Sun Prairie Part II | 12

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Speaker 1 It's about five o'clock in the evening.

Speaker 1 Kind of a sleepy January day in Wisconsin. It's been overcast all day.
There's snow on on the ground.

Speaker 1 Local reporter Dylan Brogan is driving through the suburbs of Sun Prairie, Wisconsin.

Speaker 1 When we first gave him a call, he was in the middle of resurrecting his local newspaper, which had gone out of business at the start of the pandemic.

Speaker 1 Dylan is in his mid-30s, thick-rimmed glasses, short brown hair, and he combines a reporter's bookishness with intrepid bravery.

Speaker 1 He agreed to help us make contact with Travis Harper, a former Marine and father of three young daughters, who we believe is in imminent danger.

Speaker 2 Target needs to be killed. He is a white 5'5 male, dark brown short hair, blue eyes, weighs 165 pounds, works at

Speaker 2 airport, sellers.

Speaker 2 He is violent.

Speaker 1 It is a little unbelievable that somebody would want to murder someone in this way, and it's just a little bit unfathomable.

Speaker 1 A user by the alias Malik8 has paid more than $5,000 to a Hitman for Hire website on the Darknet for Travis's murder. All right, here goes nothing.

Speaker 1 Dylan parks up the road and heads for Travis's door on foot.

Speaker 1 Hey,

Speaker 1 hey, my name is Dylan. Are you Travis? What do you mean?

Speaker 1 Um, well, it's kind of a long story, but I'm a journalist, and uh, they want to talk to you about this investigation they've been doing about something having to do with Dark Hoat.

Speaker 1 You're not in trouble at all, dude.

Speaker 1 Uh, they're hoping to make contact with you. What investigation?

Speaker 1 Well, um,

Speaker 1 I mean, they want to explain it to you, but I'd be happy to give you the details. Is this a good time? I don't want to interrupt, I can come back.
I'm about to tell you to go away, so

Speaker 1 you better be quick. Alright.
Travis tells Dylan to spit it out, and Dylan's carefully planned elevator pitch goes out the window.

Speaker 1 Alright, well, there's this dark website that turned out to be a total scam, right?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 basically, it's like a hired assassin site. And you came up as somebody paid money to supposedly put you on a hit list, but the whole thing was a scam.

Speaker 3 So am I the one getting

Speaker 1 killed?

Speaker 1 Oh, God. Well.

Speaker 1 I think you're going to want to know more about it.

Speaker 4 Not really.

Speaker 1 So, have a good day. Are you sure? Nope.

Speaker 1 Alright.

Speaker 1 Dylan gets back in the car and gives me a call. I did my best to just say, hey, I think you're going to want to know this information.
And he's just like, nope. And he closed the door on me.
Wow.

Speaker 1 I just, you know, I cannot get into the mindset of that. Like, if someone tells you someone wants to kill you,

Speaker 1 how do you not want to know what the next sentence is?

Speaker 1 We'd always been worried that breaking this news would cause people to completely freak out. But more often than not, they simply don't believe us.

Speaker 1 But like it or not, and whether he believes it or not, Travis is in danger. And we need to convince him and the police of that fact.

Speaker 1 But there's one person who can't find out that we're intervening.

Speaker 1 The person who was paid to have Travis killed.

Speaker 1 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 scam murder for hire website on the dark web.

Speaker 1 And that allowed us to see every order being placed, real money being paid have real people murdered. The tally of these targets now stands in the hundreds.

Speaker 1 We call it the kill list.

Speaker 1 In the last episode, we told you the story of Travis, the bitter feud with his ex-wife, Kelly, and how their relationship became tangled in a web of lies and deceit.

Speaker 1 But those are the only falsehoods in this story

Speaker 1 because sometimes it takes lies to catch an attempted murderer.

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Speaker 6 Hey, Zach, are you smiling at my gorgeous canyon view?

Speaker 1 No, Donald. I'm smiling because I've got something I want to tell the whole world.
Well, do it. Shout it out.
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Speaker 6 Oh my Jesus. Look at that, Zach.
We got the neighbor's attention.

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Sign switching.

Speaker 1 Yes, T-Mobile home internet for the neighborhood.

Speaker 3 Donald, you still haven't returned my weed whacker.

Speaker 1 Carl, don't you embarrass me like this, please. What's everyone yelling about? T-Mobile's got home internet.
And Donald's got my weed whacker.

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

Speaker 1 and this is Kill List.

Speaker 1 Determined to properly warn him, I reached back out to Travis with a call.

Speaker 1 And thanks, I think, to my British accent, I was able to convince him that we weren't trying to scam him or play a practical joke.

Speaker 1 He agreed to have Dylan come back to his house so we could help him make sense of it all.

Speaker 1 It was sort of baffling to me, too. So later that afternoon, Dylan is standing in Travis's kitchen, microphone in one hand, laptop in the other, as he tries to set up a video call.

Speaker 1 Travis, meanwhile, is sitting at the kitchen table, staring ahead with quiet intensity.

Speaker 1 Behind him, his partner Liz stands with her arms folded, firing concerned questions. Her eyes darting between Travis and the young journalist who's just arrived in the kitchen.

Speaker 10 So he's on a hit list?

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, that's this. I'll let them sort of explain it, but yeah, it's like this dark website and it's somebody paid thousands of dollars.

Speaker 10 Does it say when the hit was made?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 10 When was it made?

Speaker 1 Oh, you've killed me. I mean, I want...

Speaker 1 No, no, I can talk. I mean, it's.
I just don't want to mislead you in any way because they have it all in front of them, right?

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 it was in December. It was recently and they said it was super urgent.
Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 this isn't funny, Devin.

Speaker 1 This is not funny.

Speaker 1 It's not funny. I mean I wish it was a joke, but it's not.

Speaker 10 You said that this was a joke. For the record, I didn't do the hit.

Speaker 10 I know that we fought this week, but I didn't do it.

Speaker 1 Can you please? Yes.

Speaker 10 Thank you.

Speaker 1 Hey, Carl hi there everyone um

Speaker 1 there's no kind of easy way of saying this really but um your name and information including your address and we believe perhaps your car once I explained to Travis about the kid order there's only one suspect he has in mind

Speaker 6 I got a a crazy ex-wife who is uh constantly and consistently doing stuff and then I was looking through my messages on December 3rd and we got in an argument about going back to court around that same time frame So that makes sense.

Speaker 6 I mean if I was a betting man, I would bet definitely that would be her

Speaker 1 is this consistent with the kind of violent violent kind of profile of her behavior?

Speaker 3 She's not

Speaker 6 She's unstable and anybody unstable can be violent and she's gotten worse and worse throughout the years

Speaker 6 And she does do shady things and I mean that's why we got a divorce

Speaker 1 how long have you felt that she was actually really capable of actually killing you not just angry with you but really that...

Speaker 6 I think it was

Speaker 6 about a year ago, sometime in the summertime, I was like, you know, I think she's probably going to end up trying to kill me.

Speaker 6 It was right when we started back in court again, and it was getting really bad.

Speaker 10 Well, when I first met you, you said that to me, too. You said if I go missing, it was Kelly.

Speaker 1 One of the concerns is that this might not be the only kind of route that she's pursuing to have you hurt.

Speaker 6 Oh, it's definitely not the only route that she's pursuing to have me hurt. So that's why we're probably going to have to get some sort of law enforcement agency involved.

Speaker 1 The evening is deepening in Wisconsin, and I begin to sense that both Travis and Liz, in different ways, are feeling increasingly unsafe.

Speaker 1 Liz is standing over by the window and begins to part the blinds and peer into the darkness outside. Then, as Travis and I continue to talk, she quietly leaves the room and calls the police.

Speaker 1 A short while later, there's a knock at the door. So, the police are here.
What do you want to do now, guys? My god, I'm sorry, Travis. I'm so sorry to have to give you all this news.

Speaker 6 No, no, you guys are doing a great favor and a great justice for giving all the news.

Speaker 1 The police are, they tell me, responding to reports of a suspicious person,

Speaker 1 which it takes me a moment to work out must be either me or Dylan.

Speaker 1 At first the cops are skeptical of what Travis and Liz are telling them. It does seem like they are outlandish but I mean I seems like there's a bit of a history there so

Speaker 1 we're gonna take this as seriously as possible. Well I would hope you guys weren't.
Oh yeah of course.

Speaker 1 The lead officer looks about 18 years old. He tells Dylan he's a trainee and when he realizes we're recording he turns on his body camera.

Speaker 1 It seems like our involvement is making the police officers suspicious. The one thing that I was just curious about

Speaker 1 Right, but that was the part that kind of like gave me a little bit of a pause. Right, but I think as we can see now that this is actually legit and there's a hit out on him.

Speaker 1 The police officer makes a strange offer. Travis says he's worried about communicating with Kelly, who he can only talk to through a messaging app mandated by the family court.

Speaker 1 In response, the officer offers to call Kelly himself and tell her not to speak to Travis. At which point, Liz puts her foot down.

Speaker 10 I don't know if that's a good idea. I only know.

Speaker 1 I won't tell her about anything about this case though, so I won't.

Speaker 10 Right, I understand that, but I don't think you should call her until tomorrow morning because honestly, we're worried that she's going to do something to those girls.

Speaker 1 In the days leading up to this, I'd contemplated not one, but two different but equally horrible outcomes.

Speaker 1 Travis might be killed if we didn't intervene, but our intervention could also have terrible consequences if we didn't tread extremely carefully.

Speaker 1 It's clear that Travis and Kelly have been trapped in a cycle of conflict for years.

Speaker 1 And now, Travis fears that things could be about to get so much worse.

Speaker 6 I get more worried that Kelly's going to drown the kids.

Speaker 6 and kill the children more than I've ever been worried about her trying to kill me.

Speaker 6 That keeps me up at night. That one scares the shit out of me.

Speaker 6 You know, if she can't have them, no one can.

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Speaker 6 I pulled into my garage,

Speaker 6 and as I'm getting out of the truck and the garage door is closing, that's when I realized if someone was going to kill me, going into the garage now became a

Speaker 6 life or death situation.

Speaker 1 In the days that follow our conversation, Travis gets paranoid.

Speaker 1 He begins to obsess about where, when, and how he could be murdered.

Speaker 6 Every time I came in the garage door, I rounded the corner out of my pickup truck as fast as I could. I didn't even turn the truck off, put it in park, and came out ready to fight.

Speaker 6 It was terrifying going in the garage because you got to pull in the garage fast, you got to get out of your car fast, and you got to freaking get a weapon of some sort ready to fight.

Speaker 1 So I bought a pocket knife and I need to get a gun now.

Speaker 6 Like now, now.

Speaker 1 As it starts snowing, Travis's paranoia becomes almost constant.

Speaker 6 So I'm shoveling snow. Every time a car drives by, and we live on a pretty major street, I'd go back in the garage.
Shovel, shovel, shovel cart back in the garage. Shovel, shovel, shovel cart back up.

Speaker 6 I've never been a fast shoveler, but that slowed me down. Liz is in tears one day about it because she kind of realized it too.

Speaker 1 Travis is having to live with the idea of someone proactively trying to kill him all the time. This threat that he's living under has smothered his entire life.

Speaker 1 He's locked the windows and generally tries to make the house as difficult to break into as possible. Everything he does is shaped by the fear that he's about to be killed.

Speaker 6 We almost got our zombie action program going on, except we don't have the plywood on the freaking windows. The windows are closed at night and,

Speaker 1 you know,

Speaker 6 that kind of sucks.

Speaker 6 I like to have them open because I like to watch the Cardinals.

Speaker 1 Travis is confronting the really big things, his own mortality, the sheer fragility of the human body, but also small things, like not being able to watch the birds play outside his window.

Speaker 1 Knowing you're on the kill list inflicts a terrible cost. It drains the colour out of your life.

Speaker 1 And when that colour has drained away, how do you add it back? We could tell Travis he's on the kill list, but we can't take him off it. Only the police can do that.

Speaker 1 And right now, Travis and Liz don't have much confidence.

Speaker 1 The local Some Prairie Police officers who took the call were young. They didn't seem to take the call particularly seriously.

Speaker 1 Before they left, they told Travis that they thought we might be trying to scam him.

Speaker 1 And Travis and Liz have had many dealings with the Sun Prairie Police already throughout Travis's bitter feud with Kelly, and things haven't gone well.

Speaker 1 There's a risk the kill order just looks like another allegation being thrown around.

Speaker 1 Fortunately, Liz is as determined to protect Travis as Malik 8 is to kill him.

Speaker 1 After our conversation, Liz begins to work her own contacts in law enforcement. And they do not end with the local police department at Sun Prairie.

Speaker 1 One of the people that Liz phones is none other than a special agent at the FBI.

Speaker 1 So within days of first meeting Travis, we're on the phone to FBI special agent Brian Baker. So I guess where I want to start is just kind of a little bit of a

Speaker 1 just make sure that you guys aren't recording this conversation.

Speaker 1 Is that correct? At Brian's request, we stopped recording.

Speaker 1 We spent about an hour on Zoom with him, explaining to him how the site works, the messages that we have, and the technical Bitcoin information. all of which we then sent to him.

Speaker 1 Unlike the local cops, it was clear that Brian was taking things seriously.

Speaker 1 He knows a lot about Bitcoin, the dark net, and cybercrime. His questions are specific, they're purposeful.

Speaker 1 As the call goes on, I feel a rising confidence that Brian is going to actually competently and proactively investigate Kelly.

Speaker 1 Travis and Liz were reassured too, though still desperately worried about what might happen.

Speaker 6 Everyone's like, hey, we got this. Don't worry too much.
Don't worry too much, but it feels like an imminent threat. Like, there's something serious going on.
There's an imminent danger.

Speaker 6 But everyone that knows about it is like, hey, dude, we're good. We're good.
Don't panic too much. Yeah, everything's good.
We're doing our best.

Speaker 6 You know, the more I hear it, the more I want to panic.

Speaker 6 I expect one of three things to happen.

Speaker 6 One,

Speaker 6 they say there's no evidence and they'll just keep an eye out.

Speaker 6 The second one is that they're going to say that they

Speaker 6 have evidence, a motive, stuff like that, and they're going to take her in for an interview where she would probably, after about an hour, admit to everything.

Speaker 6 And then the third one is I get shot in the stomach and die in the snow.

Speaker 1 What Travis doesn't know is that a major investigation is now underway.

Speaker 1 FBI agents begin to secretly track and follow Kelly's movements. And pretty soon, Kelly is going to realize that someone is on her tail.

Speaker 1 15 miles away from Sun Prairie, at her home in the nearby city of Columbus, Kelly is starting to notice strange things are going on.

Speaker 1 Like a car that seems to be following her around, lurking on the road outside her house. When she goes to run errands, the car is there again.
Kelly takes a picture of it on her phone.

Speaker 1 On the drive home, she sees the car following her again. Freaked out, she takes an unexpected turn off the road through some nearby farmlands.
She calls the police, fearing she could be in danger.

Speaker 1 A few days later, on February 4th, Officer Cheryl Patty gives Kelly a call.

Speaker 1 She says she wants to talk to Kelly at the station about the suspicious cars she's been seeing.

Speaker 1 When Kelly arrives at the police station the next day, she's ushered into a small, cramped, windowless room to find not just Officer Patty, but next to her, FBI Special Agent Brian Baker.

Speaker 1 Kelly sits down at the end of a long rectangular table. Officer Patty to her left, Special Agent Baker to her right.

Speaker 1 The interview starts friendly enough. It begins with a subject that would have been familiar to Kelly, the many dozens of child abuse allegations that she's made against Travis.

Speaker 1 A judge had dismissed those allegations outright, but whilst Kelly might feel that her claims had gone unheard, Officer Patty and Agent Baker tell her they want to help.

Speaker 1 They ask her to go over the story all over again.

Speaker 1 Kelly doesn't know it, but she's just walked into a trap.

Speaker 1 That very moment, 12 FBI agents are executing a search warrant on her home.

Speaker 1 Officer Patty and Agent Baker listen patiently and sympathetically until 40 minutes later, Brian Baker steps into the conversation.

Speaker 1 We know what Baker says because we have a partial transcript of this interview. His words are read by an actor.

Speaker 12 I work a ton of different things, so when Cheryl brought this to me, I, well, I thought something doesn't add up. There's something weird going on here.

Speaker 12 And then I read through your whole file, and well, I'm like, no one's listening to you. You're desperately trying to protect your kids.
You're doing whatever you can, and you're not being heard.

Speaker 12 So, with my experience, I just wanted to make sure you're are safe and your family is safe.

Speaker 12 So I reached out to FBI not only in my area, but across the country and then internationally.

Speaker 12 And I'm able to keyword search on the internet to see if any threats show up, which I think is important because you're seeing cars and weird things happening.

Speaker 1 At this point, Agent Baker's whole tone changes. What started as a quiet, sympathetic concern is now becoming gravely serious.

Speaker 1 He tells Kelly he's concerned for her and her children's safety because someone has placed a hit on the dark web against a member of her family.

Speaker 12 The information I found, there is a threat against your family. And with this particular website that I found it on, and talking to the experts, it's a bad site.

Speaker 12 There are some bad people behind this site, and sometimes... Even the people that use these sites become victims because the people that run these sites have technologies to track people.

Speaker 12 So my goal here today is to protect you and protect your kids.

Speaker 12 So if you can remember anything, I need your help because I need to find out who's on the other end of this site.

Speaker 1 Baker slides a document over to Kelly across the table. It's the kill order we gave him.

Speaker 1 The FBI is trying to use the order they suspect Kelly has made to flush her out under the guise of trying to protect her.

Speaker 1 Kelly reads through the messages and then Agent Baker pulls the rug out from under her.

Speaker 1 He tells Kelly that he's tracked down the person behind the messages. He's got IP addresses and information from the Bitcoin wallet that made the payment for the hit.

Speaker 12 We know it's you.

Speaker 12 I need you to be honest with me so that I can protect everyone.

Speaker 12 So I can protect you.

Speaker 1 Kelly takes a deep breath and confesses to everything.

Speaker 1 She admits going onto the site and trying to order multiple hitmen. She says that she'd already been scammed on one site, then went on to take out a hit on another.

Speaker 1 She persevered, she says, because she felt like no one was listening to her and her allegations against Travis. She claims she was desperate.
At which point, the whole tone of the interview changes.

Speaker 1 Up until now, the police haven't told Kelly that she's under arrest. They haven't read her her rights or advised her to speak to a lawyer.

Speaker 1 Instead, they've carefully created a pretense that they are there to protect her and her children.

Speaker 1 Agent Baker leaves the room and returns with two other agents. They tell Kelly that she's under arrest and that she has a right to an attorney.

Speaker 1 Kelly tries to interject, but Brian Baker shuts her down. She's placed in handcuffs and led away.

Speaker 9 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 1 Kelly's mugshot is the first time I see what she looks like. A middle-aged suburban housewife in a prison uniform.

Speaker 1 She has strawberry blonde hair in a loose braid just beginning to come apart on the right side.

Speaker 1 Light blue eyes stared directly, almost defiantly, into the camera.

Speaker 1 Based on everything we know about her, it's clear that Kelly has a long track record of lying.

Speaker 1 But it seems like a long way to go from telling white lies to big dangerous ones to then paying to have her ex-husband murdered.

Speaker 1 When we dug deeper into Kelly's past, we found that Travis was not her first victim.

Speaker 10 Two busy moms founded momtomomy.com to build a community of doctors, retailers, and baby product manufacturers who want to be a part of a trusted network of resources available to moms across the nation.

Speaker 10 And Mom to Mommy founders Kelly Harper and Elaine Iwiki join us with the details. Great to have you both.

Speaker 1 Thank you for having me here.

Speaker 1 In 2012, Kelly appeared on Fox News New Mexico. She's beaming at the presenters, sat next to her business partner, Elaine Wicki.

Speaker 1 Their pitch is that they're your typical all-American mums, and they certainly look the part. They've just founded an online business together, mum to mummy.
Kelly lays out the details.

Speaker 13 We have an online directory for physicians, dentists, and chiropractors. And then there's an online forum also where parents can share advice, ups and downs from infant all the way up to high school.

Speaker 13 Like my daughter's trying to get into college, like what's some suggestions, things like that.

Speaker 13 And then we have free online boutique shopping, and it will always be free for all parents.

Speaker 1 And that's really cool.

Speaker 10 I love that part.

Speaker 1 Kelly keeps smiling as she reels off her sales pitch, but her tightly clasped hands in her lap betray her nerves.

Speaker 1 The whole thing feels hammy and staged in the way that only American daytime television can be.

Speaker 10 Great information. Thank you both so much.

Speaker 1 Thank you. We enjoyed being here.
We love having you.

Speaker 1 Four months later, Kelly's business business relationship with Elaine would come to an acrimonious end.

Speaker 1 Elaine's lawyers sent Kelly a letter alleging that Kelly had defrauded one of the company's corporate sponsors out of $27,500.

Speaker 1 As part of that alleged fraud, the letter claims that Kelly told Elaine that she had managed to secure a spot for them on Good Morning America, the famous national breakfast show on ABC.

Speaker 1 But when the the two women turned up at the TV studio in New York, having paid for flights and hotels, they were told there was no record of them ever being invited onto the show and were escorted out of the building by security.

Speaker 1 The letter also accuses Kelly of hiding her criminal past from Elaine. It's an intriguing detail.

Speaker 1 Remember how Travis told us that he was concerned Kelly was getting involved in fraud during their marriage.

Speaker 1 Well, it turns out that in 2005, back when Travis was a Marine stationed in Yuma, Arizona, Kelly was working as an administrator at a bone and joint clinic.

Speaker 1 She was accused then of stealing $4,500 from the company and she pled guilty to a felony and Travis was completely oblivious.

Speaker 1 And much later, after they got divorced, Kelly got in trouble again.

Speaker 1 This time, she managed to end up in possession of a forged mortgage approval letter from the Bank of Sun Prairie for a $200,000 loan.

Speaker 1 Kelly didn't face any criminal charges for the events surrounding the forged mortgage letter.

Speaker 1 And as far as we know, she didn't face any criminal consequences for the allegations laid at her by her former business partner, Elaine, either.

Speaker 1 But now she is in handcuffs, accused of trying to have Travis murdered.

Speaker 1 It feels like all the lies she's told might be about to finally catch up with her. But she's not the only one who's been twisting the truth.

Speaker 1 In the weeks that follow her arrest, Kelly gets a lawyer and begins to work on her defence.

Speaker 1 The lawyer pulls together a document. arguing that Kelly's confession should be suppressed and not used as evidence against her.

Speaker 1 Her lawyer argues that the lies the police told her about the safety of her family make her confession inadmissible.

Speaker 1 They also say that Kelly's Miranda rights were violated and that she should have been advised at the start of the interview that she had the right to an attorney.

Speaker 1 So is there a risk here then that the FBI's tactics create a genuine legal vulnerability? If Kelly's confession becomes inadmissible, there is a danger the case against her could collapse.

Speaker 1 Kelly's lawyer couldn't speak to us, but he put us in touch with a colleague of his, criminal defense attorney Jessa Nicholson Gatz, who's seen the documents that were prepared in Kelly's defense.

Speaker 1 And as a criminal defense lawyer, she's experienced in the kind of tactics the police can use to draw out a confession.

Speaker 3 So, first of all, you have to start with the understanding that police are allowed to lie to suspects.

Speaker 3 So they're allowed to use any type of deceptive tactics that they think will advance an interrogation.

Speaker 3 You know, your typical deceptive police tactic is to exaggerate the strength of the evidence against them. Here, they did something really different.
Here, they treated her like she was a victim.

Speaker 3 not a suspect. So they talked to her about having concerns for her safety.

Speaker 3 They told her that she needed to be cooperative and tell them everything because that was the only way that she could protect her children.

Speaker 3 I'm a mother of two young children, so I had an emotional reaction to the particular manipulation tactic. I think that that was probably very effective.
And

Speaker 3 on the one hand, like I have a ton of empathy for what that must have felt like for Kelly Harper. On the other hand,

Speaker 3 I've seen her reaction to that. And I think she's been very vocal.
Like, I never would have said any of this if I had known that you were going to use it against me.

Speaker 3 And I'm kind of like, well, yeah, that's what happens, though.

Speaker 3 You know, I mean, pretty much everybody says after the fact, well, I really wish I hadn't confessed to crimes. I mean, that's usually not helpful to somebody's own self-interest.

Speaker 1 Jessa also says that she thinks it's fair to argue that Kelly should have had her Miranda rights read to her at the beginning of the interview.

Speaker 3 In my view, when you take someone to the police station, put them in a locked room and are asking them questions about a case that they're the suspect in, I think they should be mirandized.

Speaker 3 They should be read the warning and given the opportunity to consult with counsel.

Speaker 1 These are the sorts of things that any defense lawyer will jump onto to try and help their client.

Speaker 1 None of this was tested in court, however.

Speaker 3 Sometimes lawyers negotiate a better sentence in exchange for not litigating an issue, and it's my understanding that that's what ultimately happened here.

Speaker 1 In return for pleading guilty, Kelly gets a six-year sentence, and Travis still gets to have his day in court.

Speaker 1 At Kelly's sentencing, he comes face to face with the woman who tried to have him killed.

Speaker 6 At first, it was terrifying, like scary, but I wanted to let her know how it affected the children and how she's always claiming that I'm the abusive one and I'm the emotionally abusive and physically abusive and terrible.

Speaker 6 I'm a terrible father.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 6 her actions have destroyed those kids and they had to start a whole new life because of of it.

Speaker 6 She didn't make eye contact at me at all. She just stared straight down at her paper the entire time I talked.
Several times I pointed at her and looked her right in the eye.

Speaker 6 I was debating on whether or not I was going to name call at all.

Speaker 6 I decided that I wasn't going to do it. And then at the very end,

Speaker 6 you know, it needed to be said, she's not a good person. She's a thing of nightmares.

Speaker 6 She's

Speaker 6 incapable of human emotion, in my opinion.

Speaker 1 We've seen no evidence that Kelly was given a psychological evaluation, and the defense never claimed that she was suffering from any mental health condition that might explain or mitigate her behavior.

Speaker 1 Instead, here's what she had to say for herself. Her words are read by an actor.

Speaker 14 I was going through a tumultuous custody battle. He'd abused our children.
emotionally and physically for years. I'd reported it to the police.
Guardian Ed Lydums.

Speaker 14 There had had been many court cases, CPS reports, and no one would listen or do anything to stop the abuse and help my children.

Speaker 14 It was my divine right as a mother to protect my children and help them from suffering. I was desperate and in a very dark place, went on the dark web to find someone to kill.

Speaker 14 I am deeply and sincerely sorry for my action.

Speaker 1 I have to stress that a judge ruled there was never any evidence to support Kelly's claims of abuse, despite extensive investigations by the authorities.

Speaker 1 And perhaps it was this, coupled with Kelly's long history of fraud, deceit and lies, that meant the judge was unable to take any of Kelly's explanations at face value.

Speaker 1 He told her, It's hard to know your underlying motivations, and you've certainly been adamant about your own.

Speaker 1 There's an awful lot in the record that creates problems with that, but I don't have the details to make sense of any of it.

Speaker 1 Kelly has been working relentlessly ever since she was convicted to try and get released. She's submitted appeal after appeal and motion after motion to try and get compassionate release.

Speaker 1 She sacked her attorney. She's now representing herself, writing long angry messages to the judge responsible for hearing her appeals.
Part of her strategy also seems to be to attack me and my team.

Speaker 1 She's variously claimed that we have offered her a book deal, we haven't, and that the Hitman for Hire website was set up by us to get stories and to make money, it wasn't.

Speaker 1 Travis, meanwhile, has uprooted his family. He sold the house and moved them to a new location in a remote area.

Speaker 1 Travis says his kids were sad to leave their old home in Sun Prairie, but he's glad to finally have full custody of the three daughters he shares with Kelly.

Speaker 1 Along with Liz's four children, the family are trying to move on with their lives.

Speaker 1 But as Kelly has pushed to be released, it feels like this story could still yet have another sinister twist in it.

Speaker 6 I still feel that sooner or later it's going to be a violent confrontation. There's nothing in her that will ever give up.
She's like the Terminator. She will not stop.
She will not quit.

Speaker 6 She will not stop until you are dead.

Speaker 6 You know,

Speaker 6 if she wants something,

Speaker 6 you better hope to God she gets it.

Speaker 10 I mean, she's sitting in there for she has nothing to do, and she's sitting in there day after day. You think she isn't plotting something else?

Speaker 10 The person that put her in jail is sitting right here. And now he's got her kids.
You know what I'm saying? In her mind, he's got her kids. He took away her life.
He took away whatever.

Speaker 6 She's not going to let it go.

Speaker 1 No, she's plotting right now. There's no part of you, though, that thinks that Kelly maybe after all this will change and no,

Speaker 6 I think jail has got her not in a position of punishment, but in a position of stewing.

Speaker 6 I mean, she said in court, and I quote, my divine right as a mother.

Speaker 6 So my death isn't just something that she needs to do because of revenge. My death to her is divine.

Speaker 6 And so, no, I don't think she's going to stop. I think I got five years left to live, to be honest with you.

Speaker 6 I'm gonna enjoy the heck out of it.

Speaker 1 In the years that have followed, Travis and Liz have been nervously waiting to see when Kelly might get released. And in May 2024, those fears were realised.

Speaker 1 Kelly was released early from prison, having served three years of her six-year sentence. She continues to maintain that she's a victim of both Travis and the criminal justice system.

Speaker 1 These cases have taught me that it might be impossible to ever really feel completely satisfied because they don't end. The lives of all the people involved just continue.

Speaker 1 And you never really know whether the remorse is real, whether motivations have changed, whether the people have changed.

Speaker 1 What we're doing doesn't make someone stop wanting to kill someone else. It just shows them the way they were trying to do it doesn't work.

Speaker 1 And in these circumstances, how can a victim like Travis ever truly move on?

Speaker 1 Coming up on Kill List, we're in the vast and empty landscape of the Utah countryside.

Speaker 1 where a devoutly religious father of 16 children is suspected of trying to murder a couple on the other side of the country.

Speaker 1 So, what I need you to just do for me is help me understand what got you to that point.

Speaker 15 What got you to the point where you felt like you needed to have them killed?

Speaker 1 Yes, I can take it.

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

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

Speaker 1 Kill List is hosted by me, Carl Miller. The reporter for this episode is Dylan Brogan and it was produced and written by our series producer, Tom Wright.

Speaker 1 Kill List is also produced by Caroline Thornham and Jay Kotayevich with additional production by Anna Sinfield. Our assistant producer is Amalia Sortland.

Speaker 1 And our researchers are Megan Oyinka and Lena Chang. Additional research from Chris Montero.
For Wanderey, our senior producer is Mandy Gorenstein. Fact-Checking by Fendor Fulton.

Speaker 1 Our managing producers are Cherie Houston, Sarah Tobin, and Charlotte Wolfe for Novel. Sarah Mathers is our managing producer and Callum Plus is our senior managing producer for Wandery.

Speaker 1 Original music by Skyler Gerdman and Martin Linebell. Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander, Max O'Brien, and Caroline Thornham.
Sound design and mixing by Daniel Kempson.

Speaker 1 For novel, Willard Foxton is Creative Director of Development.

Speaker 1 Our executive producers are Sean Glynn, Max O'Brien, and Craig Strachan for novel. Executive producers for Wandery are Marshall Louie and Erin O'Flaherty.

Speaker 15 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 15 Unfulfilled with his life in a notorious Danish biker gang, Morton 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 15 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 15 He turns from devotee to spy, tasked with rooting out some of al-Qaeda's most feared generals.

Speaker 15 The CIA and MI5 bid for his allegiance as he loses himself in a life of cash-laden suitcases, double crosses, and betrayal.

Speaker 15 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.