Big Lake | 16

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In a large, cream-coloured house, perched on a suburban street, is a childhood bedroom with a door firmly shut. Sitting at her desk, writing stories about the trials of teenage girlhood, is 15-year-old Alexis Stern.
I've realised that the worst pain comes from the person you do anything for. I think that's the morbid humour of life, the fact that it gives you something sweet and wonderful,

but then it goes sour and poisons you the longer you have it

because you hope the sweetness returns.

Alexis lives in Big Lake,

a small Minnesotan town in the United States Midwest.

There's a McDonald's, a subway and a string of gas stations

and, you might have guessed it, a Big Lake at the centre of it. But Alexis doesn't venture out much.
She prefers to stay at home writing self-published novels or hanging out with friends on the internet. It's 2016 and recently Alexis met someone new online, a British 19-year-old named Adrian Fry.
After being introduced by some mutual friends, they start texting every day and spending hours getting to know each other over video calls. Alexis tells him about the novel she's been writing about a possessed secret agent and the dark web.
She says she's always been drawn to darkness. Adrian seems almost naive in comparison.
Alexis says he doesn't drink, he's soft-spoken, and he never even heard of the dark web or the illegal things that happen on there. She says he rants and raves about American gun laws.
All in all, he comes across as a bit of a nerd, but gentle. And he really likes her.
Their relationship quickly intensifies and they officially become a couple. But they have a 4,000 mile long problem.
So shortly after Alexis' 16th birthday, after around six months of talking, they decide it's finally time to meet in person. It's exciting, but there's nerves too.

Because how well do you really know someone you've only met online?

And how much can you trust them?

My name is Carl Miller.

Since 2020, I've been part of a team working in secret

to stop people getting murdered.

We broke into a Murder for Hire website on the dark web.

We could see every order being placed,

real money being paid to have real people murdered.

The tally of these targets now stands in the hundreds.

We call it the kill list. If your name is on this list, it means someone wants you dead and is determined to make the murder happen.
So far, we've managed to help law enforcement arrest or convict more than 30 people all around the world. But things don't always work out that way.
There's other cases too, like this one, where the victim is left living in fear. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.
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See nerdwallet.com for details. From Wondery and Novel, I, arrives in Big Lake for the first time.
And despite all the planning that had gone into the week, it started, as these things sometimes do, in a Walmart parking lot. I had just gone on break and I was walking up towards the front of the store.
I was walking behind this guy and I was like, he looks really familiar.

The man in front of Alexis has short brown hair combed over to the side, clean shaven and wearing rectangular glasses. He looks sweetly nerdy and a little lost.

I was like, Adrian? Lo and behold, Adrian turned around and it took us a second. We

just kind of looked at each other. I was like, how romantic.
We meet at Walmart on my break. It's an awkward start.
Alexis says neither her nor Adrian had ever been in a relationship before. So every new interaction is a negotiation.
Do you hug right away? Is a kiss too full on even after six months of dating online already? They settle on a hug. One thing Alexis isn't ready to do, though, is tell her parents.
So Adrian has booked a hotel just out of town. Which means, for their first week together as a couple, Alexis and Adrian fly under the radar.
And it's exciting. A week of secretive firsts.
First kisses, first meals out together, first obligatory hometown tour, first nights spent together. First love? It's hard to say.
Adrian and Alexis are not used to grown-up relationships, and it's not totally clear what they really want from each other. It's relatively easy playing out the role of boyfriend and girlfriend when you're only in the same town for a week.
But when Adrian goes home, something begins to change. Alexis says he needs constant contact and she starts feeling exhausted by the responsibility of holding down a long-distance relationship.
He was texting when he was at work. When I got home from school or he got home from work, we would talk.
And it got to the point I had absolutely no free time to myself. I was always talking to him, Skyping him.
It was always an us, never just a me. And all this time they're spending together isn't actually fun anymore.
Alexis claims they fight and bargain over ways they've wronged each other. And at the core of all of this seems to be a deep-seated sense of jealousy and possession.
According to Alexis, Adrian got mad at her for hanging out with a friend who had a crush on her. But then, she says, he told her that he'd had a sleepover with a friend who had a crush on him, none of which inspires any sense of trust or honesty.
So, Alexis says, whatever had been holding them together over such a long distance began to fall apart. I tried mentioning the idea to Adrian that maybe we should take a break or break up, and he completely freaked out, saying that I was going to make a mistake, that I was the only girl he ever really cared about, saying that he wasn't ever going to find anyone else, he's going to be alone for the rest of his life.
Something about Adrian's pleas tugs at Alexis. She'd always been attracted to outcasts, partly because she's one too, but also because she likes to fix their problems and make them feel seen.
And surely, she thinks, isn't that what a girlfriend is for? She says Adrian's made it clear that love to him is her standing by him through thick and thin, through arguments, through betrayals. He seems relentless about it.
And Alexis relents. I'm a really big empath.
I feel like I really connect to people's emotions a lot more. And it was confusing.
And I was like, you know what? We'll give it another go, see what happens. About a year on from his first trip, Adrian flies out to Big Lake again.
Alexis has doubts, yes, but it's summer and the weather is nice. This time, Alexis puts him up in her best friend's family home because, despite dating him for about a year and a half, she still hasn't told her parents about her British boyfriend.
I was a horrible child. Their week together is much like their last.
They drive around, hang out with friends and eat out at restaurants. Because, you know, he's in America.

He wants to get those free refills,

since I know you guys don't really have that over there.

Free refills aside,

the trip doesn't have the same sheen that Adrian's first visit did.

The exciting firsts have been replaced by trust issues

and intense, repressed emotions.

I was trying to convince myself that I wanted to be with Adrian. And I tried really hard to try and look past all those things because I know how much it would hurt him if we broke up.
But when Adrian returns home again, Alexis says things get worse again. According to Alexis, he told her that he made out with a married woman from work and nearly slept with her.
I was like, okay, I get you were drunk, but that's not an excuse. If you're going to be sleeping around behind my back, then let's just end it right now.
After reading so many young adult novels, it's not the kind of love Alexis has come to expect.

In fact, by this point, it's just hard work.

But Alexis feels guilty for wanting to end things

and can never quite find the courage to stand her ground when Adrian tells her he wants to stay together.

Instead, for the best part of the year, they continue to video call. Alexis says that some nights they just stare at their screens in silence for hours on end.
Frankly, it's boring. And the only exciting thing to talk about is Adrian's next big trip to Big Lake.
Alexis says she makes excuses to avoid talking to him,

and when they do, she says she even tells him not to come. But it doesn't seem like Adrian's

listening. He really wants to see her, and Alexis doesn't want to hurt him by firmly saying otherwise.

More than that, Alexis says he keeps describing the beautiful life they could have together,

how she should move to England to be with him soon. It sounds nice, this fantasy life.
And Alexis decides it's only right to give him a chance in person. Maybe then she'll start to see their relationship in the way he does.
So with both parties ignoring the parade of red flags in front of them. Adrian books his third trip to Big Lake.

And Alexis finally talks to her parents.

This time, I told my parents, and I was upfront with them,

because as I said, my mom already kind of had a hunch of what was going on.

So I told her, I was like, look, you were right.

I lied to you.

I'm kind of in this relationship with this guy. It's been almost two years by this point.
I don't know if I want to be with him. I want to give it another go to see if anything will happen.
So my mom said that he could stay at our house in Big Lake. Alexis drives to the airport to pick up Adrian.
It's a big moment, a real make or break.

Will they be able to rekindle the excitement of the first trip? Or will she wish they were still

separated by 4,000 miles of ocean? I realized the moment I picked him up, that I never wanted him to

show up the third time. It was like the confirmation I needed.
At that point, I was like, crap, like, I'm stuck with you for a week now. And I don't even want to be with you in a car.
They drive back to Alexis's, where Adrian finally meets her family for the first time. And is shown to his room, which is, to Alexis' relief, on a different floor than hers.

That evening, while Adrian sleeps off his jet lag, Alexis starts thinking about how she's going to break up with him.

Should she wait until the end of the trip and pretend everything is okay?

That just seems impossible, especially since he's staying in her house.

Alexis decides it's better to rip the band-aid off right away. So the following day, she sits him down.

I was like, Adrian, I want to break up.

If you want, you can stay at my house.

But I'm like, I don't want to be with you anymore.

And he was saying that I was making a mistake,

that I wasn't thinking properly.

And again, trying to play that guilt trip with me. I was so upset with him that I went up to my room, had like a mental breakdown.
After gathering herself, Alexis leaves the house, with Adrian still in it, to get some air. And then afterwards, I had to go face Adrian again.

He was telling me we weren't broken up, that it was invalid.

It didn't count.

It took him maybe by the third day to finally accept that we were broken up.

But he still wanted to act like a couple.

He wanted to hold my hand when we walked. I was like, um, no.
Like, we're broken up. I honestly don't even want to touch you.
I eventually did cave because he was begging me and wouldn't take no for an answer. He was like, you know what, fine, whatever.
I'll hold your hand, but I'm not kissing you. And then he also would ask for, like, sexual favors after we had broken up, and I told him I didn't want to.
But again, he played the guilt trip, victimized himself, saying, it'll just be this one time. So I was like, you know what? If it'll make you shut up, fine.
something I regret I wish I was stood my ground

especially for that. Because I didn't want to do it.
While Alexis said that Adrian could continue to stay in her house, she is secretly hoping he'll just pack his bags and get on an early flight home. But she says he stays until the bitter end, and they pass the time by visiting local attractions like the zoo and the mall.
It must have been an impossibly awkward week, so I can't imagine Alexis' relief when it was finally time to drop him off at the airport and to close amicably but firmly this chapter of her life. We said our goodbyes.
We hugged. We didn't kiss.
And I thought I would feel some sort of sadness, some regret, some remorse. I felt relief that he was finally leaving.
And that's when I knew for sure that I was completely over him and us and anything in between.

I was done.

Adrian flies back to England.

But they keep in touch with the odd message and video call.

Some days it's just pleasantries.

Two friends with a complicated history catching up on life and work.

Other days, Alexis says their conversations are barbed and bitter.

He was like Jekyll and Hyde. One minute he'd be fine being my friend, and next he would go off on me saying I was a cheating whore, saying that I ruined his life, that he hoped I never succeeded with my writing, a whole bunch of stuff.
Then Adrian's anger allegedly morphs into something more dangerous according to alexis he tells her that he's looking to buy a gun and that immediately threw me off i was like what do you mean you want to get a gun he literally would vent to me saying how you hated guns how you thought we needed stricter gun laws and now now you want one? Like, that did not add up to me at all, and that was like a really big flag for me, that something wasn't right. Four months after Adrian's visit, it's clear to Alexis that her and Adrian are in completely different places.
While he's allegedly talking about wanting to buy a gun, apparently for protection against something or someone, she's dating again. And when she tells Adrian about the new man in her life, she says he loses it.
A few days after Alexis told Adrian about her new boyfriend, she gets a call from the police. They tell her she needs to come into the station right away and that her parents are going to meet her there.
And I was thinking, well, crap, did I do something wrong? Like, am I in trouble? Alexis jumps in the car. While she makes a short drive to the police station, she racks her brains for possible reasons behind their urgent call.

She can't make heads or tails of it.

Why would her parents be there?

Why would the police want anything to do with her in the first place?

Is someone her? Like, am I going to get arrested?

When she arrives at the station,

she's met by an officer who breaks the ice with one chilling question.

First thing the cop asked me is, what have you done lately to piss someone off?

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I can see on your website that the services you offer are murder, assault and arson. The order was placed under the alias Mastermind365.
At first, they didn't want Alexis killed. They had another plan in mind.
I was wondering if the hitman on this website also do other jobs. The kidnapping is the job that I had in mind.
I would also like to ask whether the hitman would provide a location to keep the target during the kidnapping, or if I would need to provide a location myself. Thank you for your assistance.
But a week later, they wrote another message, requesting a change to their order. Hello, Admin.
I have changed my mind since I previously spoke to you. I would not like this person to be kidnapped.
Instead, I would just like this person to be shot and killed. Where, how and what with does not bother me at all.
I would just like this person dead. And I laughed.
I was like, are you kidding me right now? I had just turned 18, and this is what I get. Someone wants me dead.
The cop, he told me that he wasn't supposed to show me this for whatever reason. And he showed me that it was a picture of me,

a description of what I looked like,

my home address, and where I worked.

In total, Mastermind365 had paid $5,600

for the kidnapping, then murder plot.

The officer asks Alexis if there's anyone she can think of who might have posted the order. I was like, I don't know, it could be this person, this person, this person.
And I was giving him all these names, and I was like, wait a minute. I was like, it could be this guy.
It could be Adrian. Alexis and her family are understandably terrified that whoever is behind the order could try and find some other way to have her harmed.
Panicked and scared, they decide to skip town and hit the road. We found someone to take our dogs and we packed them and we left for a couple days, just out of the blue.
My dad packed his gun we brought our guns with for safety. When we were staying in the hotel room, my dad had put a chair in front of the door, under the door handle, so it would give us enough time at least if something were to happen.
We paid with everything with cash so we couldn't be traced if we were being watched. The Stern family starts doing whatever they can to protect themselves.
They take self-defense classes. Alexis buys a pink and purple dagger.
Her parents ban her from driving alone. Yeah, I'm not dead, but I'm not living either.
I'm just in a stasis, hoping maybe something will happen happen and I wasn't going to deal with that. I needed my freedom back because I felt like I was stuck.
I didn't want to be stuck anymore. Now, I didn't have anything to do with this case back when it happened.
This case took place years before I started trying to reach the targets on the kill list. It was Chris Montero, the dark web investigator and hacker I've been working with, who tipped off the police about the threat against Alexis.
And at first, they seemed to jump into action. But then the tempo of the investigation began to ebb.
Maybe due to resources, maybe jurisdiction, maybe both. The police ultimately decided they couldn't pursue the investigation themselves.
And so they handed it over to the FBI. And after that, the case becomes a bit of a hot potato.
Over the next 18 months, Alexis seems to have had an endless cycle of case handlers. Until eventually she was passed off to an entirely different agency, the Department of Homeland Security.
But still, no arrest, no big leads, no interviews. It must have been infuriating.
It seemed like it was going nowhere. They said it was a priority and that they were trying to help me out, but they flagged Adrian because I told him this is who I thought it was.

I was pretty sure that it was him. And they said they flagged him, but there really wasn't much they could do.
It's like, okay, so am I just going to live in fear, hoping that he doesn't actually come here and try and finish the job himself? So I kind of just dropped off the face of the earth. One night, whilst having dinner with her family, Alexis glances at her phone.
We're talking all of a sudden, I have a text message from Adrian on WhatsApp. And so he messaged me asking if we could video chat.
Or that if he just wanted to know if I was okay and he wanted pictures. Alexis texts the agent who's handling her case asking for advice.
She's not spoken to Adrian for a couple of weeks and all of a sudden, in what must be the middle of the night for him, Alexis says he's texting asking to see her face. The case handler tells her not to send any photos or do any video calls.
So Alexis tells Adrian she's on a break from social media, which is why she's not been responding to his messages. But she alleges Adrian gets insistent.
Just one photo, it's going to take you like five seconds. It's not going to take that long.
I was like, no, I don't want to. At that moment, I was like, that's just way too weird.
Feeling unnerved by Adrian's insistence, Alexis calls up her agent. It sounds like he's wanting proof that I'm alive.
Now, Alexis is convinced that Adrian's behind the kill order. She says as much to the authorities.
And yet, there's one crucial detail to this story.

No one has ever been arrested for trying to kill Alexis. As far as the authorities

are concerned, this case is completely unsolved. So what is the actual evidence at play against

Adrian here? Has he been falsely accused by Alexis? Or is he responsible for planning her murder?

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You can listen to Don't Cross Cat on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. There's two key pieces of evidence that at least in Alexis mind, really point the finger at Adrian.
The first is the timing. So whoever Mastermind365 is, they upgraded the hit order from a kidnapping to a murder at almost the exact moment when Alexis told Adrian that she had a new boyfriend.
It's certainly no surprise to me that this is a really key piece of evidence in Alexis's mind, right? That's Caroline Thornham, my producer who's been with me throughout this whole investigation into the kill list. I think what is interesting to me is like, why would you start off wanting somebody kidnapped and then want them killed? Alexis's account of their relationship presents Adrian as somebody who is continually not

interested in really how she feels about them being together. You know, even at the point where

she's literally trying to break up with him, according to Alexis, Adrian is trying to overrule

that and talk her out of it

and persuade her to do things his way. And Alexis is obviously thinking that Adrian was upset about their breakup and also upset about the fact that she was seeing somebody new.
And if she's right, she's pointing to the most common motive we've ever seen on the kill list, which is a desire to control someone. And when that fails, a desire that no one else can have that person anymore.
Yeah. I mean, if you just look at the spreadsheet that we have that has a record of what arrests have been made that we know of, you know, where we're now, we've now seen a perpetrator identified, and we literally have a column of what the perpetrator's relationship is to the victim and in the vast majority of those they're an ex-partner so the fact that this you know order is a kidnapping then a killing and the timing lines up with Alexis's situation it would make you think wouldn't it I would say at the very least it's a striking coincidence.
But striking coincidence is only what it is too. You know, there's no really strong evidence that actually links Adrian in that way to the murder order.
Yeah, exactly. All of this, I think, is interesting in the context of Alexis's theory, but ultimately, you know, none of that is going to stand up in a course of law.
It's totally circumstantial and it's not anywhere near enough on its own to prove this.

The second key piece of evidence are the actual messages themselves. As Alexis has read them all, she thinks she can recognise Adrian in the messages that Mastermind365 has sent.
The language that Mastermind365 used, the spelling, everything just lined up perfectly with how Adrian would talk or type. There's a couple of small details that she really focuses on, like the order saying, thank you, all as one word with no space between it.
She says that's a regular feature of how Adrian would write to her. As soon as I saw the messages, I knew 100% who it was.

I had no doubt in my mind at that point.

It's a beguiling thing to do, isn't it?

To think that you can identify someone by how they type.

Really, in a way, that's sort of a kind of microcosm of some of the issues that are at play here across that whole relationship, right?

Because how do you know someone from the messages you've seen online from them? You know, how well do Alexis and Adrian really know each other? They've called and spoken and messaged every day. And then on the other hand, they've only met a small handful of times in person.
And it begs this question of how well can you know somebody online like this? Because Alexis has communicated with Adrian so intensely for a period of years now, yet if he did this, that's something she would never have thought he was capable of before. And you have this disjoint between knowing somebody really well and then almost them being like a stranger to you.
That's probably one of the features of online relationships, that even though they have only met each other a few times, they would have seen thousands and thousands and thousands of pages of each other's written text. Like if anyone would be able to tell Adrian by the writing style, it's Alexis.
And I also think that it must be tricky if you're in her position and you don't have many enemies. You don't have much else to go on, right? You're making theories about things because you have so many unanswered questions.
What we've learned from our experiences is just how often you can be wrong with that too. I remember a case in Germany where I was looking at somebody who I knew was the partner of the victim and questioning whether they might be behind it.
And actually it turned out it was someone completely different. And my assumption there was totally wrong.
At the same time, I can see from Alexis's perspective why she would at least be suspicious of Adrian. But what is Adrian's answer to all of this? What is his version of events if he disagrees with Alexis's account? We have tried to contact Adrian

but he's never responded to us

but to be clear, he says that the allegations that Alexis makes are preposterous and flatly untrue. We know this because Adrian did an interview with the Daily Mail in December 2019, where he denied the claims Alexis made against him in the press.
Here are his words, read by an actor. I can't believe what I'm hearing and what she's accusing me of.
I'm traumatised and hurt she would even think that it could be me. I would never think of killing anyone.
I've never so much just harmed a fly. I once really loved Alexis and we parted on bad terms because I wanted the relationship to survive.
Of course I was heartbroken. That's just normal when couples break up.
but that doesn't mean I wanted her He also says that he just simply didn't have the money to make that kind of payment to a site, that it wasn't possible that he could have gathered together that cash. So that's Adrian's version of events.
But it feels like there's a lot of things within that that a police investigation would have been able to get to the bottom of. You know, did he have enough money? You know, has he ever been on the dark net? And did he buy the Bitcoin that was involved in this order? We don't know what the police did, but we do know that the investigation never produced any kind of outcome.
So officially, the case is completely unsolved. In the course of our investigation, I made police contact in the UK, including a unit in Bath.
And so with the hope of getting some kind of answer for Alexis, I took the Mastermind 365 file, and I sent them to the police officer I'd been dealing with. Really, I had no response as to whether they were even able to investigate them, whether they had looked into them and had found there was nothing there or really any sense of any real interest in pursuing it.
Why hasn't that happened? I mean, there's a couple of theories, one of which is that it's a jurisdictional issue because Adrian is based in the UK and Alexis is based in America. And for an investigation to turn up, the kind of concrete evidence that would be needed to prove this one way or the other, it gets very difficult when you're dealing with stuff abroad.
I think it's worth reflecting also that these cases are probably still solvable. Like we know now how these investigations work and we know that a lot of the evidence that police bring into the courtroom are technical.
And those technical pieces of information probably are still out there somewhere, whether that's in a bank, whether that's on the blockchain, or whether that's on a server somewhere. I still think it's possible for police forces to actually still get to the bottom of this.
I haven't completely given up hope. I think you're right to her point there, Carl.
But also, as much as I would like to think that Alexis's case would be properly investigated now that there's even more proof just how legitimate this information is and how real the intentions of the people paying money on this site are, you know, that's actually not the reality that we've seen for most of these victims. We've reported something like over 170 cases to the police and only seen 30 arrests or so that we can count.

And there are many more Alexis's still out there right now whose cases still don't seem to be any closer to a resolution either.

And so long as there are unanswered questions here, you know, this is something that's going to hang over Alexis and over Adrian indefinitely, right? When we spoke to Alexis, she told us that she's still nervous just even about the idea of talking to us and opening this whole thing up again. To be honest with you, I have been thinking a lot about the interview.
I was extremely nervous about today because

the idea of getting justice and having

at least something be done

would be absolutely amazing.

But the fact that there's

so many and it's not just

me, there's hundreds of people that are going

through this.

So what are we left with then at the end of this story? On the one hand, Alexis believes there are grounds to suspect that Adrian tried to have her killed. On the other, in the eyes of the law, Adrian is entirely innocent.
He's never been arrested, nor have the allegations Alexis makes against him ever been tested in court. He vehemently denies being involved and there's no hard evidence tying him in any way to the crime.
So what this case shows me at least is a mess that gets left behind when the police fail to get to the bottom of a case. What's left is a cloud of suspicion that never fully dissipates.
And that need for closure must surely be as important for Adrian as it is for Alexis. If he's innocent, he deserves to be fully exonerated.
And Alexis deserves to know beyond any doubt who tried to have her killed. In that context, it would be easy for Alexis to crumble.
If someone tried to kill me and the police didn't figure out who it was, I wouldn't have words for how scared, how confused, probably how angry I would be as well. But in spite of everything, Alexis isn't that.
She's trying to move on with her life. She plans to write a book about what happened.
And with all that suffering and worry and vulnerability that this

has brought into alexa's life she's also come out the other end perhaps wiser perhaps more resilient

than she was before

like i lived through someone wanting to put a hit on on me not a lot of people can say that.

In the next episode of Kill List, we dive into one of our biggest outstanding mysteries.

In the Spanish seaside town of Ponte Vedra, Anna Garcia lives round the corner from the man the police suspect tried to have her killed. Why, after all these years, can Ana still not get justice? When I'm driving, I'm looking through the mirror, which car is coming in which direction.
I get scared and write down the license plate of the car that approached me. His defense is going to be very difficult.
He could shed very little to avoid the blame. If you like Kill List, you can binge all episodes ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.
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From Wondery and Novel, this is Kill List. Kill List is hosted by me, Carmilla.
The reporter for this episode is Caroline Thornham, and it was produced and written by Anna Sinfield and our series producer, Tom Wright. Kill List is also produced by Jake Otayevich, and our assistant producer is Amalia Sautland.
Our researchers are Megan Oyinka and Lena Chang. Additional research from Chris Montano Thank you.
Sarah Tobin and Charlotte Wolfe for Novel. Sarah Mathers is our managing producer and Callum Plews is our senior managing producer for Wondery.

Original music by Skylar Gerdman and Martin Linnebel.

Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander,

Max O'Brien and Caroline Thornham.

Sound design and mixing by Daniel Kemperson.

For Novel, Willard Foxton is creative director of development.

Our executive producers are Sean Glynn, Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan for Novel, Willard Foxton is Creative Director of Development. Our executive producers are Sean Glynn, Max O'Brien, and Craig Strachan for Novel.
Executive producers for Wondery are Marshall Louis and Erin O'Flaherty. In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan.
This assailant pulls out a weapon and starts firing at him. We're talking about the CEO of the biggest private health insurance corporation in the world.
And the suspect. He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione.
Became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history. I was targeted, premeditated, and meant to sow terror.
I'm Jesse Weber, host of Luigi, produced by Law and Crime and Twist. This is more than a true crime investigation.
We explore a uniquely American moment that could change the country forever. He's awoken the people to a true issue.

Finally, maybe this would lead rich and powerful people to acknowledge the barbaric nature of our healthcare system.

Listen to Law & Crimes Luigi exclusively on Wondery+.

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