Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
I'm Carl Miller, the host of the podcast Kill List. One night, a hacker breaks into a dark web murder for hire site, uncovering a chilling cache of documents called the Kill List. It details hundreds of names around the globe, complete with faces, addresses, as well as payments and instructions for their murders. When a murder disguised as a suicide shakes a quiet suburb, a hacker connects the victim to the Kill List.
With local police slow to act, he turns to a non-suspecting investigative journalist to help. That's me. When law enforcement decide not to investigate, our team is forced to take matters into our own hands. A decision that plunges us into a high-stakes race to warn those whose lives are in danger. And it turns out, convincing a total stranger that someone wants them dead is not easy.
I'm about to play a clip from Kill List. Follow Kill List on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. - All right, you ready? - Yep. It's a Thursday afternoon and I'm on a call with one of my producers. The road outside my house is almost totally silent. On my computer, I open Chris' document. - Oh, wow, there's a lot on here. - Yeah. Chris has run me through the orders, but this is the first time I've got my hands on the Kill List itself.
It's a long spreadsheet of names, locations, telephone numbers. So how many do we have? It looks like there's 85 on this list. I scroll through the list. A man from the US, a woman from Russia. Alongside each name, there are contact details, workplace addresses, details of their movements, and in most cases, there are photos.
The photos are the thing that strike me first. A few dozen people staring out at you as you open this document. In one, a middle-aged man stands surrounded by his family. His light blue eyes twinkle with a deep and joyful pride. In another, a woman tilts her head as she smiles shyly at the camera over rimless glasses. She's somewhere glitzy. She looks relaxed and happy.
The thing that's so striking about these photos is that they look like they've all been taken from social media. They look like kind of mainly Facebook profiles. So they're the ones that you decide to put on your profile picture. Yeah. They're nice photos. Yeah, and it's, I mean, it's just a photo, but they all just sort of have this, you know, they just don't know. And this is just sort of looming over their head and they have no idea, you know. Man, this is awful.
This list looks like any other Excel spreadsheet. It's innocuous, boring even, until you read the instructions listed against each name. There's one fucking guy and I only have his name and the city he lives in. How can I hire a killer to kill him? How much Bitcoin should I pay? Tell me the execution time in advance. I can't be there.
I would just like this person to be shot and killed. Where, how and what with does not bother me at all. I would just like this person dead. These are the messages written by whoever paid to have these people assassinated. Their specifications for the hit.
Can you kidnap silent and erase without a trace? Kill a nurse in Taipei. I guess we don't know the backstory, but like a nurse? I want her to be killed. It should seem she is dead because of an accident, not one murder. Kidnap family in Hong Kong. Can we save 15 Bitcoin for hitting the car and ensure fatality? Mother needs to die. Someone wants to kill their mom. Kill an unidentified woman in Ottawa. Kill a woman who permitted sexual abuse. Moscow. Women. 45 years old.
Jesus, man, this is terrible. Just like, these are really possibly 85 really serious crimes just staring back at us. Yeah. I mean, this is conspiracy to commit murder. Ethically, this is the hardest...
thing to cover that I've ever tried to do. And for sure, I mean, this is a ethical bomb waiting to blow up in our faces if we don't do this correctly. Yeah, I don't know, man. It looks like a big Pandora's box that we're opening. And once you open it, it's open, man. I don't think we can put it shut. The thought of what could go wrong if I meddle with this is terrifying. But so is the thought of what could happen if I do nothing. So I start with the obvious step.
I'm quite nervous, honestly. Like, I wasn't able to sleep that well. I don't know why. It suddenly makes it a lot more real and it's just a spreadsheet at the moment and it's about to turn into a crime. I'm about to phone the police and hand over my information. Chris might have struggled with law enforcement, but I've worked with the police before in my reporting. I'm confident I can do better. After all, this is a credible threat. How hard can it be to get them to take it seriously?
All right, should I just do it then?