I first heard about the kill list, the dangers seemed a bit unclear to me.

Speaker 1 After all, the Murder for Hire website was a scam.

Speaker 60 But Amy Orwine was targeted on that same website.

Speaker 49 Her death proved that the danger was real.

Speaker 31 And not because some shadowy Darknet hitman was on the way, but because the customers were the real threat.

Speaker 32 They could be as dangerous as any assassin.

Speaker 27 And what Chris was showing me were hundreds more names, just like Amy's. Kill orders being requested right now.

Speaker 40 And now that I've seen Inside This Dark World, I need to decide what on earth to do next.

Speaker 29 When Chris first showed me the list, he showed me something else too.

Speaker 21 A grainy mobile phone video.

Speaker 19 It begins in darkness.

Speaker 23 A shadowy figure appears, holding a sign with Chris's username on it. Then, the sound of liquid being splashed around.

Speaker 19 Fucking hell.

Speaker 58 Flames engulf the screen.

Speaker 70 That's the car being torched. Jesus Christ.
It's like a white car

Speaker 70 that's now on fire. It's a raging fire.

Speaker 3 The camera shakily holds its gaze on the shell of a car, blazing.

Speaker 65 Flames shoot up the windows, out the doors, over the hood.

Speaker 70 It's a fucking death threat.

Speaker 70 It's like torching a car and sending it to you.

Speaker 4 For years, Chris has been publicly working to try and get the website taken down.

Speaker 25 In response, this video was sent to him by the person running the site, who goes by the name Eura.

Speaker 29 Chris took the video and all of his evidence to the UK police.

Speaker 44 After multiple attempts to report it, he finally managed to get through to some officers who seemed interested.

Speaker 11 But in the end, Chris says, the police told him they couldn't take his information because it had been obtained via a hack.

Speaker 39 So he tried to work with US law enforcement instead.

Speaker 21 He'd made a contact at the Department of Homeland Security in America.

Speaker 38 So now, with more kid orders flooding in, he tried reaching out to them.

Speaker 47 So I send my contacts an email to say, hey, gonna send you data again.

Speaker 47 Reply, we are unable to take the data at this time due to lack of resourcing.

Speaker 10 So Chris has come to me.

Speaker 29 Since I'm a journalist and a writer who has worked with the police before, Chris thinks that I might be able to help raise the alarm.

Speaker 59 In terms of actions, this is what in the journalistic trade is known as a clear and present threat to life,

Speaker 59 which means that I need to work out what to do today. Like we can't sit on this kind of information, if you see what I mean.

Speaker 3 We're in the worst possible position I could think.

Speaker 40 Like the world is on fire.

Speaker 3 We're in the mid of a global pandemic, meaning we can't leave our houses.

Speaker 3 We found ourselves in the middle of a live assassination market, and we don't even have any policy or moral guidance yet in terms of what we actually do.

Speaker 49 It's horrible.

Speaker 40 I've never dealt with anything like this before, and I have no idea whether I can even help anyone.

Speaker 39 I am not a hardened crime journalist, nor am I drawn to adventure or risk.

Speaker 29 I can't even drive a car, honestly.

Speaker 41 But I can't step away, knowing that what happened to Amy Orwine might repeat itself.

Speaker 16 I tell Chris to send me the list.

Speaker 71 I'm Raza Jaffrey, and in the later season of The Spy Who, we open the file on Morton Storm, the spy who lived inside Al-Qaeda.

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Speaker 72 In the fall of 1620, a battered merchant ship called the Mayflower set sail across the Atlantic. It carried 102 men, women, and children, risking it all to start again in the new world.

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Speaker 69 All right, you ready? Yep.

Speaker 21 It's a Thursday afternoon, and I'm on a call with one of my producers.

Speaker 59 The road outside my house is almost totally silent.

Speaker 49 On my computer, I open Chris's document.

Speaker 16 Oh, wow, there's a lot on here.

Speaker 67 Yeah.

Speaker 48 Chris has run me through the orders, but this is the first time I've got my hands on the kill list itself.

Speaker 9 It's a long spreadsheet of names, locations, telephone numbers.

Speaker 33 So, how many do we have?

Speaker 64 It looks like there's 85. 85.

Speaker 64 I scroll through the list.

Speaker 36 A man from the US, a woman from Russia.

Speaker 48 Alongside each name, there are contact details, workplace addresses, details of their movements.

Speaker 3 And in most cases, there are photos.

Speaker 18 The photos are the thing that strike me first.

Speaker 19 A few dozen people staring out at you as you open this document.

Speaker 22 In one, a middle-aged man stands surrounded by his family.

Speaker 18 His light blue eyes twinkle with a deep and joyful pride.

Speaker 58 In another, a woman tilts her head as she smiles shyly at the camera over Rimla's glasses.

Speaker 64 She's somewhere glitzy.

Speaker 49 She looks relaxed and happy.

Speaker 24 The thing that's so striking about these photos is that they look like they've all been taken from social media.

Speaker 59 They look like kind of mainly Facebook profiles.

Speaker 13 So they're the ones that you decide to put on your profile picture.

Speaker 29 Yeah.

Speaker 13 They're nice photos.

Speaker 29 Yeah, and it's...

Speaker 73 I mean, it's just a photo, but they all just sort of have this, you know, they just don't know. And this is just sort of looming over their head, and they have no idea, you know?

Speaker 16 Man, this is awful.

Speaker 33 This list looks like any other Excel spreadsheets.

Speaker 49 It's innocuous.

Speaker 29 Boring, even.

Speaker 3 Until you read the instructions listed against each name.

Speaker 57 There's one fucking guy, and I only have his name and the city he lives in. How can I hire a killer to kill him?

Speaker 54 How much Bitcoin should I pay?

Speaker 35 Tell me the execution time in advance.

Speaker 64 I can't be there.

Speaker 74 I would just like this person to be shot and killed.

Speaker 56 Where, how, and what with does not bother me at all.

Speaker 74 I would just like this person dead.

Speaker 40 These are the messages written by whoever paid to have these people assassinated.

Speaker 13 They're specifications for the hit.

Speaker 46 Can you kidnap silent and erase without a trace?

Speaker 24 Kill a nurse in Taipei.

Speaker 73 I guess we don't know the backstory, but like a nurse.

Speaker 52 I want her to be killed. They should seem she's dead because of accident, not one murder.

Speaker 60 Kidnap family in Hong Kong.

Speaker 38 Can we save 15 Bitcoin for hit with a car?

Speaker 54 Insure fatality?

Speaker 73 Cunt mother needs to die. Someone wants to kill their mom.

Speaker 66 Kill an unidentified woman in Ottawa.

Speaker 73 Kill a woman who permitted sexual abuse.

Speaker 29 Most of them. Women, 45 years old.

Speaker 73 Jesus, man, this is terrible.

Speaker 59 Just like, these are really possibly 85 really serious crimes just staring back at us.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 34 I mean, this is conspiracy to commit murder.

Speaker 59 ethically, this is the hardest thing to cover that I've ever tried to do.

Speaker 59 And for sure, I mean, this is an ethical bomb waiting to blow up in our faces if we don't do this correctly.

Speaker 11 Yeah, I don't know, man.

Speaker 73 It looks like a big Pandora's box that we're opening. And once you open it, it's open, man.
I don't think we can put it shut.

Speaker 7 The thought of what could go wrong if I meddle with this is terrifying, but so is the thought of what could happen if I do nothing.

Speaker 11 So I start with the obvious step.

Speaker 19 I'm quite nervous, honestly. Like, I wasn't able to sleep that well.
I don't know why.

Speaker 19 It suddenly makes it a lot more real when it's just a spreadsheet at the moment and it's about to turn into a crime.

Speaker 68 I'm about to phone the police and hand over my information.

Speaker 29 Chris might have struggled with law enforcement, but I've worked with the police before in my reporting. I'm confident I can do better.

Speaker 37 After all, this is a credible threat.

Speaker 29 How hard can it be to get them to take it seriously?

Speaker 19 All right, should I just do it then?

Speaker 19 Merchant Prison Police, what's your reason for calling?

Speaker 2 Hi there, my name is Carl Miller.

Speaker 23 The reason I'm calling is that I'm a journalist on a series to do with cybercrime.

Speaker 23 It's a bit of a long story.

Speaker 33 I'm on the phone to the police trying to find the words to explain what on earth it is that I'm doing.

Speaker 23 In our kind of investigation, we've encountered a series of possible crimes, really, so I'm just looking to disclose that. And you said you're

Speaker 23 a journalist? I'm a journalist, yeah. And what's it investigative? This is going to sound quite strange.
It's an investigation into online assassination markets on the Dark Connect.

Speaker 23 So these are websites.

Speaker 23 I do my best to summarise how I ended up with a spreadsheet full of murder orders I think this is going to be a bit complicated to report on the phone I think maybe we'd be better to get officers to come and see you that's yeah that's fine at least the operator didn't think it was a prank all right thank you bye then thanks bye bye

Speaker 49 I hadn't expected officers to actually physically come around to my house but it's a good sign that they're taking it seriously

Speaker 23 From the early morning, I start obsessively peeking through my curtains waiting for the police to arrive. And so, when they do, I watch them pull up.

Speaker 62 There's currently a

Speaker 66 police van just lingering outside my house.

Speaker 4 I start recording on my phone as the two officers get out of their car.

Speaker 63 Hello, hello. Sorry, um, I appreciate it early in the morning.
Um, yeah, I'm okay to speak button. I am, yes, please come in, yeah.

Speaker 62 Um, thank you very much.

Speaker 36 So, how do you think? The man and woman standing in front of me are the first strangers I've physically met in months.

Speaker 22 Both of them are young, still in their 20s.

Speaker 24 Actually seeing the police uniforms, the white shirts and black ties and shoes, is making the situation feel really real.

Speaker 19 No, no, please take a seat.

Speaker 66 Okay, so it's a bit of a weird story and it's quite complicated, so it might need a number of interactions.

Speaker 63 Yeah.

Speaker 66 Right, where to begin. So it's...

Speaker 21 We sit in my living room.

Speaker 11 One of the officers has a police radio, which crackles in the background as I explain the situation and walk them through the cases with the biggest payments.

Speaker 66 One is to kill a hospital worker in The Hague, one is to kill a man of Arkansas, one in Italy and another one in the Czech Republic.

Speaker 66 So one of the problems of course is that these are so international.

Speaker 63 Are the names and addresses or is it just names or?

Speaker 66 In most cases it's definitely like region and name so it's like there might be a mix of both of them.

Speaker 13 The police are polite, attentive.

Speaker 58 They interrupt a few times to ask for clarification and they gravely note everything down on those small notebooks you see on police dramas there are no smirks or raised eyebrows but i'm aware that the further i go into the story the more utterly ridiculous the whole thing sounds darknet murder for hire a hacker intercepted orders lives in danger

Speaker 63 if i'm being honest and and don't take this the wrong way yeah um i mean i mean this is in we we happen to be a bit diligent when we um when we get calls and it's an extra we we jerry will always

Speaker 63 see if you've got his history or a history of mental illness or things like that.

Speaker 34 History of mental illness.

Speaker 77 That's how mad as it sounds that like the first bit of.

Speaker 20 So this is why they're here.

Speaker 6 To make sure I'm not crazy.

Speaker 63 So yeah so it is very unusual.

Speaker 63 A lot of the more unusual calls we get could potentially be more mental health related.

Speaker 66 I mean for all it's worth it's the in my career as a journalist, this is the weirdest story I've had to ever have to deal with.

Speaker 1 The police say they'll follow up on the orders.

Speaker 4 I hand over printouts of the messages.

Speaker 63 Someone will be in touch in the next order.

Speaker 66 Amazing.

Speaker 63 Whatever I can find out and actually tell you off.

Speaker 8 I fine.

Speaker 66 I really appreciate it. Thank you.

Speaker 77 No, no, no, no, thank you.

Speaker 63 Thank you.

Speaker 19 Thank you very much. No worries.

Speaker 24 I'll forego the handshake, given

Speaker 19 Corona.

Speaker 63 But thanks so much for coming over so quickly today.

Speaker 23 Okay, well the police have

Speaker 23 just left.

Speaker 76 I really hope that the first thing they'll do is to reach out to those victims named on the site.

Speaker 76 They really, really need to know this is happening.

Speaker 56 I am looking to hide for a murder of a woman.

Speaker 75 Target needs to be hit when I learn.

Speaker 42 Days pass

Speaker 68 and

Speaker 55 nothing.

Speaker 52 Bonus reward of 500 if target is eliminated within upcoming weekend.

Speaker 3 I follow up with the police again and hear back from a couple of detectives.

Speaker 24 They don't tell me much, instead asking just the same kinds of questions as the first officers I met.

Speaker 52 Please get the job done. Best if it looks like accident or suicide.

Speaker 11 Then, four weeks after my initial contact, in mid-August, I finally get an email from the Metropolitan Police.

Speaker 77 Given there are no identifiable links to the UK currently, the Met will not be taking on an active investigation into the sites.

Speaker 77 But we have also passed on the Intel to Interpol and they are actively investigating this.

Speaker 77 The relevant police forces in each country where a victim has been identified have been informed and also are conducting their investigations.

Speaker 77 So we've just officially, as of today, been handed from the Met police, who decided this wasn't their problem, to Interpol, who hopefully have decided that it is.

Speaker 33 Interpol is the international police agency.

Speaker 49 They don't really investigate crimes.

Speaker 21 They're the glue that connects different police forces around the world together.

Speaker 12 And they will pass our information on to the relevant local cops.

Speaker 44 What happens next is anyone's guess.

Speaker 48 Who knows if they will actually do anything to properly investigate the orders.

Speaker 33 Meanwhile, the victims are still none the wiser.

Speaker 64 The potential killers are still at large and new messages are being sent to the website all the time.

Speaker 54 Can you do a job in the UK for this girl?

Speaker 53 I can tell you where she runs late at night on a quiet path that no one met.

Speaker 52 Target needs to be eliminated.

Speaker 35 KSA.

Speaker 35 Beat or poison or shoot.

Speaker 54 I don't have much time left and the job must be done.

Speaker 14 Over the years, other journalists have learned of more more people who have been threatened in similar ways.

Speaker 65 One of those journalists is Brian Merchant, a writer for Harper's magazine.

Speaker 75 I did manage to speak to a few people who told me that the FBI had been in touch or the local police had said something, but they never told me what it was.

Speaker 75 It was absolutely crazy to me that law enforcement had not gone to a greater effort to investigate these cases.

Speaker 75 And as a result of of this falling through the cracks, you see some very shoddy detective work, as in the case of the Alwines.

Speaker 75 There was very clearly expressed intent that this person was wanted dead. I think a serious investigation could have turned things up, and she did not need to die.

Speaker 50 What Brian is telling me is that Amy Alwine isn't an outlier.

Speaker 33 Police forces have repeatedly failed to take these kinds of crimes seriously.

Speaker 39 Often the victims aren't even informed of the threat. The targets on the kill list could be completely oblivious that someone wants them dead.

Speaker 37 And with disclosures going via Interpol, we have no direct contact with any of the investigators.

Speaker 29 They don't know who we are.

Speaker 3 They can't check like the UK police did to see that we're not mad.

Speaker 65 We can't tell them how we found the messages or give them updates when new ones are sent.

Speaker 31 As a journalist, you're supposed to observe, watch, and report, but not interfere.

Speaker 21 But there's just no way I can wash my hands of this.

Speaker 78 It's the 29th of August, it's a weekend, it's a Saturday,

Speaker 59 and we are about to phone the first person on the kill list.

Speaker 50 I genuinely feel quite sick.

Speaker 78 Hello there, can I speak to

Speaker 38 please?

Speaker 38 Hello, it's me. Who are you?

Speaker 3 That's coming up on the next episodes of Kill List.

Speaker 2 If you like kill lists, you can binge all episodes ad-free right now by joining Wandry Plus in the Wandry app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

Speaker 51 Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wandry.com/slash survey.

Speaker 42 From Wanderer and Novel, this is episode one of Kill List.

Speaker 23 Kill List is hosted by me, Carl Miller.

Speaker 3 It was written by me, Caroline Thornham, and Tom Wright.

Speaker 24 Our lead producer is Caroline Thornham, our producer is Tom Wright.

Speaker 31 For Wanderey, our story editor is Chris Siegel, and our senior producer is Russell Finch.

Speaker 34 Our assistant producer is Amalia Saortland, and our researchers are Megan Oyinka and Lena Chang.

Speaker 68 Additional research from Chris Montero and from Anique Mossu, Fuca Postmer and Brenna Smith at Bellingcat.

Speaker 68 Fact-checking by Fendor Fulton.

Speaker 34 Our managing producers are Cherie Houston, Sarah Tobin and Charlotte Wolf for Novel and Latter Pundia for Wondering.

Speaker 25 Original music by Skyler Gerdeman and Martin Linebell.

Speaker 68 Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander, Max O'Brien and Caroline Fornham. Sound design and mixing mixing by Nicholas Alexander.
Additional engineering by Daniel Kempson.

Speaker 26 For novel, Willard Foxton is Creative Director of Development.

Speaker 34 Our executive producers are Sean Glynn, Austin Mitchell, Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan for novel.

Speaker 68 Executive producers for Wandery are George Lavender, Marshall Louis and Jen Sargent.

Speaker 23 When you're done with the first six episodes, I go deeper into the kill list, revealing never-before-told stories of more victims. New episodes roll out weekly.

Speaker 51 Thank you for listening.