Latest / The Knife: A True Crime Podcast / Rent-A-Hitman: Murder, Interrupted

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Rent-A-Hitman: Murder, Interrupted · The Knife: A True Crime Podcast

0:00
Speaker 1: This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised.
0:08
Speaker 2: She provided a picture of a three year old that
0:10
Speaker 2: she wanted to have murdered. It was her own three
0:14
Speaker 2: year old.
0:31
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Knife. I'm patient eton. I'm Hannah Smith.
0:34
Speaker 1: This week, we have an unusual story for you. We
0:37
Speaker 1: are talking with a webmaster named Bob Innis all about
0:41
Speaker 1: his website rent a hitman dot com. And yes, I
0:44
Speaker 1: am saying hitman.
0:45
Speaker 3: I actually came across this website a couple of years
0:48
Speaker 3: ago and reached out to Bob, but never heard back.
0:51
Speaker 3: We recently got in touch and sat down for an
0:53
Speaker 3: interview with him, and it was so much more wild
0:57
Speaker 3: than we expected.
0:58
Speaker 1: Let's get into the interview.
1:04
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks for having me So.
1:06
Speaker 3: I first reached out to you a couple of years ago,
1:10
Speaker 3: didn't hear anything back, Busy, It's okay, not the first
1:14
Speaker 3: time that's happened to me. I didn't take it personally,
1:16
Speaker 3: but I reached out because I came across a story
1:22
Speaker 3: about your website. Can you introduce yourself however you think
1:28
Speaker 3: we ought to introduce you, or that you would like
1:30
Speaker 3: to be introduced.
1:32
Speaker 2: Sure. My name is Bob. I'm the webmaster of rent
1:36
Speaker 2: to Hitman dot com your point and click solution. It
1:40
Speaker 2: is a parody website. It's safe to go to. Please visit.
1:45
Speaker 1: Bob registered rent to Hitman dot com in two thousand
1:48
Speaker 1: and five. It was a tech startup that focused on
1:50
Speaker 1: it security that he and a couple of his buddies
1:53
Speaker 1: created after graduation. The hit in hit Man actually refers
1:57
Speaker 1: to website clicks.
2:00
Speaker 2: Hit pertains to website hit traffic, network traffic analytics, how
2:06
Speaker 2: many page views your podcast gets for example, or in
2:09
Speaker 2: that kind of thing. We wanted to start a post
2:12
Speaker 2: graduation business that would test customers networks, Wi Fi networks,
2:17
Speaker 2: home networks. We would test it for vulnerabilities. We would
2:22
Speaker 2: let them know what they need to do in order
2:24
Speaker 2: to tighten their security of their network. If you remember
2:27
Speaker 2: back in the eighties nineties, I guess Staples had an
2:31
Speaker 2: easy button, a little red easy button maybe they still
2:34
Speaker 2: do it. Used to be able to click it and
2:37
Speaker 2: your problem would be solved. Well, our little catchphrase was
2:41
Speaker 2: rent a hit man your point in click solution with
2:44
Speaker 2: a little image of a speedy click mouse kind of
2:47
Speaker 2: a thing. And you know that was the whole idea
2:50
Speaker 2: behind our business plan.
2:53
Speaker 1: The Internet in two thousand and five was so different
2:56
Speaker 1: than it is today. Just one year before, in two
2:59
Speaker 1: thousand and four, our Facebook was launched for Harvard students,
3:03
Speaker 1: and Google debuted a brand new app called Gmail. It
3:07
Speaker 1: was really this tech scramble to see who would create
3:11
Speaker 1: something that could last, that would help define the Internet
3:15
Speaker 1: as we know it today. Rent a Hitman did not
3:19
Speaker 1: become the next Staples. It didn't do much of anything
3:22
Speaker 1: at all. Bob and his friends moved on with their lives,
3:25
Speaker 1: getting jobs in different cities, and Bob was left with
3:29
Speaker 1: this domain and for years it just sat there doing nothing.
3:34
Speaker 2: Didn't really know what to do with it. At that point,
3:37
Speaker 2: I tried to auction it off on several auction websites.
3:42
Speaker 2: Nobody wanted to buy it. A couple of years passes.
3:45
Speaker 2: This is right around two thousand and eight, and I
3:47
Speaker 2: decided to go in and check the inbox and I'm shocked.
3:51
Speaker 2: There's about two hundred and fifty to three hundred emails.
3:55
Speaker 3: What kinds of emails were you getting?
3:58
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I was expecting to see people interested in
4:04
Speaker 2: the domain name, but unfortunately that didn't happen. There were
4:08
Speaker 2: people inquiring about asset extraction. What countries do you operate in.
4:14
Speaker 2: There was even a female out of the UK who
4:17
Speaker 2: was looking for a relationship. She wanted a relationship with
4:21
Speaker 2: a hit man so that she could learn the trade.
4:23
Speaker 3: So these are people looking for hit men.
4:27
Speaker 2: They were looking for hit man and people to do
4:30
Speaker 2: their dirty deeds.
4:31
Speaker 3: As you're reading these emails, like, what's going through your mind?
4:36
Speaker 2: You know, I was not equipped at that point to
4:39
Speaker 2: kind of take in comprehend their request. But as the
4:44
Speaker 2: years passed, you know, I joked about it with friends. Sure,
4:48
Speaker 2: you know there's people out there that are so mad
4:51
Speaker 2: they're googling how to hire a hit man.
4:54
Speaker 1: Bob didn't respond to any of the emails. It was
4:57
Speaker 1: strange he thought that he was getting them at all.
5:00
Speaker 1: At the time, the website didn't have much on it
5:03
Speaker 1: except a notification that it was for sale, But somehow
5:07
Speaker 1: there still seemed to be people who believed runt a
5:09
Speaker 1: Hitman dot Com was run by an actual hitman, an assassin,
5:14
Speaker 1: a killer for hire? Were these real requests? Bob checked
5:18
Speaker 1: it up to a few practical jokes, kids having a
5:21
Speaker 1: laugh on the internet, But then in twenty ten he
5:25
Speaker 1: got an email that sounded different, one that he could
5:28
Speaker 1: not ignore.
5:30
Speaker 2: A lady by the name of Helen sent an email
5:33
Speaker 2: to the website indicating she had three family members in
5:36
Speaker 2: the UK that she wanted murder. It was over a
5:39
Speaker 2: family inheritance. By the end of the day, she had
5:42
Speaker 2: written two full, on long and rambling emails on what
5:47
Speaker 2: she wanted done, who, the intended targets were, the addresses,
5:51
Speaker 2: her reason, where she was in Canada, and the whole thing.
5:57
Speaker 1: Bob did something he'd never done with prior emails. He
6:01
Speaker 1: decided to respond. There was something about this email that
6:04
Speaker 1: sounded real, like this woman Helen might actually want her
6:08
Speaker 1: family members killed. So he emailed her back, posing as
6:12
Speaker 1: the man who could arrange a murderer.
6:15
Speaker 2: And I had responded and asked her if she still
6:17
Speaker 2: required her services and wanted to be placed in touch
6:21
Speaker 2: with a field operative, and she responded yes.
6:25
Speaker 3: And you responded to her that way because you were like,
6:27
Speaker 3: this lady's serious. I need to see, like how serious?
6:30
Speaker 2: Yeah? There was Definitely she was providing way more information
6:34
Speaker 2: than I had ever anticipated. If I didn't respond to
6:38
Speaker 2: the email, somebody else may have gotten it, and you know,
6:42
Speaker 2: results are going to be different. Probably she provided so
6:46
Speaker 2: much information I was on my iPhone like iPhone one
6:48
Speaker 2: or whatever. It was way back in the day, and
6:52
Speaker 2: I was corroborating and verifying addresses. And the more I
6:57
Speaker 2: looked into it, I just knew she was serious. I
7:00
Speaker 2: could just tell that she was in a spot mentally
7:03
Speaker 2: that was not good, and that these people were in danger.
7:06
Speaker 1: Who did she want killed.
7:10
Speaker 2: Aunt, uncle and another family.
7:12
Speaker 3: Member all over an inheritance.
7:15
Speaker 2: All over a family inheritance.
7:18
Speaker 1: Once Bob realized this murder for higher request was real,
7:22
Speaker 1: he felt the need to report it to authorities.
7:25
Speaker 2: There was an officer in Nevado at the time where
7:28
Speaker 2: I grew up, and we had become friends over the years,
7:32
Speaker 2: and I had printed all this information out. I had
7:35
Speaker 2: about twenty pages of information and I brought it down
7:38
Speaker 2: to the police station. I gave him the stack of papers,
7:42
Speaker 2: told him, you need to look into this. I mean,
7:44
Speaker 2: this is very serious. He reached out to somebody that
7:48
Speaker 2: he knew in Canada who put him in contact with
7:51
Speaker 2: Niagara Regional Police Services and they ended up doing the rest.
7:57
Speaker 2: But it was very serious, and she had fled. The
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Speaker 2: youth ended up in Canada, lost her passport, had nowhere
8:04
Speaker 2: to go, and reached out to the website, and then
8:08
Speaker 2: when the authorities in Canada went to perform a welfare
8:12
Speaker 2: check Honor, they obviously validated verified the information. She had
8:17
Speaker 2: a warrant out of the UK, so she was extradited
8:21
Speaker 2: after one hundred and twenty six days.
8:23
Speaker 3: When you got news of Helen's arrest, how did that
8:27
Speaker 3: make you feel about the website and all of this
8:30
Speaker 3: playing out?
8:32
Speaker 2: Oh? Wow, Yeah, it was a kind of an awakening experience.
8:36
Speaker 2: I mean, it was a nine dollar and twenty cent
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Speaker 2: website had just basically saved the lives of three people,
8:42
Speaker 2: and with little to no effort on my part.
8:47
Speaker 1: It is a federal crime to hire someone to commit murder,
8:50
Speaker 1: even if it's never carried out, and if money is exchanged.
8:53
Speaker 1: The maximum penalty is a fine and up to ten
8:56
Speaker 1: years in prison. For Bob, the idea that he helped
8:59
Speaker 1: stop a potential murder was sort of exhilarating. It made
9:03
Speaker 1: him think totally differently about rent Hitman dot com. He
9:07
Speaker 1: no longer had hopes of selling the domain. Instead, he
9:10
Speaker 1: decided to build out a website.
9:13
Speaker 2: You know, it was getting organic traffic on its own.
9:16
Speaker 2: People were seeking it out. Obviously, I'm not here to
9:19
Speaker 2: capitalize or make money off the website. There is no advertising.
9:23
Speaker 2: These are visitors who are actively seeking out the website.
9:27
Speaker 2: Maybe they've heard about it through podcasts or whatever, most
9:30
Speaker 2: of them haven't, and they're seeking a solution for an
9:35
Speaker 2: issue that they have. And there's web forms that people
9:38
Speaker 2: can utilize to fill out the who, when, where, and
9:41
Speaker 2: why in their own words, and the intake form can
9:47
Speaker 2: capture an IP address. There's warnings on the page that
9:52
Speaker 2: the site is not real.
9:53
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to like, just for anyone who's not
9:57
Speaker 3: looking at the website right now, it is loud and
10:01
Speaker 3: clear that this is not real. But it has saved
10:06
Speaker 3: lives and it has worked. You created this intake form
10:08
Speaker 3: where people really sort of stay out themselves as wanting
10:11
Speaker 3: to have someone killed. Yeah, yeah, yeah, And so you
10:18
Speaker 3: build out the website after Helen's arrest and you continue
10:24
Speaker 3: hearing from people and even more so or how does
10:27
Speaker 3: that all go down? Yeah?
10:30
Speaker 2: So in twenty ten with the Helen email, that's when
10:34
Speaker 2: I kind of took everything into consideration and thought, man,
10:38
Speaker 2: these people are coming to a website, or they're trying
10:40
Speaker 2: to seek out a solution for obviously a very serious
10:44
Speaker 2: problem that are going through. Why not create like a honeypot,
10:48
Speaker 2: you might say. I mean, technically it's not a honeypot
10:50
Speaker 2: in the it sense, but it attracts people that have
10:55
Speaker 2: nefarious things in mind.
11:03
Speaker 1: Bob describes his sense of humor as inspired by the
11:06
Speaker 1: Cohen Brothers, and this appreciation for absurdist dark comedy is
11:11
Speaker 1: on full display at rent to hitman dot com. If
11:14
Speaker 1: you actually read the website, it's full of jokes, like
11:18
Speaker 1: his fake CEO Guido Finelli, who seems to be inspired
11:21
Speaker 1: by the Italian mob, or the photo of al Capone
11:25
Speaker 1: on the contact us page with the caption one of
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Speaker 1: our best field operatives. Bob said, he's not trying to
11:31
Speaker 1: trick people into thinking that this is a real website
11:34
Speaker 1: to hire a real hitman. If you take just a
11:37
Speaker 1: few seconds to read it, it's very clear this website
11:40
Speaker 1: is a farce, and that can be confirmed with a
11:43
Speaker 1: quick Google search.
11:45
Speaker 2: This is registered with go Daddy. It is one hundred
11:49
Speaker 2: percent safe and secure. We have disclaimers on the page.
11:54
Speaker 2: You can google the web page and read Wikipedia articles
11:57
Speaker 2: and People magazine or Rolling Stone. I mean, there's podcasts,
12:02
Speaker 2: there's news stories. I mean, people, please do your homework
12:07
Speaker 2: and then let's just say that you're one of the
12:09
Speaker 2: angry ones and you're searching for a solution. So you
12:12
Speaker 2: land on the website. You see you rent a hitman
12:14
Speaker 2: your point and click solution, and then there's a friendly
12:17
Speaker 2: note from the CEO, Guido Finale. Fictitious by all means,
12:21
Speaker 2: but anyway, it basically explains the website is fake. You know,
12:26
Speaker 2: thanks for checking in, and then you know we offer solutions.
12:31
Speaker 2: We have over seventeen nine and eighty five US based
12:34
Speaker 2: field operatives. That's the same number of police departments in
12:39
Speaker 2: the US in twenty sixteen. By the way, we have
12:42
Speaker 2: customer testimonials discount packages like it.
12:46
Speaker 3: Is mind blowing right that someone would take the seriously.
12:50
Speaker 2: Cool cats and Kittens discount ten percent off. Yeah, customer testimonials.
12:55
Speaker 2: Let's see, we have a gallery of images.
12:58
Speaker 1: Can you read us one of the costs testimonials.
13:01
Speaker 2: Yeah, Laura from Arizona caught my husband cheating with the
13:07
Speaker 2: babysitter and our relationship was terminated. After a free public
13:10
Speaker 2: relation consultation, I'm single again and looking to mingle. Thanks
13:15
Speaker 2: Squeedo and Rena Hydman.
13:17
Speaker 3: Amazing.
13:18
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I can see how if you are, I
13:22
Speaker 1: don't know, you haven't done your research. Like you said,
13:25
Speaker 1: you go to this website, you are angry, You're not
13:29
Speaker 1: really reading it so much. You could potentially ignore all
13:35
Speaker 1: of this and click. I mean it's hard to imagine, Like, yeah,
13:41
Speaker 1: I mean, you could click and just write and this
13:43
Speaker 1: is who I want killed. I guess is that happening.
13:48
Speaker 2: It is happening. It's happening more frequently than I can handle. Personally.
13:53
Speaker 2: I'm just a one man show. I've had to dumb
13:56
Speaker 2: the website down and turn it down so that it
13:59
Speaker 2: only receives a trickle of submissions. I mean, if I
14:02
Speaker 2: had funding, if I had people that work with me
14:06
Speaker 2: to create the nonprofit that I am aiming to create,
14:10
Speaker 2: then this would be a twenty four to seven operation.
14:14
Speaker 1: Because you're getting so many submissions.
14:18
Speaker 2: Yeah, every single day.
14:19
Speaker 1: Are you able to tell us, like how many you're getting?
14:22
Speaker 2: Yeah, give me one second here, let me pull up
14:25
Speaker 2: something just from April. First, I've had twenty eight submissions
14:30
Speaker 2: on one web form.
14:32
Speaker 1: We talked to Bob in mid April. That means in
14:35
Speaker 1: about two weeks he had twenty eight submissions to the
14:38
Speaker 1: site requesting the service of a hitman.
14:41
Speaker 2: You got to say maybe two or three of those
14:43
Speaker 2: are worth looking into. I get a lot of spam,
14:47
Speaker 2: and they're not all murdered for higher solicitations. Some of
14:50
Speaker 2: them are pries for help from kids being bullied at
14:54
Speaker 2: school or at home. There's some kind of an abuse
14:57
Speaker 2: situation and they're trying to seek some kind of a solution.
15:03
Speaker 2: You know, there's obviously people out there that are seeking
15:07
Speaker 2: assistant suicide. I've had emails as recent as last week. Hey,
15:12
Speaker 2: I don't care if this is a joke website. I'm
15:14
Speaker 2: looking for a way to and yeah, the best thing
15:19
Speaker 2: I can do is like respond in an email and
15:22
Speaker 2: send them links to resources that they'll probably never use.
15:27
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm not in a position to dispense therapy.
15:30
Speaker 2: I'm not a therapist.
15:31
Speaker 3: How does it impact you to sort of get emails
15:34
Speaker 3: like this from people who are either just so hateful
15:39
Speaker 3: that they've lost all sense of morality or in such
15:43
Speaker 3: a hopeless situation that they don't know how to get
15:47
Speaker 3: out of that they might seek out something like this.
15:51
Speaker 2: Man, You know what, it is tough. I mean, I
15:55
Speaker 2: obviously have a pretty good support group around me to
15:59
Speaker 2: keep me sane, but there's a lot of people out
16:01
Speaker 2: there that need help. It's hard to open your inbox
16:04
Speaker 2: in the morning and see two or three more people
16:08
Speaker 2: that you wish you could help. But it's troubling. It's troubling.
16:13
Speaker 3: Yeah, what is the tipping point for you when you
16:15
Speaker 3: contact authorities when it's someone who is crying out for help,
16:19
Speaker 3: whether it's a child or someone else. You know, is
16:23
Speaker 3: there like a sort of procedure you follow, just even
16:26
Speaker 3: though you're a one man show with those, Well.
16:29
Speaker 2: There's a couple of different things I look at. Number one,
16:33
Speaker 2: is there a child involved? Is the solicitor or the
16:36
Speaker 2: target a child. If so, that's automatically reported for a
16:40
Speaker 2: welfare check. I don't care. I don't play around with those.
16:44
Speaker 2: If the threat or email comes from an academic domain
16:49
Speaker 2: eedu at school, I don't mess around with those. Those
16:53
Speaker 2: go to school resource officers. They can sort that out.
16:57
Speaker 2: There have been threats where a student has made threats
17:01
Speaker 2: directly against the superintendent of that school district because his
17:06
Speaker 2: own mother is a teacher in the district who is
17:09
Speaker 2: disciplined somehow, and the student child wanted to see some
17:15
Speaker 2: kind of retaliation that didn't go well.
17:18
Speaker 1: Bob found himself unexpectedly on the receiving end of these messages.
17:24
Speaker 1: Some of them were cries for help, some were empty
17:27
Speaker 1: threats by frustrated people with nowhere else to turn, but
17:31
Speaker 1: some were real from people who wanted someone in their
17:34
Speaker 1: lives dead and who were ready to take action on
17:37
Speaker 1: that plan. And now Bob, who isn't in law enforcement,
17:42
Speaker 1: is being told about these homicidal plans, and now he
17:46
Speaker 1: has to decide what, if any responsibility, he has in
17:49
Speaker 1: all of this. So there are cases that come through
17:52
Speaker 1: that he reports to law enforcement, and sometimes they even
17:55
Speaker 1: make the news, like in twenty twenty three when a
17:58
Speaker 1: young mother reached out to him.
18:01
Speaker 2: Jasmine Pyez This is a woman out of Florida, eighteen
18:05
Speaker 2: years old. She filled out a submission in her own words,
18:11
Speaker 2: provided her name address. She used a fake name to
18:14
Speaker 2: fill it out, but that wasn't hard to get around.
18:18
Speaker 2: But she provided a picture of a three year old
18:20
Speaker 2: that she wanted to have murdered. It was her own
18:23
Speaker 2: three year old. She had said in her request she
18:27
Speaker 2: wanted to have the kid taken far, far away and
18:30
Speaker 2: possibly killed. She had later stated that she had tried
18:34
Speaker 2: to take the kid to the forest to get eaten
18:38
Speaker 2: by bears or drown and I guess Ultimately what came
18:43
Speaker 2: out of it was the investigators had determined, after interviewing
18:48
Speaker 2: her and her boyfriend, her boyfriend had given her an
18:52
Speaker 2: ultimatum lose the kid or I'm done, and this was
18:57
Speaker 2: the result.
18:58
Speaker 3: Wow, And so can you tell us a little bit
19:01
Speaker 3: about how her case played out after you notified authorities?
19:08
Speaker 2: Well? Yeah, so notifying the authorities was really a bit
19:12
Speaker 2: difficult in this case. It took several several phone calls
19:17
Speaker 2: for me getting through to the law enforcement agency in
19:20
Speaker 2: Miami before somebody would take this seriously. And during the
19:25
Speaker 2: course of trying to report it, ours had gone by,
19:29
Speaker 2: and I'm getting more and more kind of irritated, and
19:34
Speaker 2: I keep asking for a supervisor, and they keep transferring
19:38
Speaker 2: me around, and finally I get through to somebody, a
19:42
Speaker 2: supervisor in their dispatch center, and I explained the situation.
19:46
Speaker 2: I told them, Hey, this isn't a prank. You know,
19:48
Speaker 2: I've been in people in Rolling Stone, and I kind
19:50
Speaker 2: of referenced some news stories and the ladies like, oh, okay,
19:54
Speaker 2: I get this. I get this. That's when they took
19:56
Speaker 2: it seriously, when she could verify that, hey, it's not
19:59
Speaker 2: just some random report. But once they got in there
20:04
Speaker 2: and investigated. I believe they made an arrest within six hours.
20:09
Speaker 1: The Miami Dade Police Department opened an investigation after Bob
20:13
Speaker 1: sent in the tip. An investigator posed as a hitman
20:16
Speaker 1: for hire and texted with Jasmine Piez. She moved forward
20:20
Speaker 1: with an attempt to hire him, agreeing to pay three
20:23
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to have her three year old child killed.
20:27
Speaker 1: Jasmine Piez and her boyfriend Gamaliel Sosa were both arrested
20:31
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three. Jasmine has lost custody of her
20:34
Speaker 1: child and is charged with first degree solicitation of murder
20:38
Speaker 1: and unlawful use of a communication device. Soza was charged
20:41
Speaker 1: with first degree murder, conspiracy, and unlawful use of a
20:45
Speaker 1: communications device. This joke website had actually turned into a
20:50
Speaker 1: tip that potentially saved the life of a three year old.
20:53
Speaker 1: And Bob gets messages like this all the time from
20:57
Speaker 1: different people in different counties run by different law enforcement departments,
21:02
Speaker 1: And each time that he has a hitman request that
21:05
Speaker 1: seems real, he will then call the local PD, introduce
21:09
Speaker 1: himself and try to explain the situation.
21:13
Speaker 3: This is for real, it's a satirical website, or I
21:17
Speaker 3: don't even know if that's what you would call it.
21:18
Speaker 3: But it's this website rent to Hitman that is a joke.
21:21
Speaker 3: But people do seek it out and please take this seriously.
21:25
Speaker 3: Do you get a lot of pushback of like, you know,
21:28
Speaker 3: this can't be real?
21:30
Speaker 2: I do. I get a fair amount of pushback. I've
21:33
Speaker 2: had some agencies basically laugh and say aha, you know whatever.
21:39
Speaker 2: But once I send people a link to like a
21:43
Speaker 2: news story or kind of explain it a little bit
21:45
Speaker 2: further and kind of lay it all out, they tend
21:49
Speaker 2: to comprehend it a little bit better. You know. Fortunately,
21:52
Speaker 2: there's US Department of Justice press releases out there which
21:56
Speaker 2: reference to website. There's legitimate news services and stories and
22:01
Speaker 2: stuff that have covered it. It's getting easier to be
22:05
Speaker 2: received by agencies, but there's still challenges.
22:10
Speaker 1: It makes sense that it would be difficult to communicate
22:12
Speaker 1: the situation to law enforcement. As much as Bob is
22:16
Speaker 1: trying to help and is helping, he's not in law enforcement.
22:20
Speaker 1: He's not a government official. He's not even an incorporated
22:23
Speaker 1: nonprofit with guidelines or operating procedures. He's just a guy
22:28
Speaker 1: who happened to create a website that is getting hundreds
22:31
Speaker 1: of submissions from people who are planning or want to
22:35
Speaker 1: commit murder, and he's just trying to stop that from happening.
22:40
Speaker 1: Step one for Bob is to verify a submission is
22:43
Speaker 1: real and not a joke. He needs to know that
22:45
Speaker 1: the person who submitted it is a real person. It's
22:49
Speaker 1: not that hard to verify. Most people have an online
22:51
Speaker 1: footprint these days, but it can take a lot of
22:54
Speaker 1: time going down rabbit holes looking for social media pages,
22:59
Speaker 1: searching names and addresses. If Bob can confirm that the
23:03
Speaker 1: person trying to hire a hitman is a real person,
23:06
Speaker 1: then it's on to step two, make contact.
23:11
Speaker 2: Then that's when I'll send a message back, do you
23:13
Speaker 2: still require services? Would you like me to place in
23:16
Speaker 2: contact with the field up earth? If they respond back
23:20
Speaker 2: with haha, I was just kidding, have a nice day. Okay,
23:24
Speaker 2: that gets filed one way. If they say yes, and
23:29
Speaker 2: you know I really want this done urgently, well, obviously
23:32
Speaker 2: they've kind of expedited their own request, and that's when
23:35
Speaker 2: it's basically drawn up. I'll do a statement. I'll reach
23:40
Speaker 2: out to an agency and basically hand it off and
23:44
Speaker 2: tell them they can either perform a welfare check on
23:48
Speaker 2: the intended target or they can work it as they
23:51
Speaker 2: see fit, and you know the ones that they arrest
23:54
Speaker 2: are the ones you hear about in the news.
23:56
Speaker 1: Wow, I mean that's a lot of work. Like, how
23:59
Speaker 1: many hours are you spending on this a week?
24:04
Speaker 2: Well, like I said, I've had to tone it down
24:06
Speaker 2: to maybe twenty hours a week now, you know, for
24:09
Speaker 2: my own personal sanity. But at the rate things are going,
24:14
Speaker 2: I could spend the entire week on this. I mean literally,
24:18
Speaker 2: it would fill every hour of every day. It's just
24:21
Speaker 2: that crazy. There was a time when I was putting
24:24
Speaker 2: in a forty hour work week somewhere else and I'd
24:26
Speaker 2: come home and do this, you know, for forty or
24:28
Speaker 2: sixty hours. I'd be up all night. My wife wouldn't
24:32
Speaker 2: like it, but you know, that's kind of sorry.
24:36
Speaker 1: Bob says he gets murder for higher requests from literally
24:40
Speaker 1: all over the world. A while back, he received hundreds
24:43
Speaker 1: of emails from Indonesia after an Indonesian YouTuber posted about
24:48
Speaker 1: rent a hitman dot com on the dark web, and
24:51
Speaker 1: the links that Bob went to in order to report
24:53
Speaker 1: these requests is surprising.
24:57
Speaker 2: I had contacted the US State Department. They're like, yeah,
25:00
Speaker 2: we don't care. I reached out to the US Embassy
25:04
Speaker 2: in Jakarta, never heard back from that guy. So I
25:07
Speaker 2: decided to take this information to the Indonesian Consulate in
25:12
Speaker 2: San Francisco and I gave them the information. And the
25:15
Speaker 2: reason I did that was five of the requests were
25:18
Speaker 2: for assassination of their president Joko with Dodo. I don't
25:22
Speaker 2: know whatever came of the information that I gave. All
25:26
Speaker 2: I can do is just kind of clear it off
25:28
Speaker 2: my chest, and you know, at least you guys have
25:31
Speaker 2: the information.
25:33
Speaker 1: With the case of like these Indonesian requests. You know,
25:37
Speaker 1: you have been told by multiple governmental agencies, you know,
25:43
Speaker 1: the US Consulate that essentially they don't care, or maybe
25:49
Speaker 1: they care personally, but they're not going to put resources
25:51
Speaker 1: and time into this. And you hit multiple roadblocks and
25:54
Speaker 1: then your response is to go in person to the
25:58
Speaker 1: Indonesian Consulate Inza Recisco. Why do you think you're so
26:02
Speaker 1: driven to do that when even these governmental agencies are like,
26:06
Speaker 1: we're gonna kind of wash our hands of this. What
26:09
Speaker 1: do you think it is that makes you want to
26:11
Speaker 1: follow through with this?
26:14
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I just don't want to see anybody
26:17
Speaker 2: get hurt. And you know, if I'm the kind of
26:22
Speaker 2: last line of defense before those people end up getting
26:26
Speaker 2: hurt or whatever. Damn right, I'm going to do something.
26:30
Speaker 2: And yeah, I ended up going to the consulate myself
26:34
Speaker 2: with my dad. I took my dad. That was the scary,
26:37
Speaker 2: scary moment. Man, I don't know what they're going to
26:39
Speaker 2: do to me in there. I mean, am I treading
26:41
Speaker 2: on some kind of international law you know that I
26:44
Speaker 2: don't know about? Or I didn't know what the hell
26:46
Speaker 2: to expect. I really didn't. Yeah, if I could help everybody,
26:49
Speaker 2: I would.
26:57
Speaker 3: Wendy Wine is the first story I came across that
27:02
Speaker 3: led me to your website, and so from you know,
27:06
Speaker 3: my recollection, Wendy came across rent a Hitman in July
27:10
Speaker 3: of twenty twenty, and she wanted to have her ex
27:15
Speaker 3: husband killed. Yeah, and you know this is like all
27:19
Speaker 3: playing out on your dialogue with her on the website.
27:22
Speaker 3: You're letting authorities know they're in Michigan and she then
27:26
Speaker 3: offers to pay you. Am I remembering correctly that that's
27:29
Speaker 3: like the moment you're like, Okay, this person's really serious.
27:34
Speaker 2: Yeah, Wendy is a very unique situation, by the way,
27:38
Speaker 2: because yeah, when she when she submitted the information. She
27:43
Speaker 2: submitted the information under an alias. It wasn't hard to
27:47
Speaker 2: see through her alias and figure out who she really was.
27:51
Speaker 2: I could tell this was a woman who had obviously
27:55
Speaker 2: a beef with her ex and wanted him taken out.
27:57
Speaker 2: She made it very clear verifying the information and sending
28:02
Speaker 2: her an email, do you still require services? And that
28:05
Speaker 2: kind of thing, and after she responded, well, that's when
28:09
Speaker 2: it got passed off to Michigan authorities. And you know
28:12
Speaker 2: that the rest of that story.
28:14
Speaker 3: But for those who don't know, can you tell us?
28:17
Speaker 2: But for those who don't know, she actually met up
28:21
Speaker 2: with undercover who played part of a field operative for
28:25
Speaker 2: the Hitman. Apparently there was some money exchanged.
28:30
Speaker 1: It was July of twenty twenty when Wendywine found rent
28:33
Speaker 1: a hitman dot com. According to reporting from CNN, Wendy wrote, quote,
28:39
Speaker 1: it's kind of weird that your company isn't on the
28:42
Speaker 1: deep or dark web. She then went on to offer
28:45
Speaker 1: to pay five thousand dollars to have her ex husband killed.
28:49
Speaker 1: The Michigan State Police sent a trooper in playing clothes
28:52
Speaker 1: to meet with Wendy in Detroit. She reportedly provided her
28:55
Speaker 1: ex husband's home address and work schedule and handed him
28:59
Speaker 1: to hundred dollars as a down payment.
29:03
Speaker 2: She was ultimately arrested, She was ultimately convicted. She is
29:09
Speaker 2: serving her time right now. I hope she's doing well.
29:13
Speaker 2: Her ex husband is living in another state and has
29:17
Speaker 2: been since this old thing started, and I wish him well.
29:22
Speaker 2: There's something about the Wendy thing that I think needs
29:24
Speaker 2: to be pointed out, and this was never brought out
29:26
Speaker 2: in trial. However, that's because she kind.
29:29
Speaker 3: Of took her deal, right, Wendy, you pled guilty, Yes,
29:33
Speaker 3: yes she did.
29:34
Speaker 2: She had actually gone to the dark web. She had
29:37
Speaker 2: gone to a dark web website and she had basically
29:40
Speaker 2: provided her name and or alias rather and the name
29:46
Speaker 2: of her target, Wendy Georgina Harris. Harris was there. Aelius
29:52
Speaker 2: had gone to the dark web days before going to
29:56
Speaker 2: my website. So she had actually reached out to the
30:01
Speaker 2: dark web seeking services and didn't get the results there
30:04
Speaker 2: that she was after.
30:06
Speaker 1: Potentially or do you know, like actually getting in contact
30:10
Speaker 1: with someone who could render hitman services on the dark web.
30:15
Speaker 2: Yeah, she had tried.
30:18
Speaker 1: And failed in some way and then went to your website.
30:21
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know what the result was. Of her
30:24
Speaker 2: from getting help on the dark web. But I only
30:26
Speaker 2: imagine that I had intervened before things could get to
30:29
Speaker 2: that stage.
30:31
Speaker 1: In talking with Bob, what became clear to us is
30:34
Speaker 1: that he spends a lot of his time on this website,
30:38
Speaker 1: following leads, verifying submissions, assessing if a threat is serious,
30:44
Speaker 1: and then trying to convince police departments or local sheriff's
30:47
Speaker 1: offices that his information is real and should be looked into.
30:51
Speaker 1: It's a lot for him to do after he signs
30:53
Speaker 1: off from his paid job. The idea that he would
30:56
Speaker 1: miss a tip and then maybe someone would be killed
30:58
Speaker 1: because of that, it's too much for Bob to bear,
31:02
Speaker 1: so he has spent sleepless nights fielding emails and following leads.
31:07
Speaker 1: He hopes to change that by creating a nonprofit. He'd
31:10
Speaker 1: love more help sifting through all the murder for higher requests,
31:14
Speaker 1: educating the public about internet safety, and he'd like for
31:18
Speaker 1: someone to help him navigate the best way to report
31:20
Speaker 1: these tips to law enforcement.
31:23
Speaker 2: A retired FBI special agent, for example. I have somebody
31:26
Speaker 2: in mind that I would love for that role, and
31:29
Speaker 2: he's excited about it too. You know, just somebody that
31:33
Speaker 2: can communicate better with law enforcement than I can. Somebody
31:36
Speaker 2: that maybe has the credentials to actually not just talk
31:40
Speaker 2: to a call taker, but actually get into somebody decision maker,
31:43
Speaker 2: an investigator, you know that kind of thing. What I
31:46
Speaker 2: would ultimately like to accomplish is with the creation of
31:50
Speaker 2: the nonprofit. Obviously, have a staff, some people that are
31:56
Speaker 2: good with open source intelligence and cyber investigations. I can't
32:00
Speaker 2: do it by myself. I'm unfunded. The biggest thing that
32:04
Speaker 2: anybody can do to help at this point in this mission,
32:07
Speaker 2: in my mission, is to help with funding. There was
32:11
Speaker 2: a case out of Las Crucius, New Mexico, involving a
32:15
Speaker 2: subject by the name of Lee Trehillo. He had filled
32:19
Speaker 2: out the submission form he wanted to take out his
32:22
Speaker 2: mother in law because she was like interfering with his relationship.
32:27
Speaker 2: I had reported it to the Las Crucius police department.
32:30
Speaker 2: It fell through the cracks. Nothing happened for a number
32:35
Speaker 2: of weeks. I spoke to a sergeant in Las Crucius
32:39
Speaker 2: who said, oh, yeah, it fell through the cracks. We
32:42
Speaker 2: had a homicide last week or a couple of days ago.
32:45
Speaker 2: We've been working on it. I'm like, that's your answer,
32:48
Speaker 2: So I didn't like that this guy's mother in law
32:52
Speaker 2: is still in jeopardy and y'all haven't worked this case.
32:56
Speaker 1: Wow, I guess just my last question I have is like,
32:59
Speaker 1: when you say, think back about creating this website and
33:02
Speaker 1: how it's impacted your life, what do you think of that?
33:06
Speaker 1: Are you glad that you made it?
33:09
Speaker 2: Like?
33:09
Speaker 3: What do you think about your position? And how has
33:12
Speaker 3: this experience sort of affected how you interact and see
33:15
Speaker 3: the world.
33:17
Speaker 2: Seeing it full blown in my inbox every day, it
33:20
Speaker 2: really kind of it kind of hardens me a little bit.
33:24
Speaker 2: I scrutinize things a lot more than probably the average show.
33:29
Speaker 2: But I do know there's good people out there, and
33:32
Speaker 2: I do know that not everybody is a nefarious and
33:35
Speaker 2: malicious pos and just some people make mistakes. Some people
33:41
Speaker 2: say or do things online that they probably will take back.
33:45
Speaker 3: Is there ever this thought for you about kind of
33:48
Speaker 3: towing the line where you're glad that the website has
33:52
Speaker 3: been reported on journalistically so that people take you seriously
33:56
Speaker 3: when you call and you have something to send, but
33:58
Speaker 3: also maybe it's not as well known that it becomes
34:03
Speaker 3: no longer overkill.
34:06
Speaker 1: Yeah.
34:09
Speaker 2: I had initially thought that, you know, the more podcasts,
34:13
Speaker 2: or the more traffic or the more news stories would
34:16
Speaker 2: hamper the analytics the visitor. That's not the case these people.
34:22
Speaker 2: I mean, it's busier than ever. I don't get it.
34:27
Speaker 1: Bob wants everyone to know that he has a new website.
34:30
Speaker 1: This time he's focused on people trying to sell stolen
34:34
Speaker 1: catalytic converters. The website is we buycatconverters dot com. Patient.
34:40
Speaker 1: I wrapped up the interview, stopped the recording, and then
34:44
Speaker 1: Bob mentioned something to us that had not come up
34:47
Speaker 1: in the interview, so we hit record a second time.
34:51
Speaker 3: We're back, Hannah and I ended the interview and then
34:56
Speaker 3: amateur mistake, amateure mistake, and then Bob brought something and
35:01
Speaker 3: we are heading record again.
35:04
Speaker 2: Yeah. So we've covered a few things, but we haven't
35:07
Speaker 2: covered the individuals that are seeking employment through the website.
35:11
Speaker 1: As in aspiring hitman.
35:14
Speaker 2: As in aspiring hit man, aspiring field operatives.
35:18
Speaker 3: Field operatives. Do they send you resumes?
35:23
Speaker 2: Yeah? Upon request?
35:25
Speaker 3: Yeah, tell us about some of these applications that you've gotten.
35:30
Speaker 2: So there's an individual out of Tennessee. This is an
35:34
Speaker 2: adjudicated case. His name is Josiah Garcia. His sentencing is
35:40
Speaker 2: like in a couple of weeks, by the way, but
35:42
Speaker 2: he applied to the website he was in the Tennessee
35:46
Speaker 2: National Guard. He claimed his nickname was the Reaper for
35:51
Speaker 2: not missing any of the targets, and he had indicated
35:55
Speaker 2: that he had an expanding family and wanted to make
35:59
Speaker 2: money for his family. He had sent in a picture
36:05
Speaker 2: of himself, a headshot, his ID as requested, and a resume,
36:11
Speaker 2: at which point multiple email exchanges were conducted. He had
36:16
Speaker 2: indicated many times that he was ready to move forward
36:19
Speaker 2: and wanted an interview with our onboarding team. After thoroughly
36:24
Speaker 2: vetting all of his information. That's when I passed the
36:26
Speaker 2: information onto an agency in Tennessee and they ultimately met
36:31
Speaker 2: with the Reaper offered him a fictitious kill packet and
36:36
Speaker 2: enveloped with like twenty five hundred dollars in it and
36:39
Speaker 2: a target. He ended up taking the money and then
36:43
Speaker 2: immediately kind of regretted his decision and said he was
36:46
Speaker 2: trying to put the money back, but he was arrested.
36:49
Speaker 2: During his interview with the onboarding field agent, he had
36:55
Speaker 2: said that he had no problem taking ears and fingers
36:58
Speaker 2: as trophies and that kind of thing. Yeah, he was
37:01
Speaker 2: good to go.
37:03
Speaker 3: I have never wanted to be a hit woman, but
37:07
Speaker 3: I would not send my picture no way. I don't
37:10
Speaker 3: want anyone to know what I look like.
37:12
Speaker 2: Yeah, you would think in hit Man one oh one
37:16
Speaker 2: that they would teach you not to leave any kind
37:17
Speaker 2: of trail. Yeah.
37:19
Speaker 3: Published on Justice dot Gov September twenty fifth, twenty twenty four,
37:25
Speaker 3: says Garcia pleaded guilty to using interstate commerce facilities and
37:29
Speaker 3: the commission of a murder for hire.
37:32
Speaker 2: Yeah, he agreed to carry out a contract killing for
37:34
Speaker 2: five thousand and accepted twenty five hundred down.
37:38
Speaker 1: What are the people that are applying for this job?
37:40
Speaker 1: Is it all because they're in some sort of like
37:43
Speaker 1: desperate financial need or are there other reasons why people
37:47
Speaker 1: are applying?
37:49
Speaker 2: Honestly, I don't get into that with them unless they
37:52
Speaker 2: volunteerily bring it up. And in Josiah's case, he had
37:56
Speaker 2: mentioned that he had a growing family and was just
37:58
Speaker 2: trying to, you know, earn money for his family. His
38:02
Speaker 2: intent is fine, but his means of carrying it out
38:05
Speaker 2: is pretty screwed up. I'm not a fan of that,
38:09
Speaker 2: but yeah, I do what you do to take care
38:10
Speaker 2: of your family. But he wasn't the only one. There's
38:13
Speaker 2: individuals around the country that have applied to become hitman
38:17
Speaker 2: and they have filled out the information. I send them
38:21
Speaker 2: a little questionnaire just for further information, just to kind
38:25
Speaker 2: of find out what's in their head. What is their
38:27
Speaker 2: favorite tools of the trade. Do they carry their tools
38:30
Speaker 2: with them by a chance? Are they available to disappear
38:34
Speaker 2: if needed? In that kind of thing? Some of the
38:37
Speaker 2: responses are pretty wild. There is a couple of ongoing
38:43
Speaker 2: cases right now around the country involving potential applicants, some
38:47
Speaker 2: of which are absolutely just these people need to be
38:51
Speaker 2: off the streets. Like yesterday, there is a case out
38:55
Speaker 2: of South Africa that is very interesting and involves the
38:59
Speaker 2: South African Police Service officer who wants to be a
39:02
Speaker 2: hit man. Oh and he wants to clean up his
39:06
Speaker 2: neighborhood down in Cape Town where he's at. Yeah. Try
39:11
Speaker 2: reporting that one.
39:12
Speaker 3: Yeah. Wow, that is so so. I don't know what
39:15
Speaker 3: you would do do? Yeah there no.
39:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyway, if there's a will, there's a way people
39:22
Speaker 2: want a job.
39:27
Speaker 1: Wow, thank you so much, Bob. What an interview? What
39:30
Speaker 1: an interview? Worth the weight? Yes, totally worth the waight
39:33
Speaker 1: you have been trying to get him to interview for
39:35
Speaker 1: like over a year.
39:37
Speaker 3: I honestly think it was multiple years, because it was
39:40
Speaker 3: when we worked on our other show, and I thought, like,
39:43
Speaker 3: I don't even know that this is right for our show,
39:46
Speaker 3: but I just really want to interview this person. And
39:48
Speaker 3: he never got back to me. And then I actually
39:50
Speaker 3: think on the website at the time, it was saying
39:53
Speaker 3: I caught like a form response that he wasn't doing interviews,
39:56
Speaker 3: and so I just kind of cataloged it.
39:58
Speaker 1: Yeah, what was it like to send a request on
40:02
Speaker 1: the website. Yeah, well, I was like, Okay, if I
40:05
Speaker 1: write him, I need to be very clear. I'm not
40:07
Speaker 1: looking for a hitman. I get that this is like
40:09
Speaker 1: a parody, okay, but I do want to talk to
40:12
Speaker 1: you about it.
40:12
Speaker 3: So I think I wrote like five times in my
40:14
Speaker 3: initial outreach like I'm just a podcast producer, to.
40:19
Speaker 1: Be clear, I don't want to have anyone killed.
40:21
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't have the FBI coming after me. But yeah,
40:24
Speaker 3: that interview was so different than any other interview we've
40:29
Speaker 3: ever done. Yeah, it really was the way that it
40:33
Speaker 3: consumed his life.
40:34
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was really surprising that he said at one
40:37
Speaker 1: point he was going to his forty hour a week
40:39
Speaker 1: job and then spending like twenty to forty hours additionally
40:43
Speaker 1: working on these cases. You could tell that he really
40:45
Speaker 1: has you know, he cares a lot. He gets very
40:48
Speaker 1: wrapped up and consumed with this sometimes. Yeah, there's so
40:51
Speaker 1: many cases really that were mentioned in this episode, and
40:55
Speaker 1: there was just a couple that I wanted to follow
40:58
Speaker 1: up on quickly. Bob meant, this case out of Las Crucis,
41:02
Speaker 1: New Mexico. This is from Justice dot Gov. A man
41:06
Speaker 1: was sentenced to the statutory maximum of ten years in
41:09
Speaker 1: federal prison for trying to hire an undercover ATF agent
41:13
Speaker 1: to murder his girlfriend's mother for two hundred dollars. This
41:17
Speaker 1: is the case that Bob was saying, like, he reported
41:20
Speaker 1: this and then followed up and was concerned because there
41:23
Speaker 1: had been no investigation or no follow up, and he
41:26
Speaker 1: kind of left it off in the interview as like,
41:28
Speaker 1: the mother is still at risk, so I just wanted
41:30
Speaker 1: to look it up and see if anything happened to her.
41:32
Speaker 1: But they ended up following through with it, and according
41:35
Speaker 1: to court records, between April tenth, twenty twenty two and
41:39
Speaker 1: May eleventh, twenty twenty two, Leif Hayman repeatedly solicited a
41:43
Speaker 1: hitman to murder his girlfriend's mother through the website rent
41:46
Speaker 1: to hitman dot com.
41:47
Speaker 3: It's like, two hundred dollars you think that? I mean,
41:52
Speaker 3: there's so many things wrong with trying to hire a
41:55
Speaker 3: contract killer, especially through a website that's so obviously a joke.
41:59
Speaker 3: But the two hundred dollars, I'm like, who's believing that?
42:03
Speaker 3: I don't know if that was like a down payment
42:05
Speaker 3: or what. I mean, Yeah, that's really wild. I don't
42:07
Speaker 3: know if that was just like a number who threw
42:08
Speaker 3: out there. It's enough to get him on that, Like,
42:11
Speaker 3: that shows some serious intent. And for me listening to
42:15
Speaker 3: Bob tell that story and others of requests that have
42:19
Speaker 3: come through that he's then been able to get law
42:22
Speaker 3: enforcement involved, was this every single time? Having to say, okay,
42:27
Speaker 3: here's the situation I have this website. I mean, that
42:30
Speaker 3: is like to get somebody on the phone to sort
42:32
Speaker 3: of listen and take it seriously, because no one wants
42:35
Speaker 3: to go to their colleagues and law enforcement and say
42:38
Speaker 3: there's a website run't a hitman. You know, it's a
42:41
Speaker 3: lot of explaining and yeah, which sort of feels like
42:45
Speaker 3: as it should be. You know, if you're just a
42:47
Speaker 3: random person, yeah, calling in like tips, like there should
42:51
Speaker 3: be some sort of skepticism or like looking into it. Yeah,
42:55
Speaker 3: it was just it was such an interesting interview. It
42:57
Speaker 3: made me think of so many things.
42:58
Speaker 1: But one of the things I did think about, like
43:00
Speaker 1: I kept thinking about that movie Minority Report. Did you
43:04
Speaker 1: see that movie? Yeah, Tom Cruise. It's like a sci
43:07
Speaker 1: fi futuristic movie where he's a cop and he works
43:12
Speaker 1: for this organization that's figured out how to predict crimes. Right,
43:15
Speaker 1: they have like I don't remember, like psychics or something
43:18
Speaker 1: they're working with, and so they get these visions of
43:22
Speaker 1: the crimes and then they send out people to arrest
43:24
Speaker 1: everyone before the crime happens, and obviously things go awry.
43:28
Speaker 1: I think Tom Cruise ends up getting framed or something.
43:32
Speaker 1: And I remember being a good movie. I have to
43:34
Speaker 1: rewatch it, but consider that Irec. Yeah, yeah, there you
43:36
Speaker 1: got Minority Report coming in hot recommendation. But there's something
43:40
Speaker 1: about this whole like predicting a crime it's going to happen. Obviously,
43:45
Speaker 1: it is a federal crime to try to solicit murder,
43:48
Speaker 1: but there's something a little tricky about that for me.
43:52
Speaker 1: You know, one of the cases that I found when
43:54
Speaker 1: I was looking up rent a Hitman is the case
43:58
Speaker 1: of Devin Fouber in nineteen. He was a twenty one
44:02
Speaker 1: year old man living in Virginia and he contacted rent
44:05
Speaker 1: to hitman dot com and requested to have his ex
44:08
Speaker 1: girlfriend and her parents both killed. And you know, when
44:13
Speaker 1: you first hear about that on the service, it's so horrible,
44:16
Speaker 1: like how could anyone do this? But when I started
44:18
Speaker 1: to look more into it, it's a little more murky,
44:21
Speaker 1: Like it turns out that he has mental health issues.
44:25
Speaker 1: They didn't say what his diagnosis is, but they just
44:29
Speaker 1: mentioned that it's serious enough that he should be on medication.
44:33
Speaker 1: He was off of his medication, and his mother said
44:37
Speaker 1: that he had always had learning and behavioral issues. And
44:43
Speaker 1: he even is quoted to have said, I say stuff
44:47
Speaker 1: out of my mouth, I don't mean to say, Like,
44:49
Speaker 1: there's clearly some issues and some confusion. And when you
44:53
Speaker 1: think about rent hitman dot com someone like that going
44:57
Speaker 1: to the website, it's like, is that clear to that
45:00
Speaker 1: person that this is a fake website and is there
45:03
Speaker 1: like an understanding of that or not? But he did
45:06
Speaker 1: move forward. He sent multiple requests to rent a hitman
45:09
Speaker 1: dot com. He wanted his ex girlfriend and her parents
45:11
Speaker 1: both killed. His ex girlfriend had a young child, a
45:15
Speaker 1: three year old child, and he requested for them not
45:18
Speaker 1: to harm the kid, and he had these sort of
45:21
Speaker 1: delusions that he would become the father to this kid.
45:25
Speaker 1: I mean, clearly, there's so much going on there, right,
45:28
Speaker 1: And there was a competency evaluation as part of the
45:32
Speaker 1: court proceedings, and it was noted that his brain, this
45:36
Speaker 1: is what they said, his brain didn't develop normally, disrupting
45:39
Speaker 1: his development and language skills. But still he was given
45:43
Speaker 1: a ten year sentence for this. It just brings up
45:46
Speaker 1: so many bigger questions. How much of a threat was he?
45:51
Speaker 1: Maybe he was, you know, I mean clearly he tried
45:54
Speaker 1: to have some people killed. But at the same time,
45:57
Speaker 1: like sending him to prison for ten years, Like, how
46:00
Speaker 1: is this helpful? Yeah, I just have to wonder. It's like,
46:03
Speaker 1: that's totally separate from Bob and Rent a hit man.
46:07
Speaker 1: We do have an issue about how we react to
46:10
Speaker 1: mental health issues in our justice system, and Bob is
46:14
Speaker 1: bringing this information but not making the decision. And so
46:18
Speaker 1: it's like, yeah, it is sad, and it is I
46:22
Speaker 1: think a little murky, you know. It makes me think
46:24
Speaker 1: of the Tennis and Jacobson episode. This man is having
46:28
Speaker 1: a mental health crisis, but also a real threat to
46:31
Speaker 1: their lives doing something violent, doing something violent. Yeah, it's tricky.
46:35
Speaker 3: So much more came out of that interview than I expected,
46:38
Speaker 3: especially when we turned the mic back on, because we
46:42
Speaker 3: had never done that before. I think in all of
46:44
Speaker 3: our interviews turned it off and then like stopped recording
46:47
Speaker 3: and then like, wait a minute.
46:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, here's something we need to talk about. These people
46:51
Speaker 1: applying to be a hit man.
46:54
Speaker 3: Never had that cross my mind and thinking of like
46:56
Speaker 3: thinking about the interview and questions and yeah, that's also
47:01
Speaker 3: just I can't believe anyone looks at the website and
47:04
Speaker 3: thinks it's real. But also, you know, there's a lot
47:06
Speaker 3: of stuff out on the internet. I mean, they're finding
47:09
Speaker 3: this website, but what if they'd found something else.
47:12
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think the thing with like people not looking
47:15
Speaker 1: at it and not realizing it's real, that's the part
47:17
Speaker 1: where I struggle with. I wonder how many of these
47:20
Speaker 1: cases are people with serious mental health issues because they're
47:24
Speaker 1: not understanding that this isn't real. And I don't know that.
47:27
Speaker 1: I think that there's clearly some people who are understanding
47:31
Speaker 1: completely that this is. You know, they're trying to hire
47:33
Speaker 1: someone to kill like Wendy Win, Wendy Wine. It's complicated.
47:36
Speaker 1: I did want to mention one thing. At the end,
47:39
Speaker 1: after we turned the mic back on, Bob talked about
47:42
Speaker 1: the case of Josia Garcia, who had applied to be
47:45
Speaker 1: a hit man and then there was a sting operation.
47:47
Speaker 1: He had entered into all these conversations about I would
47:50
Speaker 1: take thoses and ears as prizes or something, took money
47:56
Speaker 1: from what he believed was like a hitman or recruiter
48:01
Speaker 1: or sooner, and then tried to give the money back immediately,
48:04
Speaker 1: but still had incriminated himself. He was sentenced in late
48:09
Speaker 1: April twenty twenty five to five years probation.
48:12
Speaker 3: That seems right to me.
48:13
Speaker 1: Yeah, well cool, what an interesting episode. So glad that
48:16
Speaker 1: we talked to Bob. So glad that you were persistent
48:19
Speaker 1: and finally tracked him down. I can be a bit
48:21
Speaker 1: of a best We love it. Yeah, thanks for listening.
48:25
Speaker 3: See you next week. If you have a story for us,
48:31
Speaker 3: we would love to hear it. Our email is The
48:33
Speaker 3: Knife at exactly rightmedia dot com, or you can follow
48:36
Speaker 3: us on Instagram at the Knife podcast or a Blue
48:38
Speaker 3: Sky at the Knife podcast.
48:40
Speaker 1: This has been an exactly right production, Hosted and produced
48:43
Speaker 1: by me Hannah Smith and me paysia E.
48:46
Speaker 3: Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and Alexis Samarosi. This episode
48:50
Speaker 3: was mixed by Tom Bryfogel. Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.
48:54
Speaker 1: Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport Artwork
48:57
Speaker 1: five and SA Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia
49:00
Speaker 1: Hardstark and Danielle Cramer.