Wondry subscribers can binge all episodes of Caellist early and ad free. Join Wondry in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Hi there, it's Cole here. I'm so sorry to phone you this late. It's approaching midnight and I'm on the phone to Elena. It's seven days since I first warned her about the threat to her life. So. And the reason we, we wanted to is just that we kind of had some information today that we didn't think could wait. So again, I'm so sorry to phone you this late and to leave you waiting there. Elena lives in Switzerland, and just a few days ago, we were strangers. The first time we spoke, I told Elena that someone had paid around $7,000 in bitcoin for her murder on the dark web. Now I'm calling with an update. Yesterday, another payment was made.

Another payment was made.

Another payment? Yeah. So the person using the website has made a number of payments now, six in total, but the last one was made yesterday. It's a payment of this might not mean much to you, 0.156 bitcoin, which overall takes the amount paid up to 1.7, which is about $33,000. $33,000? Yeah. We just wanted to make sure you had that information and check that you're okay and to tell you that we're obviously going to continue to talk to the police there in Switzerland and make sure they have this information as well. You know, heavy. I mean, this is obviously really concerning stuff. I think if without huge disruption to your life, you can stay somewhere where your husband might find it more difficult to reach you, I definitely think that would probably be better. And I imagine that you would feel safer there as well. I offer to pay for her to go immediately to a hotel. No, I think it would be okay.

I mean, he won't reach me.

He's not going to do anything. You know, just put the cardinal contract.

On me, didn't he? You know, there's no, what? There's no other hitman coming for you, as we, as we've said before, so that the danger or the concern is really your husband. It's not anyone else. We're going to phone the police now, and we can always talk to you. And I'm sorry that every time we phone, it's just to give you more horrible news, really. But we just, you know, want to keep you informed is everything we're seeing.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

So I'll hear from you again?

Yes. Okay. All right. Good night. Can you fucking imagine being told this, I'm still shaking with adrenaline after that call. So I stay on the line to speak with my producer. It's night, and you're by yourself in a flat one town away from your armed husband, who you've learned yesterday has just put more money on trying to kill you. I would be out of the fucking country. I mean, I wouldn't be. I wouldn't just be in my daughter's house. I would have moved my family out of the country while this was happening. $33,000 closer to 34. This one actually is, like, a legitimately serious amount of money to have someone killed with. I'm terrified that at any moment Elena's husband could turn up at her flat and kill her himself. And that's only one of a long list of other worries I'm facing. At exactly the same time as we're trying to keep Elena safe, we're tracking down another target on the kill list, a fishmonger from a small village on the spanish coast. Another case, another threat, and another person to reach. But our investigation isn't just getting bigger. It's growing more complicated. More languages, legal systems, more police forces to navigate.

And that complexity brings jeopardy. We're having to make more and more life and death decisions where still one wrong step could spell disaster. From wandering and novel. I'm Carl Miller. This is kill list episode three, first contact. Day after day, new kill orders keep on coming. It's relentless. The target needs to be killed. He is a white, five foot five male I'm looking to hire for the murder of a woman. I can send you 0.214 bitcoin tomorrow. Do you accept? One of the targets is a woman called Anna. She lives in the northwest of Spain, and someone paid $24,000 to have her killed. I prefer a car accident. A week is good. So the same week that I was trying to reach Elena in Switzerland, I also needed to find someone on the ground in Spain.

I got an email from a friend.

Esperanza Escribano is a journalist from Barcelona.

And he told me, hey, I know a team of journalists that is working on something to do with security problems on the Internet. Would you be interested? So I said, yeah, why not?

So on the 25 November 2020, Esperanza got on a plane by 05:00 a.m. the next morning, as the sun was beginning just to rise over the trees, she was driving a rental car through the north spanish countryside.

The landscape is very, very green and wet. Mountains and rivers. I felt I was, at that moment, maybe the only person who could warn Anna.

Esperanza knew she needed to find Anna quickly. The hit was placed only yesterday. And given that Anna lives in a small village, the person who wants her dead could be just around the corner. According to the order messages, Anna leaves to go to work at the fish markets in a nearby town at 540 in the morning. So that's where Speranza went.

Okay, so I'm in the market.

Inside, rows of fish were stacked up in piles of ice. A few early Christmas decorations glinted in the gloomy November light. Esperanza weaved up and down the stalls, scrutinizing every face.

And I thought, no, no, they don't look like Anna.

She started asking around the market.

So nobody knows her in here? I don't know. I don't know what's going on. I'm so lost.

Esperanza stepped outside to smoke a shaky cigarette.

I was desperate. It was like, my life is now reduced to this. I mean, my only mission, my only goal in this life is to find this woman. And I can find her.

Esperanza drove to Anna's house. Nobody answered the door, so she walked next door and spoke with one of the neighbors, who at first was suspicious and wouldn't give her Anna's number.

And I was like, okay, I understand, but it's a life or death issue. Could you call her and ask her to call me, please?

Espranza had just pulled up at a petrol station down the road to get fuel when her phone rang. It was Anna. She was safe.

And I was like, ah. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Almost 12 hours. That felt like years. And she was laughing like, okay, like, this is very weird, but I think I sounded, I don't know, reliable in a way.

Esperanza told us that Anna had agreed to meet in a village a few miles over. So now, for the second time in two days, I had to come face to face with someone on the kill list and deliver possibly the worst news of their life. Hi.

Hi.

Hi there. Can you hear me? Yes. Well, Anna, firstly, thanks for finding time to speak to us. It's nice to see you. When I first saw Anna over the video call, she was sitting with Esperanza at a table outside a bar. The sun had set, and Anna looked at me through the screen with warm brown eyes. She gave me a nervous smile.

I'm translating on the go because it's already a weird situation.

Thank you. There's really no easy way for me to say this. I broke the news about the hit, and then I had to wait for Esperanza. Translate it. I watched as Ana slowly received my message. She kept looking between Esperanza and the screen.

She says she's freaking out and she's laughing, but just because she's nervous. Oof.

Anna was clearly in shock, but she did believe me. And not only that, she already had an idea of who it might be that put her on the kill list. But it couldn't be certain. We made a plan. Anna and Esperanza were drive together to the police station in the nearest city. It's a tall, ugly office building situated on a narrow street in the center of the town. They'd phoned me from there so I could then tell the police about the kill order.

Anna is parking, and we're gonna enter.

The police station at the front desk. Esperanza did her best to explain what was going on.

I knew what I was going to explain could seem a movie from Hollywood. So I decided to be very serious and explain it with the seriousness it required.

They told the officer this was life or death.

And they looked at me like, eh, what the fuck? What is this? What are you telling us?

They were told to sit in a waiting room and an officer would be out to see them soon.

We entered this very old fashioned waiting room full of banners with different campaigns against gender violence. And that's when we heard the police inside talking about the case. The dark web. Whoa. The dark web hired someone to kill her? What is this? It's a science fiction movie. And they were laughing. Laughing.

I can't believe it. Esperanza said.

I felt so insulted, and I was really, really angry.

A police officer finally came out and told Anna and Esperanza their case would have to be transferred to Spain's national police force, the Gardier Seville. They're kind of a military police force or gendarmerie, like you get in France.

And I said, well, don't worry. We will just go to the civil guard because I don't rely on these people anymore. I can't trust someone who was laughing at us.

Esperanz and Anna stormed out of the police station. Back in the car, Anna's anger began to curdle into bitter resignation. Either there's a death, she said, or nothing happens. As I encounter more cases, I see a common thread amongst the people who are on the kill list. Many, if not most of them are women. So as we go to the police, I'm increasingly worried that what we're reporting is not one, but two kinds of crime that police won't take seriously on the one hand, a cybercrime involving bitcoin and the darknet, on the other, violence against women. Anna told her story in front of male police officers surrounded by posters about gender violence. She told them about a credible threat to her life and they just laughed. In Switzerland, things are not going much better. The police have taken our information and they did check on Elena, but since then they've told us almost nothing about the investigation. And so the only way we can learn more is via Elena herself. But at least in this case, we have a clear suspect, her estranged husband. Switzerland has some of the most restrictive privacy laws in the world, so we're going to be calling Elena's husband Bruno.

He's my second husband.

In 1992, Elena was in her late thirties, divorced and working as a secretary. She'd grown up in the swiss countryside and lived an adventurous life working in London and post war Berlin. Now she was looking for love again.

30 years ago, when you wanted to meet someone, you had in the papers those.

I don't know the word for it, like classified ads.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Good sense of humor and like, stuff like that. Interest in boats clean.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

Elena was browsing the classified ads in her local paper when one caught her eye. It belonged to Bruno, an ex army officer.

I wrote to him and then he called me and that's how it started.

You don't remember what his advert actually said?

No, I can't remember. That's been too long. Now.

Elena does remember speaking on the phone with him, though.

I thought he was actually quite funny, had, you know, a lot to talk about. He was quite younger than I am, so I thought that very interesting as well.

They met up, but on first impressions, Elena wasn't exactly bowled over.

I wouldn't say he's handsome, but not that bad looking. He can be very charming if he wants to be.

Bruno was smart, he was successful. He'd been in the army and worked as an engineer. He'd even started his own company. The two of them hit it off. They started dating and eventually moved into a large house together where Bruno could run his business on the first two floors. After three years of dating, they got married. But even in those early days, things weren't always smooth sailing.

We always had problems when it didn't work out like he wanted it to work out. My reaction was always, you know, just to keep quiet for a couple of days, maybe a week, and then everything went back to before.

The way Elena describes it, these arguments could be over the smallest of things, like directions. When they were driving. The details of the argument were always secondary to the real point. Bruno always needed to be right. Elena doesn't like confrontation, so she would find herself retreating until Bruno's stormy moods had passed. Then things would settle down again until the next argument. For years, that routine worked, and a lot of the time they were happy together. Bruno's business was a success and they were building a house and traveled regularly to exciting places like the Maldives. But there was r1 sticking point in their relationship.

I thought he was jealous of the kids, especially my daughter.

Elena had two children from her previous marriage, twins, a boy and a girl. They were young when Bruno entered the picture. But as they grew older, Bruno would argue with Elena's daughter. She reminded Bruno of Elena's romantic past, and that made him jealous. Elena's daughter was also more forthright than her mom and wouldn't back down in an argument. Bruno did not like to be challenged, certainly not by a young woman.

I was always in between, you know, between the two of them. That was actually my biggest problem. And I mean, for the last, I don't know, ten years, I was taking medications against depression.

The stress worn Elena, but she kept quiet. And when the kids grew up and moved out, things got easier and the calm periods grew longer. But the tension was always there, ready to bubble over. And one Friday afternoon, it did. Elena's daughter had asked Bruno for money to help buy her first home. Bruno complained that she was entitled, and in the ensuing argument, he gave Elena an ultimatum.

He said, I've got to decide.

Him or her, your husband or your daughter. He must have understood in a way that was a kind of impossible decision for you.

I think he just didn't care. And he. I suppose he thought that it was going to be like any other time. You know, stop talking for a week, and then everything is going to be okay again.

For Elena, this moment crystallized something she'd been feeling for a long time, but perhaps had admitted, even to herself, she wasn't happy in the marriage and she needed to leave it. Elena got in touch with a divorce lawyer. She moved upstairs to the room where her daughter had lived growing up and started looking for her own place. Elena says that that was the moment when Bruno realized she was genuinely serious about leaving him.

It's something he never thought could or would happen to him, because actually, his whole life, everything always went very smooth and business is doing well and everything was always okay when I filed for divorce. Then he got really bad.

Elena says that Bruno told mutual friends he couldn't understand why she'd left. Yet at exactly the same time, he started sending her aggressive WhatsApp messages full of accusations and insults.

Okay, yeah, here's a nice one. Here's a nice one. It says, now, I can't actually translate that. It says, du elen de Trexau. Can you imagine what that means? Well, it's something which you pick, you horrible pick something like this.

This way.

He says, for 25 years, I've been living actually off him and been lazy and haven't been working and only profited of him. Then he says, believe me, you and your, and your slot daughter will get nothing.

What do you think he's really trying to do here? So you said it was partly about money. Is he just really angry with you.

Or, you know, through that divorce and the court involved? He's gonna have to give me quite some money, and that's something he just doesn't like to do.

The texts grew even more sinister when Bruno messaged Elena with detailed descriptions of where she'd been and what she'd been doing.

He must have been organizing someone who followed me. He said, you know, private investigators doesn't cost that much anymore.

Another time, Elena was at the hairdressers in the old neighborhood where she and Bruno had lived together. She was sitting in front of the mirror when her hairdresser caught sight of something outside.

She says, your husband's coming. And I was looking out the window, and really he came walking straight up to my car.

At the time, Elena still had the logo of Bruno's business on the back of her car. Bruno walked over to it holding a bottle of black spray paint.

He sprayed my back window, where the logo was all black. My daughter actually said, I should go to the police. You know, I said, that's not worth it.

After that incident at the hairdressers, Elena didn't see or hear from Bruno for several months, until one night in October 2020, a few weeks before I first told her about the kill order, Elena was out having dinner with some friends at a restaurant.

He walked in with two other people, and as he was sitting there, he was showing me the middle finger. And as he walked out later on, he looked at me, and he just made the movement with his hand, like, cutting my throat.

Elena draws her hands across her neck.

Then he just walked out. I was stunned.

That dinner was on October 14. Ann's first message to the assassination site was just four days before, a week after I reported the new payments to Elena and the police. I'm still waiting for an update. There's been no news about whether law enforcement are any closer to catching the person responsible, whether that's Bruno or someone else. And Elena told me something that makes me question whether they're really doing everything they can to keep her safe. She says the police told her that they have a theory as to who could really be behind the assassination site.

That website was set up by you journalists to get a story.

Wow. So the swiss police believe I am running the assassination site. I mean, I'm just totally speechless. I mean, in what world is it okay for the police to be sharing a baseless hunch with the person who is in the middle of all of this? It's either shockingly irresponsible or it's actually a deliberate maneuver to have Elena distrust us. I could never have done that to you. And setting up an assassination site is illegal, so there's no way we could have done it.

Oh, God. I didn't really believe it.

That is a crazy part of an even madder story. Against all my expectations, the interactions we're having with the police are starting to seem adversarial. And with that, I have a growing sense that our small, fragile team now sits in the middle of all of these different hostile forces. In one direction, we have the shadowy cybercriminals running the site. In another, we have the murderous customers taking out the orders. But now a third, the police, who either don't believe us or think we're somehow wrapped up in all of this. It feels like we've entered a very lonely place. If we can't change how the police see us, we're never going to protect Elena, Anna or I, any of the other targets on the list. After they were laughed out of the first police station, Esperanza and Anna drove to the Gardia Seville. Across town, Esperanza once again explained to the officer at the front desk why she and Anna had come. But this time, nobody laughed at her.

We felt finally relieved. I mean, you're going to these places with a high vulnerability. And finally they're saying, I believe you. And wow, that's crucial.

Hi, everyone. Can everyone hear me?

I think it's just good taste.

Yeah. Okay, great. So can you. Is it worth me introducing myself?

Yes, I think.

All right, well, it's an hour or so later, and I've just joined a video call. From my screen, I can see Esperanza, Ana and an officer from the civil guard all squeezed into a tiny office at the police station. It's my turn to try and explain. Okay, let's start off by describing the website so it's on the darknet. I lay out the whole story, the sites, the messages, the payments. There is also a payment of roughly $13,000 in bitcoin, which we're very confident represents the payment for the hit. So money has changed hands as well as the messages. The officer tells us he'll pass our information to the cyber investigations unit. He tells us to expect follow up calls from the police. I'm relieved we aren't being laughed at. But I think back to the UK police. We'll be in touch. Can mean a lot of things. The next day, when I check in with Anna and Esperanza again, Anna says she also has reservations about the police.

She thinks the civil guard only listened to us because I was with her, because I'm a journalist from a prestigious media and they only listened to us because she had that support.

So does Anna want us to continue kind of providing this support so to continue putting pressure on the police if we can, and helping them if we can, to try and get a serious investigation set up here?

Yes. And right now what I think is that we have to go with all our weapons.

We agreed to keep in touch. Now at least Anna knows about the danger she's in. I'm really moved by how quickly she's been willing to trust me. Having Esperanza there physically has made all the difference. In the days that follow, I wait to hear whether the police have made any arrests. But nothing comes. There are no new messages in Anna's or Elena's orders. In January 2021. After weeks of nerves, I finally get news. Anna. Hello. Hola.

Hola.

With Esperanza translating, Anna tells me that one morning, just three days before Christmas, a police unit tore through the peaceful quiet of a tiny spanish village looking for one man.

All the special forces of the police came to arrest him. Like going through the roof with this. Super big guns. And then they took him to the police station.

The spanish police have finally made their move. For the first time since the kill has landed in my lap, I can feel the knot in my chest begin to loosen. But Anna is not feeling my sense of relief.

I didn't understand why because it's been four years since we don't talk anymore.

For legal reasons, I can't tell you the name of the person who was arrested. The case against them has not yet concluded. But I can tell you that it's not anyone Anna suspected. It had been four years since Anna last heard from the person who was arrested. She'd never even considered them. And it doesn't stop there.

So yesterday I was working at the market and this week got a call and a voice of a woman said, watch your back, I'm coming for you.

Watch your back, I'm coming for you. Let's just go back to what on earth is actually happening here, because normally with an arrest of the person trying to kill someone, our job is complete. You know, hooray, we're heroes. But then Anna gets another threatening phone call.

So this clearly isn't overdose. I feel like things are not going better, but worse. And I'm just tired of this.

Hiya.

Hi, Carl.

How are you doing?

So so.

When I speak to Elena, I hope for better news. Thanks for having us in again. I'm sorry this is all dragging on so unbelievably long.

Yeah, it's gonna take a lot longer.

Really?

Yeah.

Elena had some shocking news about her estranged husband, Bruno.

They had him in custody and they said at least for three months, really?

On the 11 December, the police arrested him three weeks afterward. First disclosed the kill order to them. When Bruno was interrogated, he confessed. Elena tells me the police have given her the interview transcripts.

They were asking him why he did it and he thought his existence was in danger because, you know, I wanted that money, you know, because of the divorce and everything.

That must have been horrible for you to read.

Yeah, it was really terrible. It was really terrible. That's why I had to stop. I haven't read anything since then because it made me really sick and I just couldn't, you know, I just couldn't take it.

Elena tells me that although there has been a confession, the proceedings are dragging on. The swiss courts move slowly. It could still be years until the case is adjudicated. We're about to say goodbye when Elena remembers a detail about the police investigation. She wants me to know.

They found that he had rented a room where he had weapons and munition. It looks like he was actually thinking about doing it himself.

My God. Where is this room in relation to where you are?

Oh, quite near, actually.

Oh, my God. That is absolutely terrifying.

I think he was planning it and then in the end he decided it was too dangerous. They would suspect him, you know, if something happened to me. So in the end, he decided not to do it himself.

Elena hangs up but I need to talk to someone about what I've just heard. So I stay on the line with my producer. That was the single scariest fact of the kill list. I thought I was gonna be sick, actually, when she said that I felt so bad. I genuinely think we saved her life psychologically. I think he was ready to kill her. I think it was just a practical question for him at that stage with the room and the guns. The police report that Elena sends me lays out what they found in that room. The list goes on for more than six pages. Camouflage balaclava, black rubber marigold gloves, 110 liter rubbish sack, pepper spray, x two gas mask, gps tracker, telescopic batter, flick knife, ammunition, various submachine gun, Kh nine, nine mm Remington Model 870 tactical with flashlight, Creco rifle, model 300, Glock 43, nine mm pistol. Wofer model PP nine Mm Uzi, nine mm machine pistol. Sigma del P 220 pistol, six Sauer p 228 pistol. Kalashnikov AK 47, Smith and Wesson 0.44 Magnum. 29 pratic. Shortly after reading this list, my nightmares start. They're always set in the same place, the hallway of the house where I grew up.

I'm crouched behind a painted wooden door, which seems thin and weak, and someone is hurling themselves against it. I don't know what he looks like, but I know it's Bruno. And with each crash, the door frame strains. The hinges warp and buckle as the door gives way. My eyes burst open into the darkness of my bedroom. I'd managed to intervene this time, but looking at that list of weapons, it's terrifyingly clear that things could have ended very, very differently. There's no guarantee we'll be so lucky next time. The kill lists present two deadly and contradictory pressures. On the one hand, every case is urgent. At any moment, the person placing the order could decide to take matters into their own hands. They've clearly been fantasized emphasizing about a murder, and the kill order could just be one way they're going about it. But on the other hand, we're stepping into scenarios where the only thing we know is that they're dangerous. One wrong move and we could accidentally tip the potential killer off and cause the target or our local reporter to be harmed, or worse. It seems to me there is simply no safe way for us to be doing what we're trying to do.

And yet doing nothing is not an option either. And that feels like a sort of moral trap that I don't know how to get out of. All I can do is keep going. My team and I worked with journalists in Colombia to make contact with a target in Bogota.

I honestly didn't think that he would answer this fastenitive. It completely caught us off guard.

We tried to reach a man in Arkansas, in the US. Okay, I'm here. I feel like my heart's about to jump out of my chest. There's a woman in the Hague in the Netherlands. Informatic cake over Internet scams. And two targets in Canberra, Australia, just gearing up to phone Australia to speak to a couple that's been on the list in Nancy, France. We approach a woman who tells us she thinks her ex boyfriend is behind the hit. They broke up in October 2019.

Since then, he's been threatening her and.

Harassing her with the police. I'm part thorn in the side, prodding, following up, asking for information, and part technical advisor, offering explanations about the order details with the victims. We're checking in, answering questions, providing updates. None of this was ever what I intended. This has become so much bigger, so much more unwieldy than I could ever have anticipated. As responsibilities pile up, so does the pressure on my team. We're not police. We're a handful of podcasters and a hacker. Yet we often find ourselves making life or death decisions under enormous time pressure, with almost no information. Every time we do this, we risk tipping off the perpetrator. They could be sat next to the person we're trying to reach. Each time, there's a risk we could end up accidentally getting someone killed. Time and again, we face decisions where we genuinely don't know what to do. We're just doing our best. And all of that uncertainty, all of that urgency, leads to arguments, should we be doing this? But I don't have to fucking answer. I'm just so tired. This is so draining. I mean, I haven't been up to sleep properly. Think about it all the time you think about what they must be going through.

It's just. I don't know how much longer we can keep doing this. I'm not really sure much longer I can keep doing this. On March 31, things get worse. A new order pings into my inbox. But the user isn't fantasizing about a murder. It's even sicker than that. I want the target kidnapped for seven days while being held. She will be given injections of heroin at least two times per day. She will be taught to do it herself, have pics and videos of her doing on her own should be collected. I need help. I need someone who's willing to engage with us, who won't laugh us or the victim out of the room or accuse us of being devious journalists, lying to victims to drum up a story. I need a law enforcement organization that can operate on a global scale. Someone needs to step in or sooner or later, we're going to make a terrible mistake. Follow Kill list on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes early and ad free right now by joining Wondry in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey@wondry.com. survey from Wondery and novel this is episode three of Kill List.

Kill List is hosted by me, Kyle Miller was written by me, Caroline Thornham and Tom Wright. Our lead producer is Caroline Thornham. Our producer is Tom Wright for Wandery. Our story editor is Chris Siegel and our senior producer is Russell Finch. Our assistant producer is Amalia and our researchers are Megan Oyinka and Lena Chang. Additional research from Chris Montero and from Anique Mossu, Fuka Postma and Brenna Smith at Bellingcat. Additional reporting by Franziska Engelhardt from podcast Shmieda Esperanza Escribano, Jonathan Gruber, Anna Holligan, Maru Lombardo, and Rodrigo Rodriguez from Loro podcast Adelie Pozman Ponte, Alexander Ritchie and Sarah White's Codacek from reckon south. Fact checking by Fendor Fulton. Our managing producers are Cherie Houston, Sarah Tobin, and Charlotte Wolfe for novel and Latta Pundia for Wandering. Original music by Skylar Gerdemann and Martin Linnebell. Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander, Max O'Brien and Caroline Thornham. Sound design and mixing by Nicholas Alexander. Additional engineering by Daniel Kempson 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 Wandery are George Lavender, Marshall Louis, and Jen Sargent.