Spokane | 15

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Hey, it's Carl here.

Speaker 1 Just letting you know that this episode contains descriptions of a coercive and controlling relationship.

Speaker 1 Emily Sugarman is working out at her gym in New York City. She's in the zone.

Speaker 1 Until she gets pulled out of it by an incoming call.

Speaker 2 It said Spokane County Jail on my phone, and I was like, is this what I think it is?

Speaker 1 Emily is a senior reporter at the Daily Beast, a national news website.

Speaker 2 I like ran into this vestibule between the entrance and the check-in counter. Maybe the quietest place where they're not, you know, pumping workout music.

Speaker 2 And I answered the call and, you know, there was this voice that said,

Speaker 3 Hello, this is a free call from Ron, an incarcerated individual at Bokan County Jail to accept this free call, press one.

Speaker 2 I am like sweaty and in the middle of a workout.

Speaker 5 To refuse this free call, press two.

Speaker 2 But it's now or never. I don't think this guy's going to call me back.

Speaker 1 Emily says that in her experience, people who are being prosecuted don't want to talk. So this call is a huge deal.
It's for a story Emily's editor had assigned her.

Speaker 2 She, you know, came up to me and just said, there's this crazy story in the Spokane Spokesman Review that you should look at.

Speaker 2 The headline of the story was, Spokane doctor accused of attempted kidnapping in dark web Bitcoin scheme. And I was like, oh, let's go.

Speaker 1 Let's look into that.

Speaker 1 The name of the doctor behind this mind-blowing headline was Ron Ilk.

Speaker 1 At first, Emily thought Ron had to be someone totally disconnected from reality. Someone at the edges of society.
But then she looked him up.

Speaker 2 He was an eonatologist. He was pretty high up in the practice.
You know, he volunteered for children's charities. And from the outside, you know, just seemed so kind of like a typical guy.

Speaker 2 It made me want to understand more about his psyche.

Speaker 1 Now, as Emily is standing in her gym, Heron is calling her.

Speaker 5 We may start the conversation now.

Speaker 5 Hey, Ron.

Speaker 5 Hey, Emily, how are you?

Speaker 1 My name is Carl Miller. Since 2020, I've been part of a team of journalists working in secret to stop people getting murdered.

Speaker 1 We broke into a scam murder for hire website on the dark web. We could see every order being placed, real money being paid to have real people killed.

Speaker 1 The tally of targets we've identified is now in the hundreds. We call it the kill list.

Speaker 1 So far, We've managed to help law enforcement arrest or convict more than 30 people all around the world.

Speaker 1 In this episode, we're returning to the case that haunts me more than any other.

Speaker 1 The case of Dr. Ron Ilk.

Speaker 1 I want the target kidnapped for seven days. While being called, she will be given injections of heroin at least two times per day.

Speaker 1 In our entire investigation, we hadn't come across anything as shocking as Ron's treatment of his wife, Jennifer. Abuse masked as BDSM.

Speaker 6 He wanted me to call him sir all the time and then he'd get frustrated if I didn't want to do certain things that he requested me to do.

Speaker 1 Jennifer wasn't Ron's only victim. Jennifer also told us about Amanda, a woman Ron dated while he was still married to Jennifer.

Speaker 6 There's like a septic tank thing in his yard. She said that he put her down in there and put the top on, threatening to leave her in there for hours.

Speaker 1 Ron was arrested by the FBI, but the story isn't over. As me and my team built a relationship with Jennifer, Daily Beast reporter Emily Sugarman started building a relationship with Ron Ilg himself.

Speaker 1 After his arrest, she followed as Ron desperately tried to wrestle back control from inside his jail cell, showing us how dangerous the manipulations of an abuser like Ron can be, even from behind bars.

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Speaker 1 From Wandery and Novel, I'm Carl Miller, and this

Speaker 1 is Kill List.

Speaker 5 Let me know if you can't hear me because I can wander around in my cell a little bit and try to get better reception.

Speaker 5 Okay, wherever you are right now sounds pretty good.

Speaker 1 This first phone call between Emily and Ron happens in 2021 and it lasts about 15 minutes. It's the start of a long and wild ride for Emily.

Speaker 5 How was your workout? Good? It was good. It was a good thing to be on a Saturday.

Speaker 1 The call was not at all what I expected.

Speaker 2 Immediately when I started talking to Ron, it was like he saw me as a potential ally and he was trying to win me over to his side.

Speaker 5 At some point, I do want to get my story out there in its entirety, right?

Speaker 5 So for instance, how does a small-town country boy like me, who becomes a regionally well-known musingologist, get into the point where he's at? It's a big story. It's a giant story.

Speaker 5 It's kind of a Shakespearean tragedy in some ways.

Speaker 2 Imagine you're me getting this call from a guy who has some incredibly damning evidence against him in court.

Speaker 2 Anybody else would be telling me, just you need to speak to my lawyer, you know, you need to get the facts, but he is presenting himself as like the great Gatsby and just trying to create this incredible character for himself and sell me on his life story and being the hero.

Speaker 1 Ron is trying to deploy against against Emily a glistening public persona that he's spent years constructing around himself.

Speaker 1 The heroic chisel-jawed doctor who saves babies' lives and gets stopped in public by thankful mothers.

Speaker 5 You know, I'd be in Costco and people would come up to me and they'd say, hey, Dr. Ilg, do you remember us?

Speaker 5 And their little 25 leaguer, who's now five years old, running around the store and doing great.

Speaker 1 Ron says he'd be in Costco and parents would come up to him saying, Dr. Ilg, do you remember us?

Speaker 1 And that their five-year-old, whose life he'd saved as a baby, was running around the store, healthy and well.

Speaker 1 Ron is obviously hoping that after this call, Emily will write this version of the story, his version, challenging the prosecution's narrative that he is an insidious abuser with a years-long violent history.

Speaker 2 I was thinking, I was like, oh, this guy really thinks he's some kind of Don Juan who can charm anyone.

Speaker 2 And I think he might be evil.

Speaker 1 Emily lets Ron talk and he quickly moves on to his next point, his dominant and submissive lifestyle.

Speaker 5 Prosecution is, you know, they're using the DS lifestyle or my sexual orientation, much like back in the day when homosexuals, you know, were persecuted and prosecuted.

Speaker 5 True, but just to, you know, I think what's being prosecuted here is not your lifestyle, but, you know, the things that you ordered from the dark web.

Speaker 2 When he started comparing having a pdsm kink to being gay back in the 80s or 90s i was like this can't be real

Speaker 2 his argument was essentially that he was being kink shamed by the u.s government when emily challenges ron on this point

Speaker 1 it leads to something she isn't expecting

Speaker 5 you hear how you said that

Speaker 5 There's supposed to be this belief in America that you're innocent until proven guilty, right? Right. And the way you just stated it proves that I'm guilty.

Speaker 5 Well, okay, so are you

Speaker 5 so your argument is that you did not send those messages, you didn't place those orders?

Speaker 5 The person that was writing those emails was not me.

Speaker 1 Ron tells Emily he's innocent. He suggests that someone could have easily hacked into his dark web accounts and framed him.
This moment shows Emily how Ron actually operates.

Speaker 2 You can hear him in there trying to manipulate me. And it's just this very, like,

Speaker 2 I am the teacher. I am in charge.
Let me show you how you've got this all wrong about me. Oh, but you hear how you said that, right? Emily, like, that's not right.

Speaker 1 This call is Emily's first mad dash through Ron's web of lies and misdirections. She barely gets a word in.
Before she knows it, their time runs out.

Speaker 5 Okay, well, thank you so much for calling. I appreciate Okay.
Bye. Bye.

Speaker 5 The caller has hung up.

Speaker 1 Over the next few days, Emily writes her story. The headline reads, Hitmen, Bunkers and Bondage, inside the case of Washington baby doctor Ronald Ilg.

Speaker 1 It's exactly the kind of shocking story a tabloid editor would love in their paper. Emily writes about all the darkest parts of Ron's abuse and his dark web plot.

Speaker 1 But the tone of the article definitely isn't what Ron had hoped for.

Speaker 1 When it comes out, Emily is ready to move on.

Speaker 2 I didn't expect to have a running conversation with this guy.

Speaker 1 But Ron has a different plan.

Speaker 1 He just kept calling me, you know?

Speaker 3 Hello, this is a free call from Ron.

Speaker 2 I would be at work. I would be going to the grocery store.
It would be like Spokane County Jail, you know?

Speaker 3 Spokane County Jail. Spokane County Jail.
Spokane County Jail.

Speaker 2 To the point that like some of my friends knew, you know, like the guy that I was seeing at the time knew, be like, oh, that's like Ron Elm calling.

Speaker 1 Emily says she became more and more intrigued by Ron's psychology. She says she would go on to speak to him about 20 times over the course of the next year and a half.

Speaker 1 During that time, Ron's story spreads wider. He's talked about on news websites and on TV channels.

Speaker 10 A federal grand jury has indicted a Spokane doctor accused in a dark web kidnapping plot.

Speaker 10 He's accused of finding someone on the dark web to kidnap his estranged wife before assaulting, drugging, and extorting her.

Speaker 11 A Washington doctor stands accused of taking to the dark web to hire someone to kidnap his estranged wife for seven days with a reward of $40,000 in Bitcoin.

Speaker 1 Whilst the media latch onto the story, it's Emily who has exclusive and really quite extraordinarily intimate access to Ron.

Speaker 1 She speaks to him basically throughout the entire time he's in court as he fights the charges against him.

Speaker 2 It was just this very odd relationship.

Speaker 2 I wanted him to feel comfortable talking to me. I wanted him to open up to me.

Speaker 1 That's the whole deal.

Speaker 2 But I also didn't want to sound like I was his friend. And so I think I literally said to him sometimes, like, Ron, I'm not your friend.

Speaker 1 As Emily logs more and more hours on the phone with Ron, the world, as seen through his eyes, starts coming into view.

Speaker 2 He had a very clear picture of who he was, and it was not what I or the prosecution was representing publicly.

Speaker 1 Ron obviously doesn't want the world to see him as the monster that's written about in the court documents. He insists he wasn't abusive.

Speaker 1 He just practiced, he says, consensual BDSM with the women he loved.

Speaker 1 Despite the fact both Jennifer and Ron's other partner, Amanda, had filed restraining orders against him and are actively cooperating with the FBI.

Speaker 2 He would say, no, no, they're lying.

Speaker 2 I think he kind of had this image of a grand love story with Jennifer and Amanda, and he just had to make them see that they could live this life together, that they would see the truth, they would come back to him.

Speaker 1 Emily sticks with the story and writes two more articles about Ron. She grows fascinated by his determination to shape the narrative, to own it, to control it.

Speaker 1 She follows his case as he tries to do the same in the courtroom, too.

Speaker 1 He claims innocence, repeating the lie about having been hacked and framed.

Speaker 1 But no one is buying it. So in August 2022, Ron at last pleads guilty, meaning that he will definitely be going to prison, although a judge will still have to decide for how many years.

Speaker 1 A guilty plea might at first look like Ron is admitting defeat, but he isn't.

Speaker 1 Instead, he's just realised his defence has hit a brick wall.

Speaker 1 Now, he needs to figure out a way to get as low of a sentence as possible. Emily finds out what Ron's scheme is just a few weeks later.

Speaker 1 She's sitting at work in a Daily Beast offices up high inside a Manhattan skyscraper when the familiar caller ID, Spokane County Jail, shows up on her phone.

Speaker 1 She picks up and chats to Ron like she's done so many times before.

Speaker 2 We'd been talking about him taking a plea deal and how unfair that was and how unfair the court system is.

Speaker 1 Which is when Ron says to Emily, Also, by the way, I'm engaged.

Speaker 2 And I was like, to who?

Speaker 1 How? What?

Speaker 1 Somehow, from behind bars, Ron Ron Ilg has put a new plan into motion. And another woman under his spell.

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Speaker 1 With her phone glued to her ear, Emily can't quite believe what Ron is telling her.

Speaker 2 He was like, We're in love and we're gonna get married.

Speaker 1 While in jail, Ron has, somehow, gotten engaged to someone new.

Speaker 1 The incredible thing is, details of his crimes are splashed all over news sites and TV stations.

Speaker 18 He wanted someone to kidnap his estranged wife and inject her with heroin until she stopped the divorce proceedings.

Speaker 1 When you google his name, the top results are all articles about Ron being arrested. So Emily wonders, who is this woman who's agreed to marry Ron? And actually, Ron wants Emily to talk to her too.

Speaker 1 He gives her the woman's number.

Speaker 2 He was like, you can call her.

Speaker 1 Why don't you give her a call?

Speaker 2 And so I did, because I was like, this can't be real, you know? And I called and I got on the phone with this very sweet woman who said, yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 I'm in love with him and we're going to get married.

Speaker 1 The woman goes by the name Izzy. Me and my team, we've been trying to speak to her directly.
We've run numbers, we've sent emails, but we've never heard back.

Speaker 1 Luckily, Izzy told Emily the whole genuinely astonishing story of how her relationship with Ron began.

Speaker 1 It started when Izzy's husband was in prison for abusing her. Although sometimes they still spoke on the phone.
And Izzy's husband started telling her tales of this other magnetic prisoner, Ron.

Speaker 1 Izzy grew intrigued and wrote Ron a letter. Soon, they started talking on the phone.

Speaker 2 She was someone who had had a lot of trauma from past relationships, had had bad experiences with partners being violent to her, and here was someone who was consistently calling her, being affectionate towards her, and laying out a model for their life together, which would involve him really calling the shots, you know, being in charge.

Speaker 1 Emily says that on the phone with Izzy, Ron mapped out a reassuring future for her, one spent in a dominant, submissive relationship with him.

Speaker 1 And when Emily asked her how she felt about Ron's crimes, Izzy's response was shocking.

Speaker 2 She told me, you know, well, if someone cared enough to do that for me, try to kidnap and torture me to get me back, I would be flattered by that.

Speaker 2 I think she is a great example of how Ron's powers of manipulation do work. I think we all do this.

Speaker 2 I think we all accept what someone is telling us, even if it maybe seems a little hard to believe, because they're also promising to love us.

Speaker 1 Emily says that during this interview, she starts to feel incredibly protective of Izzy.

Speaker 2 It felt so sad to me. I wished so deeply that I could have done something

Speaker 2 because I could tell that this was someone who just wanted affection and care and was being duped.

Speaker 1 After getting off the phone with Izzy, Emily files her penultimate article about Ron.

Speaker 1 She walks away from the interview with a clear sense of Ron's intentions.

Speaker 2 I think he was kind of using her as a connection to the outside world. He had her start a YouTube channel to post interviews with him.

Speaker 1 I am Izzy. I am Izzy.
I am Izzy.

Speaker 1 This seems to be Ron's big plan with Izzy.

Speaker 1 While he's stuck in jail, on the outside, Izzy starts to run a sort of free Ron Ilk campaign online. It seems Izzy wants to introduce to the world the quote-unquote real Ron Ilk.

Speaker 20 Baby Doctor, Spokane, Katire, Dark Web,

Speaker 20 kidnapping, all that big story that went.

Speaker 20 And um,

Speaker 20 well, he is my

Speaker 20 best friend.

Speaker 1 In this video, she interviews Ron from prison through a video call. The sound quality is awful, but you get the gist early on.

Speaker 1 It's Ron's plea to the world that he can change.

Speaker 1 I am broken. Becoming otherwise is exhausting.
In our wasteful, consumption, addicted society, we throw. He says he's broken and that our consumerist society throws away broken things.

Speaker 1 But that maybe broken things can be put together and made more beautiful than ever before.

Speaker 1 Ron's making the case that he should be given a second chance. And...
I imagine, also a lighter sentence. But if Ron is pinning his hopes on this PR PR campaign, he's bound to be disappointed.

Speaker 1 Most of Izzy's videos have just a few dozen views, and it's really hard to imagine they could change anyone's mind.

Speaker 1 Here's a video Izzy posts about how Ron is supporting her.

Speaker 1 Dr. L has been helping me get ready to

Speaker 1 start a new trip from the legs of the

Speaker 1 very well at the end. So I'll go as long as you tell the tale.
Listening to these videos is very uncomfortable.

Speaker 1 It's clear that Izzy is extremely vulnerable and that she's relying on Ron for his support and affection to get out of a dark place.

Speaker 1 For example, there's one video in which it sounds like Izzy is speaking to Ron directly. Baby,

Speaker 1 I know you're scared that I wasn't going to get sober, but

Speaker 1 I wasn't dragging my feet. Just there's always...

Speaker 2 A bunch of things going on in my life.

Speaker 1 I hope it gets less.

Speaker 1 But if it doesn't, I hope it doesn't mean you love me less. Now, we don't know exactly what challenges Izzy was facing with sobriety.

Speaker 1 But all of her videos make it seem clear that Ron is trying to exploit her vulnerabilities to take control of her life, to ultimately help himself.

Speaker 1 Over time, his demands on Izzy grow beyond just a YouTube channel. We asked an actor to read out one of Ron's letters to Izzy in which he sent sent her instructions for a ploy he's come up with.

Speaker 17 Find the social media that is talking about my stuff the most and post this.

Speaker 17 There was an alleged leak from the prosecution that Jennifer, Ron Ilg's wife, says she was involved in creating the fake messages.

Speaker 1 Ron is attempting to use Izzy to try and erode the prosecution's case against him.

Speaker 1 By still spreading the lie that he's innocent, even after he's pleaded guilty, only this time pinning it all on Jennifer, his estranged wife.

Speaker 7 It was pretty disturbing.

Speaker 1 Of course, Jennifer sees what Izzy is doing online. She even watches some of her videos.

Speaker 1 Throughout this entire time, me and my team stay in touch with her, checking in about how she's doing. And watching those videos on Izzy's channel is a really weird experience for her.

Speaker 7 A lot of what he says is stuff that I've heard myself. It was pretty triggering.

Speaker 1 Jennifer is basically watching the same manipulations she's lived through with Ron play out again online in real time.

Speaker 7 He's just grooming her and manipulating her to think he's going to help her when he's just enjoying it because he has control over somebody. That's what he thrives on.

Speaker 1 At this point, it's clear. that Ron will be in prison, but a judge still hasn't decided for how long.

Speaker 1 And despite being inside a jail cell, unable to do any physical damage, we see that he can still manipulate and dominate Izzy's life through letters and phone calls.

Speaker 1 Ron is able to bind Izzy to himself in the same ways that he once did Jennifer. And Jennifer knows how that story ends, with Ron turning, gradually, over the course of years.

Speaker 1 taking over his partner's life and then becoming violent. Yet for months, it seems that Ron's mask of a loving and caring partner just makes Izzy fall for him deeper and deeper.

Speaker 20 It has the biggest heart because he goes on and on and on about this one to help me.

Speaker 1 Watching her videos, Izzy appears to be fully dedicated to Ron. All right, Dr.
Ilga, doctor me away. Can't wait.

Speaker 1 So far, Izzy has seemingly followed Ron's plan, working with him to make sure he gets off as lightly as possible.

Speaker 1 But then, out of nowhere, just a day before he is to be sentenced by a judge, Izzy turns on Ron and ultimately lands the final blow against him.

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Speaker 1 One day before Ron's sentencing hearing, the prosecution submits an unexpected document. It's entitled, Notice of Exhibits for Sentencing and Notice Regarding Acceptance of Responsibility.

Speaker 1 Now, that might sound boring, but its contents are explosive.

Speaker 1 With just a day to go before Ron will plead with the judge for leniency, the prosecution has gotten their hands on brand new evidence.

Speaker 1 Evidence that shows how brazenly unremorseful Ron is about the crimes he's pleaded guilty to. It consists of seven letters written by Ron, given to the prosecution by Izzy.

Speaker 1 Up until now, it seemed that Izzy has been totally devoted to Ron. So why she's walked away, slipped out of his grip at this crucial moment, is a mystery to us.

Speaker 1 But even though we haven't been able to speak to Izzy directly, there's still a trail of clues we can follow to try to understand why she ended up leaving Ron.

Speaker 1 Even in their one conversation, journalist Emily Sugerman noticed some glimpses of uncertainty in Izzy about Ron.

Speaker 1 For one, Izzy used to think that before all this, Amanda, the woman Ron dated while married to Jennifer, had just been Ron's mistress. But

Speaker 2 he didn't tell her that he and Amanda had been engaged at one point.

Speaker 2 And she read a detail, I don't know if it was in my article or in someone else's about Amanda having a Pinterest board with wedding inspiration on it for their wedding.

Speaker 2 And so it was kind of dawning on her that this was maybe a more serious relationship than she thought.

Speaker 1 Izzy must have started feeling nervous every time Ron mentioned Amanda to her.

Speaker 2 He talked about her a lot. When they talked on the phone, he would talk to her.
When he wrote letters to her, he would talk about Amanda.

Speaker 1 Even though Amanda didn't want anything to do with Ron anymore, he remained steadfast in his delusion that there was still some love between them.

Speaker 1 But he would try to reassure Izzy about his feelings for her, too.

Speaker 2 He told her that he was in love with her and that, you know, she was the one, but she told me, you know, when he gets out, I don't know how he's going to feel.

Speaker 2 I think that was an indication that already some of what he was saying was starting to not resonate with her. She was starting to see some of the lies behind this kind of suave personality.

Speaker 1 Ron must have started noticing a shift, a nervousness in Izzy. Here's an actor reading one of the letters she handed to the prosecution.

Speaker 17 Ron wrote to her, I bet you are pissed that I'm stuck in the past.

Speaker 1 I'm not.

Speaker 17 I'm actually looking out for your future. Please don't disappear.
I'm only trying to help you and us.

Speaker 1 I can imagine Izzy reading this and feeling her anxiety about Amanda transform into doubt about Ron.

Speaker 1 And while we don't have any of the letters she wrote to him, the prosecution only released Ron's side of their conversation.

Speaker 1 It's clear that whatever she was writing back must have been getting more and more apprehensive, because Ron's writing started growing anxious too.

Speaker 1 Mainly about the impact Izzy can have on his sentencing.

Speaker 17 We need to stick with our narrative, which is you and I are the perfect dominant submissive couple. If we do anything away from this narrative, you will give me eight to ten years.

Speaker 17 You disappearing, eight to ten years. You leaving, eight to ten years.

Speaker 1 It seems that the tighter Ron wanted to hold on to Izzy towards the end, the more she wanted to slip out of his grasp. The real Ron began to reveal himself once more.

Speaker 2 You can pull the wool over people's eyes for a while, but not forever.

Speaker 2 The crazy leaks out.

Speaker 1 As far as we know, Izzy hasn't spoken publicly since the end of her relationship with Ron. So it seems that she's now done with this part of her life.

Speaker 1 But her final act in this story, giving Ron's letters to the prosecution, will ripple out. They become crucial when it comes to the sentencing.

Speaker 7 None of the other victims or witnesses ever show up to the court hearings. I was the only one that did.

Speaker 7 They don't feel comfortable going and I understand their discomfort because I've been there, but I just felt like I needed to face it.

Speaker 1 Other than Jennifer, Ron's estranged wife, the judge doesn't get to see the people impacted by Ron's actions.

Speaker 1 So as Ron fights to keep his sentence to a minimum, the letters to Izzy help underline how much of a threat he still is.

Speaker 1 When the lead prosecutor on Ron's case, Richard Barker, first reads them, he can't quite believe what Ron has been writing.

Speaker 19 In some of the letters, he's attempting to use this case to get more attention. He wants to do interviews with Dateline.
He wants to get on TV and just draw more attention to his poor victims.

Speaker 19 and not in any way showing or reflecting remorse, but in a way that aggrandizes Mr. Ilg.

Speaker 1 And not only did he try to get TV appearances, Ron also wanted a book deal. He attached this text for Izzy to send out to a publishing company.

Speaker 17 While he remains incarcerated, we are seeking a publishing company and an exceptional writer to document his story. His true life story will be the next 50 shades of gray, but on steroids.

Speaker 1 Still, years after his arrest, Ron is trying to emerge from the story as some sort of a hero, which backfires on him because all of Izzy's letters give the prosecution a very strong hand when asking the judge for the maximum possible sentence.

Speaker 19 We're absolutely going to have to ask for eight years because he's engaging in conduct that's really reflective of a lack of remorse.

Speaker 1 On the day of the sentencing itself, Jennifer and her family arrive in a wood-paneled courtroom. Ron is sitting just across the aisle from them.
Jennifer glances over at him.

Speaker 7 He seemed nervous. He didn't look at us at all.
He just avoided eye contact.

Speaker 1 The hearing begins. Rich Barker and the prosecution team present all their arguments for why Ron shouldn't get any leniency.
With all his frenzied scheming laid bare, it's not looking good for him.

Speaker 1 But he has one final opportunity to help himself. He's allowed to give a statement that shows he understands what he's done.

Speaker 1 As he steps up to deliver his speech, he lets the courtroom know he wants to speak from the heart.

Speaker 17 This is going to be very difficult for me.

Speaker 1 What I did was horrible.

Speaker 17 The messages I wrote were...

Speaker 17 I can't even wrap my mind around what I did. I truly can't.

Speaker 1 Jennifer can't believe it.

Speaker 7 I cried because I was shocked and I thought, wow, he'd actually admitted to it and called it, you know, horrendous.

Speaker 1 But quickly, Ron's statement starts going off track, becoming far less about remorse and much more about trying to win sympathy for himself.

Speaker 17 Becoming a physician was always a dream for me and I was discouraged from trying to reach that dream because when you live in rural Oregon, it's not very often that somebody achieves that sort of a dream, but I did.

Speaker 1 It was a miracle.

Speaker 1 It's the same story Ron was trying to sell to Emily. His persona is the only thing he's got left.

Speaker 19 The sentencing was

Speaker 19 unlike any other that I think I've attended. It was a very self-serving statement.

Speaker 1 I was drowning and everything was just out of my control.

Speaker 19 He talked for about an hour and it was almost just a ramble.

Speaker 17 It was like I was watching myself in a role or in a play or some sort of a fantasy world, and I didn't understand what was happening.

Speaker 7 I don't know how genuine he really is. I think that it's his last resort, and so he just was forced into doing it.
He's using it to make himself look good.

Speaker 7 Like, you know, oh, I was broken, and I'm being fixed, and I'm a better man now, but it's all a, I don't believe it.

Speaker 1 It seems that the judge doesn't believe Ron either. After he finishes, he gets sentenced to eight years in prison.
The most he can get.

Speaker 1 Ultimately, this story is one with a happy ending, or as happy as you can get in these circumstances.

Speaker 1 Here we have an abuser who hid in plain sight for years, so skilled at maintaining a pristine public persona. until he was finally unmasked, held to account, with his reputation destroyed.

Speaker 1 But the thing is, it was a really unlikely series of events that made this ending possible. I spoke about this with Emily Sugarman.

Speaker 2 There are so many, I think, Ron Ilgs in the before period, before it all really broke down. He just hit a series of hardships that were insurmountable to him.

Speaker 1 But maybe there are people out there who never quite hit one as catastrophic as a team of journalists hacking their dark web messages.

Speaker 1 Ron's case reveals dynamics that play out over and over again in domestic violence cases.

Speaker 1 The psychology of these relationships, the control people like Ron exert in meticulous ways, means that from the outside it can be so hard to see what's really going on for victims.

Speaker 1 Though Emily makes the point that even in this case, where it seems that we were only able to expose Ron thanks to the kill list, Information about how dangerous he is was already out there.

Speaker 1 Because before we ever stepped in, Jennifer had already filed for divorce and for a restraining order, detailing much of Ron's abuse in her petitions.

Speaker 2 What Jennifer was saying was very scary, and the fact that he was allowed to continue following her, stalking her, until the FBI got notified that there was a possible dark web hitman plot, I find that very striking.

Speaker 2 This really made me think about how seriously we need to be taking allegations of domestic violence and intimate partner violence.

Speaker 1 Emily makes the case that those kinds of allegations, they're often the first sign that something worse is going to happen.

Speaker 1 But the problem is that very often abusers don't face any repercussions, even if it's well known how dangerous they are.

Speaker 2 Assuming a position of power and status in your community helps an abuser to reach more victims.

Speaker 2 If you're a highly respected figure, people are more willing to trust you, both victims and then the people that these victims talk to and try to complain to.

Speaker 1 I think the core thing I've taken away from this case and my conversation with Emily is an answer to a question that has permeated this whole story.

Speaker 1 Where does Ron's power, the power of abusers, come from?

Speaker 1 It can seem so strange that anyone could fall for a girl at Ron and stand by him.

Speaker 1 And one part of the answer is who Ron is. A careful, calculated manipulator with influence, intelligence, and money.
But according to Emily, it's also down to something else.

Speaker 2 It's less about him and more about the people that he victimized.

Speaker 2 A lot of people are out there hurting.

Speaker 2 wanting something better and very vulnerable to someone like Ron who can swoop in and promise you the world and you don't realize what it's going to cost you.

Speaker 2 It's like just how vulnerable we all are in the pursuit of love and affection.

Speaker 1 The story doesn't end here.

Speaker 1 Ron is due to get out of prison in September 2027

Speaker 1 and he's already looking for someone new.

Speaker 1 He's created an account on a prisoner dating website and if you click on his profile, you'll see him standing with his hands in his pockets, smiling.

Speaker 1 He's somewhere outside, perhaps a farm.

Speaker 1 He looks handsome. In his bio, he writes,

Speaker 17 I used to work as a doctor and loved helping with community outreach. I keep a positive attitude.
I'm a Christian. and people describe me as a nice guy.

Speaker 17 I'm an open person, so feel free to ask me anything. I look forward to getting to know you.

Speaker 1 Next time on Kill List.

Speaker 1 A family in Minnesota pack their guns, skip town, and hide out on the roads after they learn that someone's trying to kill their teenage daughter.

Speaker 10 The first thing the cop asked me is, what have you done lately to piss someone off?

Speaker 1 If you like Kill List, 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 1 Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wandry.com/slash survey.

Speaker 1 From Wanderer and Novel, this is Kill List.

Speaker 1 Kill List is hosted by me, Carl Miller. This episode is produced and written by Jay Kutayevich.
Our series producer is Tom Wright.

Speaker 1 Our producers are Caroline Thornham, Amalia Sortland, and Anna Sinfield. And our researchers are Meghan Oyinka and Lena Chang.
Additional research from Chris Montero.

Speaker 1 For Wanderer, our senior producer is Mandy Gorenstein. Fact Checking by Fendor Fulton.
Our managing producers are Cherie Houston, Sarah Tobin and Charlotte Wolfe for Novel.

Speaker 1 Sarah Mathers is our managing producer and Callum Plus is our senior managing producer for Wanderer. Original music by Skyler Gerdman and Martin Linebell.

Speaker 1 Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander, Max O'Brien and Caroline Thornham. Sound design and mixing by Daniel Kempson.

Speaker 1 The news clips you heard in this episode were from KREM2 News, Daily Mail and Forne News Now. For Novel, Willard Foxton is Creative Director of Development.

Speaker 1 Our executive producers are Sean Glynn, Max O'Brien and Craig Strachard for Novel.

Speaker 1 Executive producers for Wanderery are Marshall Louie and Erin O'Flaherty.

Speaker 21 I'm Raza Jaffrey and in the latest season of The Spy Who, we open the file on Morton Storm. the spy who lived inside Al-Qaeda.

Speaker 21 Unfulfilled with his life in a notorious Danish biker gang, Morton's storm is lost. One afternoon he stumbles into a library looking for answers.
He finds them in the form of a book about Islam.

Speaker 21 The towering ginger-haired Dane doesn't know it yet, but that moment will hurl him into a world of radicalism and see him rise through the ranks of militant Islamist organization, Al-Qaeda, only to suffer a huge crisis of faith.

Speaker 21 He turns from devotee to spy, tasked with rooting out some of al-Qaeda's most feared generals.

Speaker 21 The CIA and MI5 bid for his allegiance as he loses himself in a life of cash-laden suitcases, double crosses, and betrayal.

Speaker 21 Follow the Spy Who on the Wondery app or wherever you listen to podcasts, or you can binge the full season of The Spy Who Lived Inside Al-Qaeda, early and ad-free, with Wondery Plus.