48 Hours - Click for a Killer: Part 1

Episode Date: September 30, 2018

A "48 Hours" investigation into one murder leads into the dark web and to the disruption of four potential murder-for-hire plots. "48 Hours" correspondent Peter Van Sant investigates.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. I really hadn't even heard of the dark web before. It's just scary. It's a scary movie to me.

This is terrifying. And it's as easy as going to Amazon. A few clicks and you could hire a hitman. You go to the website and you send an email. Who you want dead, who you want hurt. They'll tell you how much money it's going to cost. And you pay for it. Well the dark web is everywhere. It's all over the world. It's got no borders.

I'm very familiar with the dark web and all the cybercrime it contains. I discovered there's a lot of sick people out there. There are people around the world in danger. And I had to do something about it. On the dark web, everybody's anonymous. It's like a parallel internet, and sometimes we call it the internet's evil twin because it is a place of absolute lawlessness. What makes it dangerous is that it can't be policed.

On the dark web, you can buy and sell drugs. Any drug you want. You can buy weapons. Human trafficking. Pornography of the most depraved types. And sometimes I've seen people trying to kill people. Hitmen for hire advertise their services on the dark web. The Cosa Nostra is the proven legitimate deep web eBay of crime. We offer you services to beat up, set fire or kill customer targets. Hi, my name is Jura. We have hundreds of gang members, criminals and people who love to kill for money. They are anonymous.

You are anonymous. So come and get rid of those nasty problems. This is deadly serious. This is talking about the murder of a human being. You know, when you pay $10,000 to get someone killed, these are dangerous people. These are messages from the user known as DogDayGod, one of the most notorious users of the website. What's the first sentence that DogDayGod writes? I'm looking to hire you for a hit. 911, what's the address of the emergency?

I think my wife shot herself. There's blood all over. Took me about six minutes to get to the house. It soon became clear that it was not a suicide. Someone had killed her. She was a devoted wife, a loving mother who had many friends. I mean, my friend was taken from me. It's like road rage ten times, but through the Internet. That's just too close to me.

It scares me to death. Tonight, we're going to take you on one of the strangest journeys ever on 48 Hours. It's a murder investigation that begins not far from here in small town Minnesota and then takes us to here in Texas, here in California, to here in Tennessee, to 4,000 miles away, here in London. 48 Hours explores the alarming world of murder for hire on the dark web, and follows the story wherever it leads to expose an international criminal organization and hunt for a murder mastermind across the globe named Jura. How recently has Jura threatened your life? Well, I think it was about a week ago. I'm going to take this guy down. I will be waiting for you on the deep web.

Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories of the products you're obsessed with and the bold risk-takers who brought them to life. Like, did you know that Super Mario, the best-selling video game character of all time, only exists because Nintendo couldn't get the rights to Popeye? Or Jack, that the idea for the McDonald's Happy Meal first came from a mom in Guatemala?

From Pez dispensers to Levi's 501s to Air Jordans, discover the surprising stories of the most viral products. Plus, we guarantee that after listening, you're going to dominate your next dinner party. So follow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. It's just the best idea yet. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island.

It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reached the age of 10 that would still avert it. It just happens to all of us. I'm journalist Luke Jones, and for almost two years, I've been investigating a shocking story that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it,

people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn Trials exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. podcasts, or Spotify. A hitman marketplace is like any other auction site.

It brings customers and vendors together. You're looking at a man who says he's behind an international murder empire named Besa Mafia. He calls himself Yura. His real name is unknown. Any hitman is welcome to sign up, but not all will be accepted. His website invites would-be killers to send him hitman audition tapes.

What you are about to see can't be verified because it was anonymously posted online. Is this a real hit? If one searches online for, I quote, shot dead on street, one will find plenty of news about people being shot dead in the street by unknown people that shoot and leave the site. Those are our hitmen. We will be waiting for you to come place your orders and get rid of your problems. Eura's ominous brand of high-tech terror extends from an unknown location to the smartphones, tablets, and laptops of middle America. In fact, we discovered Jura and his hitman-for-hire website

while investigating the shooting death of Amy Allwine in the Minneapolis suburb of Cottage Grove, Minnesota. Amy and her husband Stephen, both 43, seem to live a quintessential American life, surrounded by friends, family, and dogs. Lots of them. Yes, good boy! Nice job! Amy ran a dog training business,

while Stephen, a freelance IT expert, worked from their home. They were college sweethearts, married in 1996, and eventually adopted a young boy. Joseph is now 10. When she talked about her son, her face changed from happy to happier, if that's possible. Always thinking of others, Amy was the salt of the earth, says her friend, Jane Sharp. You could look in her eyes and just see good. Faith was important too, says Washington County Prosecutor Jamie Kreiser. They were members of the United Church of God, as were all of their family members.

Church of God, as were all of their family members. Stephen, a respected elder in the church, delivered sermons, counseled couples, and even made videos with Amy demonstrating dance moves that complied with their conservative religious beliefs. But sometime, somewhere, warm-hearted Amy Allwine had made an enemy. Somewhere, warm-hearted Amy Allwine had made an enemy. In the spring of 2016, long before we began our investigation, the FBI learned about a murder-for-hire site called BESA Mafia, people paying for other people to be killed, and began looking into it.

Pouring over that treasure trove of dark web data, FBI agents were startled to learn that dozens of people had ordered contract killings all over the world. But one in particular stood out. Someone using the chilling screen name, Dog Day God, had ordered the assassination of a woman in Cottage Grove, Minnesota. Her name? Amy Allwine.

It was a case where the FBI had approached us about some concerns regarding Amy and threats on the Internet. Cottage Grove Police Captain Randy McAllister. Dog Day God says, I need this bitch dead, so please help me there was an urgency right dog day god sort of chomping at the bit for this to happen dog day god said amy has ruined my life and stolen my business eileen ormsby an australian writer and cbs news consultant learned about the all wine case while researching a book about the dangers of the dark web. So here we have hacking services, stolen PayPals and credit cards. The dark web is the name that we give to the group of websites that can't be accessed using Google or any of your

normal search engines. You need to download special software and then it opens up this new world to you. The technology behind it was actually developed by the US military to hide military secrets. So that sort of security obviously offers criminals great security as well. The killing of Amy Allwine had been ordered on that hitman website, BESA Mafia. Eura is the owner of BESA Mafia and subsequent websites that are the most profitable group of murder-for-hire sites that have ever existed. Ever existed? Ever existed. Ormsby's research letter to a like-minded colleague half a world away in London.

Chris Montero, IT specialist by day, white hat hacker by night, had also found Vesa Mafia. If you pass the barrier of having paid money to get someone killed, you are mentally committed to doing that. Chris didn't want us or our footage to reveal the location of his apartment. The people who had used this website are in many cases dangerous people. Because these are people who genuinely want to have someone else murdered. Yes and in many cases are paying significant amount of money for this. Dog Day God spent a lot of money to have Amy Allwhite murdered. Dog Day God wanted her dead badly enough to pay Eura and the Besa Mafia site

more than $12,000 in the digital currency Bitcoin. Bitcoin is an online currency. Even financial transactions are made anonymously on the dark web, says prosecutor Kreiser. Bitcoin is untraceable because when you use Bitcoin, it is done through what is called a wallet. And so once I get a Bitcoin wallet, I can use that to pay for these services on the dark web. That is correct. Even murder. That's right. With the hit against Amy bought and paid for, the FBI had to tell her and Stephen the frightening news.

I believe it was May 31st of 2016. Cottage Grove detective Terry Raymond rode along with the FBI that day. Well, we brought her into an interview room. You had to ask the question, Amy, do you know anyone in your life who would want you dead? Right. And she didn't. She was completely shocked and had no clue who it could possibly be. Raymond says at the time, the FBI never mentioned anything to him or the Allwines about Jura, Besa Mafia, or Dog Day God. But they told her there was a murder-for-hire plot against her on the dark web.

It was the FBI's investigation. They have people that are familiar with the dark web. Other than an extra patrol thing, it's not something we would get involved in. The authorities advised Amy and her husband to beef up their home security and then left. They installed a video surveillance system, and they purchased a pistol.

So they had taken steps. And Amy Allwine, from that point on, lived with this knowledge that someone wanted her dead. Then, two months later, in July 2016, Amy got another death threat, this time sent directly to her. Amy, I still blame you for my life falling apart. Here is what is going to happen.

I will come after everything else that you love. Suddenly, the threat to kill hung over Amy's entire family, including her son Joseph, then eight years old. Here is how you can save your family. Commit suicide. So why not do it now and save them? Now, how seriously do you take this threat? You have to investigate it as much as you can. The problem is the email it was sent from was anonymized, so it was untraceable.

And so the house is up here on the left. But someone did want Amy Allwine dead. And soon enough, she would be. 911, what's the address of the emergency? Find out about the potential dangers of the dark web at 48hours.com. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. The scary cult classic was set in the Chicago housing project.

It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. Candyman. Candyman? Now, we all know chanting a name won't make a killer magically appear. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. We're going to talk to the people who were there,

and we're also going to uncover the larger story. My architect was shocked when he saw how this was created. Literally shocked. And we'll look at what the story tells us about injustice in America. If you really believed in tough on crime, then you wouldn't make it easy to crawl into medicine cabinets and kill our women. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty.

Her specialty, representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop.

Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informant's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. And listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. Tentacle 4315.

Tentacle 4315. I'm in route to 110th Street. Sergeant Gwen Martin was just starting the night shift on November 13, 2016 911, what's the address of the emergency? When a 911 call came in that made many on the Cottage Grove Police Department drop what they were doing The caller was telling them that a female had shot herself. I think my wife shot herself. There's blood all over. We get in the squad cars and we start going to the scene. The adrenaline is pumping. Your heart's beating fast. As an 18-year veteran patrol cop and experienced paramedic, Martin says she was trained to be ready for anything. But nothing had prepared her for a message she received from dispatch

about halfway through her six-minute drive to the scene. I knew it was Amy. Martin had grown fond of Amy Allwine after teaching her in an eight-week course for citizens to learn about law enforcement and emergency services. They'd last seen each other just two weeks earlier at graduation. My heart stopped. No, this isn't possible. Amy wasn't suicidal. Amy was happy. She had a husband. She had a son. What possibly could be going on? As Martin rounded a final curve on the pitch black country road, the taillights of first responders at the scene appeared in her windshield.

And that's the house there. Yep, that's the house there. house there. Yep, that's the house there. She says she entered the house still hoping that the female might be someone other than Amy. And what did you see? I saw Amy lying on the floor, a pool of blood, a blank look on her face, obviously dead. Amy Allwine was sprawled on the bedroom floor. Amy Allwine was sprawled on the bedroom floor. Her eyes were open, her pants partially unzipped. And I started crying. My mind was spinning. I was whirling with disbelief, with shock. Martin called Captain Randy McAllister at his home.

He rushed to the scene, passing the Allwine's son Joseph outside the house. The boy was being comforted by his father, he rushed to the scene, passing the all-wine son, Joseph, outside the house. The boy was being comforted by his father, Stephen. Did you happen to notice or did any of the officers describe his demeanor? At that point, no. He appeared calm to me. McAllister says he expected to find a suicide, But once in the house, his nose detected something strange. A pumpkin was roasting in the kitchen. So the notion would be that Amy Allwine put a pumpkin in the roaster, put it in the oven, and then shot herself.

Yeah, yeah. So that was really odd. It doesn't look like a suicide. Yeah, yeah. So that was really odd. It doesn't look like a suicide? Amy's gunshot wound was easy to miss at first, a single bullet hole inside her right ear. The Allwine's pistol was lying in the crook of her left arm, which was perplexing because Amy was right-handed.

How did her hand end up under the bed and the gun end up on her left arm? Then McAllister studied the bloody scene around Amy. I noticed what we call satellite blood drips that were actually outside of the blood pool. At some point, Amy's head was suspended above those drops. Meaning prosecutor Jamie Kreiser says, that someone may have moved her body to this spot. And when the crime scene team did a luminol test looking for invisible blood stains, it's lit up like a Christmas tree. Bloody footprints, too faint to be seen with the naked eye, suddenly appeared everywhere. They went back and forth to the mudroom, but they also went into the bathroom on the main floor and they went into the son's bedroom. There were no immediate suspects. Amy's son was just a kid. Her husband, Stephen, had

helped beef up security at the house after the FBI's warning. Even bought a gun. He agreed to be questioned down at the police station. We're a normal family. There's nothing unique, nothing strange. The thing that stood out for everybody, I think, is his demeanor. Even though Stephen Allwine had made that 911 call, McAllister says Allwine was oddly calm for someone who had just found his wife shot to death.

Even when he started crying at one point, I guess I don't even know what to look for. I don't know what... It just seemed kind of fake to me. Allwine told police he'd spent the morning working in his basement. He says when he came up for lunch, Amy wasn't feeling well. She was coming down with something. Allwine said he'd given their son to Amy's parents for the afternoon. He left the house at roughly 5 30 p.m. to go pick his son up from the grandparents house. From there Allwine says he took his son for dinner and then drove home.

And the son apparently went right to the master bedroom to look for his mom and found her on the floor. When people call 911, they're usually calling for help. I need help. I need an ambulance. I need the police. They're in utter shock, despair. I need help. And his first line wasn't asking for help. I think my wife shot herself. There's blood all over. It was more of a statement.

As the 911 call went on, Stephen Allwine's distraught young son, who discovered his mother's body, had questions. Why did she do that? I don't know. I don't know, bud. Come here. He then asked. Are we going to remarry? I don't know, bud. Did you hear what I heard? What seemed like a chuckle? Yeah. There was nothing funny in that room, in that scene. Nothing funny at all. Although Stephen Allwine's behavior seemed fishy

in the 911 call and police interviews, McAllister said there was no apparent motive for him to kill his wife. And there was no definitive evidence linking him to the death scene. At that point in your mind, is this a murder case? I think it's a murder case. I just don't know who done it. Amy Allwine's husband, Stephen, called 911.

I have it here. I don't even want to hear her son, the poor little boy. Jane Sharp is furious that authorities who knew about the dark web hitman threat against her friend Amy Allwine didn't do more to protect her. I think they failed her. They failed her. So when you arrive at the residence, there's not a sense of the husband might be someone we should really keep our eye on. No, we didn't discuss any of that. someone we should really keep our eye on. No, we didn't discuss any of that. Terry Raymond and Randy McAllister from the Cottage Grove Police say this was the FBI's case.

The feds took the lead that day. Local police say they did everything they could for Amy, warned her to take security precautions, and increase patrols in her area. You can't park a car indefinitely outside of somebody's house unless you have more specific information. We wanted to ask the FBI about the Allwine case, but the Bureau declined our request for an interview.

Since 2015, Chris Montero had been sounding the alarm about dark web murder-for-hire sites. He'd been writing online articles to argue that many hitman sites were phony. In 2016, he says he noticed someone had edited one of his posts about BESA mafia, insisting it was real. This is Jura doing this? Yes. So he's basically saying, this guy's not right, don't listen to him. You can have people killed. Yeah. An online argument ensued.

The sniping continued for months until Chris says he received a chilling video from Jura in his inbox. And in this video is someone holding up a piece of paper with my domain name. And there's a big flame and a car is being torched. It was very, very surreal. At this this point i didn't know what to do chris called a lawyer the next day in the following weeks as the threats from europe continued he sought help and support from his online community including author eileen ormsby in aust Australia. Did you interpret this as a threat upon Chris's life? Yes, we both did. Chris also saw it as a declaration of war.

I was going to take this guy down. That was easier said than done. Eura's sites were encrypted, and he regularly changed their names. To customers, law enforcement can't easily close our site because the IP is hidden. Posting is hidden. Then Chris developed a special computer code to hack into the Basin Mafia site.

So you were able to see all the communication that's gone between customers and Jura himself and his responses. What are you discovering? I discovered there's a lot of sick people out there, in many cases being very graphic about how they want the person to suffer. I would like this person to be shot and killed.

I have very strong motives to kill my daughter. Do you know where I can hire someone to rape another person? Do you pour acid on my target? If so, how much does it cost? Did you come across someone who used the handle Dog Day God? Yes, I did. The target in this kill order was Amy Allwine. Chris found scores of messages between Dog Day God and Jura discussing how, where, and when the hit would take place. What did Dog Day God want done?

The target killed whilst they were on a particularly given date. Dog Day God writes, I am looking to hire you for a hit. Jura writes back, Dog Day God again. The target will be traveling out of town to Moline, Illinois. What is the price in Bitcoin for a hit and ideally making it look like an accident? Normal killing by gunshot is $5,000, Ura responds. Killing to make it look like accident is $5,000 plus max $4,000. It's all organized. It's all ready to go.

Ura is offering everything here except airline miles, it seems, for this hit. Dr. Agod has a very intimate knowledge of Amy's whereabouts, her movements, and what she's going to be doing at any one time. And Ormsby says Dog Day God's messages with Jura, which began about nine months before Amy Allwine died, make clear that as time passed, Dog Day God had grown impatient about having the hit carried out. March 20th, 2016. I want her gone. I need her gone. Chris says he was so concerned about the hitman's sights, he contacted the FBI. I spoke to an agent there and explained the situation.

He admits he didn't get into specifics about any plot in particular and says the conversation went nowhere. He eventually gave up trying. This would take over my life even more than it has. But Chris's life was turned upside down in January 2017 when he learned about Amy Allwine's death. I was so upset when I found out, and this is exactly what I tried to stop. It's really a bit difficult. Very painful for you. Back in Minnesota, police had been investigating Amy's death since the day her body was discovered. They'd made an unusual find in the basement where Stephen had an office.

He had a lot of very advanced electrical and computer equipment. I heard there was as many as 66 electronic devices down there. I mean, did it look like mission control? Yeah. It was a lot, even for an IT professional like Stephen Allwine. And investigators unearthed startling cyber evidence in his email. Stephen Allwine had been going on a website called Ashley Madison. It is a website for married people seeking extramarital affairs. A hack of a controversial social networking website.

Ashley Madison, whose client list was leaked in 2015, publicly shaming some of the most rich and powerful adulterers in America. How do you think she would have taken that news? She'd have been crushed. Jamie Kreiser says Stephen Allwine's position in the church would have been in jeopardy if he divorced Amy. Stephen Allwine had dated at least three women through different internet forums. Those relationships ranged from a date to a prolonged sexual relationship. from a date to a prolonged sexual relationship.

This is one of those women, and read for yourself, their texts could never be heard in church. That goes to motive in that Stephen Allwine did not want to be married anymore. The incriminating evidence against Stephen Allwine was growing. They discovered Allwine had been shopping on the dark web for an anti-nausea drug called scopolamine. Taking a large amount of scopolamine would render you helpless, essentially. Had he pulled the trigger himself or hired a hitman from URA's website? Hitman from Jura's website. Jura claimed Amy's shooting was arranged on BESA Mafia.

In this video diary he sent us. The BESA Mafia hitman visited the Alwine residence and shot his wife using her gun and then left the location in a hurry. Either way, Amy's autopsy showed an enormous amount of scopolamine in her system. In high enough amounts, it can kill you. In spite of the scopolamine in her system, in spite of the messages to the hitman's site, Randy McAllister was lacking absolute proof that Stephen Allwine was involved in Amy's death.

Could someone else have used Allwine's computers? I really didn't latch on to Stephen Allwine as the suspect until December 12th. December 12th, 2017. That's the day McAllister got a call from another investigator who had just made another crucial discovery. Stephen moves from being the grieving spouse of Amy to the suspect in her murder. I've worked on many murders in my career. This one, far and wide, the most complex, trying case I have ever worked on as a prosecutor. On December 12, 2016, authorities in the Allwine investigation caught their biggest break of all. Is there a smoking gun in this case, in your opinion?

There is a smoking gun in this case, in your opinion? There is a smoking gun in this case. Prosecutor Jamie Kreiser says the smoking gun was a 34-character code in a message from Dog Day God paying for Amy's murder in Bitcoin, that digital currency that people on the dark web often use to buy and sell anonymously. The problem for Stephen Allwine was that the code was on his computer. Kreiser says it could not have been a coincidence. So in the end, who is Dog Day God? Dog Day God is Stephen Allwine. The man who swore to God that he would love, honor, and cherish Amy Allwine is now suspected of sending her to an early grave.

We know he tried to hire a hitman to kill her. We know he tried to poison her. He tried to get her to kill herself with these emails. That didn't work. Prosecutors say after waiting for nine months, Stephen Allwine was so frustrated that the hit hadn't happened that he shot his wife to death himself, using that nausea drug to render her helpless

and the gun he'd bought for their personal protection. Hi there. I'm Michelle Fransk, 28. Stephen Allwine was arrested on January 17, 2017, on murder charges. He hired defense attorney Kevin DeVore. Let's get right to it. Did Stephen Allwine murder his wife Amy? No. If he didn't, who did?

Well, there were threats that were being made directly to Amy Allwine on the internet. DeVore claims authorities had tunnel vision from the start, focusing on Stephen Allwine and ignoring other possibilities. Now investigators say, nice try with that, but Stephen wrote all those emails. It was Stephen who sought to hire a hitman. That's what they say, but they didn't provide us with any proof that he sent those emails. There is a 34-digit code, the same code that was found on Stephen Allwine's laptop and on a cell phone. Because how do you explain that?

Well, that was the best evidence the state had in their case. And the truth is you can't explain it. You can't explain it, but there is another possibility of how it got on there. Incriminating evidence was uploaded to Stephen Allwine's computer from a device called S Allwine iPhone. But DeVore will ask jurors to believe the phone wasn't Stephen's. In any case, DeVore says there's evidence a woman wrote messages like this one. I don't know how a f*** like you got to my husband.

There were other women involved in Amy's life, friends of hers and other colleagues that had full access to her internet, to her home. Andy says it was a woman after all, or at least someone claiming to be, who tried to get Amy to commit suicide just months before authorities found her dead. It appeared that it was another female that was angry with Amy for allegedly having an affair with this woman's husband. Police found no evidence Amy Allwine was having an affair with anyone. It sounds like you're making up an excuse for your client. Well, let me tell you, as a criminal

defense attorney, my job is to defend my client to show that he's not guilty. Allwine's arrest rocked the United Church of God, where he had been held in such high esteem. Officials issued a statement expressing their profound shock and sadness. As Stephen Allwine's murder trial approached in January 2018, authorities were winding down their investigation. But 48 Hours was launching one of its own. their investigation. But 48 Hours was launching one of its own. We wanted to learn more about the shadowy figure behind the Besa Mafia site. So I ventured into a very strange place for the first time in my life, the dark web. Jura had by this time closed down Besa Mafia and opened a new hitman site called Cosa Nostra, another reference to the mob and organized crime. Again, these websites can't be verified. This is the Cosa

Nostra website on the dark web. You can see the pictures of somebody who's clearly been shot, a man with a gun, eyes hidden, like he's a hitman, cars that have been burned. We wanted to talk to Jura ourselves, so we wrote to him on the dark web. Amazingly, he responded almost right away. Hi, I am Jura, he wrote. I got your earlier message.

And even more amazingly, agreed to an interview with an important condition. He said it had to be in London. So we've flown from New York to London, rented this studio. You can see the lights behind me for the big interview. And we even brought in a master of disguise who's going to camouflage Yura's face. Now all we need is him. Eileen Ormsby, who we'd brought to London from Australia,

joined us as we waited. What do you know about Jura? Where does he live, do you think? I don't know where Jura lives, but I suspect he's not too far away from us right now. On our second day, we got a message on the dark web. What did he say? I don't think he's coming.

Jura told us that he was convinced that we were being followed by British intelligence. So we offered to meet him in a public place where he could surveil us and see that we were alone. We even offered to talk in a moving taxi, making our way through London. But Jura was convinced that if he showed up, so too would the authorities. I do have several millions to live a nice life and start several businesses. Why should I risk being arrested and end up in jail? Chris Montero says he knows just how risky contact with Jura can be.

He experienced it firsthand in his own home. February 4th, 2017. You're here in your flat in London. What happens? Well, I'm just in the living room having some soup and I hear some noises from the door. I'm thinking, what's going on? So I come out and I go here to listen. He says he'd spent months monitoring Jura, when Jura cunningly turned the tables on him.

Jura wasn't happy with me. He decided what he would do, he would try and confuse the matters of who ran the website. Not long before, he discovered that Jura was trying to frame him, claiming Chris ran the hitman's sites. And before I know it, there's a bashing ram knocking down the door. There's armed police bursting in. They pushed me up against the wall here and saying, hands in the air, you're under arrest for incitement to murder. And I'm like, what? He says he was amazed when cops confiscated his computers

and locked him up. British authorities dropped the charges and later refused our request for an interview about Chris Montero. What a nightmare. It wasn't fun. I do not recommend. Knowing what Jura had done to Chris, we weren't surprised that he backed out of an interview with us

during our four days here in London. But we didn't walk away empty-handed. Jura did give us some information that took our investigation into a whole new direction. The man who apparently cornered the market in contract killings sent us a video diary. I am doing this video diary entry to give you official statements about the site. And insisted he actually wanted to save lives. To prove it, he began giving us the names of the murder targets from his sites.

We wanted to touch base with you. Normally as journalists, we report the news and then do our best to get out of the way. But this was different. We found ourselves in the middle of an apparent live marketplace for murder. And there was only one thing we could do. Our team contacted authorities. We blurred our staff's faces for security reasons. We have a tip on a murder-for-hire plot. Knows where the target works, knows where the target lives. And after we called authorities,

we began approaching targets like this woman ourselves. Now I know that someone has a target on my back. They were trying to murder me. What do this dog trainer in Minnesota I didn't see anything out of the ordinary This Hollywood actress You had no idea this was going on I had no idea This hacker in London

This person is very, very serious about having Laurie killed. This single mom in Tennessee. Why is someone trying to murder me? And this shadowy figure in an undisclosed location have in common... A hitman goes and shoots a target from close range. Murder for hire plots on the dark web. From the American heartland to countries across the globe. He's being charged with something that could get him hanged.

The tips that you have given 48 Hours now total 33 in nine countries. It's a lot to take in, really. And 48 Hours helped expose them. They just received a tip for a murder for hire in Iran. It's against a citizen of Taiwan. It's a murder for hire plot unraveled. Last week, police received a tip about the murder for hire plot from the CBS News program 48 Hours. Miss Jones, can I talk to you?

If it wasn't for 48 Hours, there would have been a funeral. Back at the airport, heading to California, where we're told an arrest is imminent. Do you understand the terror that you have caused with this murder for hire plot? Coming up next. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey.