Kill List - Berlin | 8

Episode Date: November 5, 2024

Someone wants a German Twitch streamer dead. And as they examine the kill order, host Carl Miller and his team are increasingly worried that the threat could be coming from inside the victim���s apartment. Follow the Kill List on the Wondery App or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes early and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery+ in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial by visiting www.wondery.com/links/kill-list now. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondry Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of Kaolist early and ad free. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. Sitting in his apartment in Berlin, a young man is live streaming to his followers on Twitch, a social media platform for video gamers. He's 34 years old, but looks younger, with a neat beard and a flame of greenish blue hair gelled up into a quiff. He's got a slightly emo sense of style, and is wearing a black string necklace.

His name is Andreas, but his friends call him Andy. He's been a Twitch streamer for a few years and has built up a small but loyal following of about 5,000 people. He plays all sorts of games, from cute platformers all the way through to gory horror. To Andreas' right, his boyfriend Enrico leans over him stroking his shoulder affectionately. Enrico is about the same age, with a similar sense of style, same neat beard, who would dye blonde hair

and black plug earrings. Today is Andreas' birthday, and Enrico has made a surprise video for him. In it, a parade of Andreas' friends appear, one after the other, wishing him a happy birthday and singing him songs. Enrico hugs him and pushes his face right up against Andreas', affectionately nuzzling him. From a distance, Andreas' life seems wholesome and sweet. His Twitch channel is all about silliness and having fun,

playing games, and inviting his friends over to make sushi with him and Enrico. But appearances can be deceiving. Under the surface of Andreas' seemingly rosy life lies a story of love turning to obsession. Because what Andreas doesn't know is that someone, somewhere, is trying to kill him. And this is No Game. Hi, wanted to know if you are still taking jobs in Germany. I'm willing to pay 10,000 for a killing by stabbing or 12,000 if it is made to look like a robbery gone wrong. My name is Karl Miller.

Since 2020, I've been part of a team working in secret to stop people getting murdered. We broke into a scam and murder for hire website on the dark web. in secret to stop people getting murdered. We broke into a scam murder for hire website on the dark web. We could see every order being placed, real money being paid to have real people murdered. The tally of these targets now stands in the hundreds. We call it the Kill List. So far, we've managed to help law enforcement arrest or convict more than 30 people all

around the world. When we look at the perpetrators, we often find people caught in a liminal zone between fantasy and reality. And in this episode, that line between fact and fiction, games and reality seems to dissolve completely. Get ready for Las Vegas style action at Bet MGM, the king of online casinos. Enjoy casino games at your fingertips with the same Vegas strip excitement MGM is famous

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that also happens to have the best converting checkout on the planet. And that's no industry secret. That's Shopify. Learn more at Shopify.com slash Enterprise. From Wondery and Novel, I'm Carl Miller. And this is Kill List. We're going to be calling the user who wants Andreas dead, CIDA. CIDA writes in clipped, formal English, and the messages are amongst the most extensive we've ever seen. We have more than 40 pages of correspondence between SIDER and various fake hitmen, where

SIDER is shopping around, trying to find someone to take on the job. The messages are all on a similar theme. The same target, the same desire to kill, and the same method of murder. making it look like he got into a robbery that went bad. Target currently lives in Berlin. This street is called... ...move there a few months ago, so it should be easy to get rid of him without much suspicion. CIDA hands over detailed information about Andreas. Beyond the street Andreas lives on,

they also provide his social media profiles, his email address, and two photos of Andreas, both of them selfies taken from his social media profiles, his email address and two photos of Andreas, both of them selfies taken from his social media. SIDER also seems to know Andreas' movements. They inform one of the would-be hitmen the exact day that Andreas dyed his hair blue. We first catch sight of SIDER on the Hitman site on the 6th of March 2022. Two days later, and they've already uploaded nearly $10,000. Over the next few weeks, they upload 11,000 more.

In total, we can trace $21,535 worth of Bitcoin that's been transferred for the killing. They contact more than 10 supposed hitmen with names like Eurokiller, Hunter, even Hitler. There's a relentlessness to CIDR's obsession that is genuinely unnerving. Yet at the same time, CIDR is polite to a fault, even to the people scamming him. Hi, sorry for the inconvenience. I want to make sure I didn't make any mistakes, since it is very important to me to get someone to accept my order if possible soon. Thanks in advance for a reply and sorry again if I'm too impatient. patient. It seems clear that the person we're looking for is not a hardened criminal. Sider seems much more naive than that.

And there's a detail in the kill order which hints at their true motive. I want to hire someone to take the target out as in end their life. at their true motive. heart. I wish him not to be harmed under any circumstances in any way or form." To emphasise that point, Sider puts in three exclamation marks. The target most likely works from home, his boyfriend as well, so it will probably require an optimal timing to catch him alone. Whoever wants Andreas killed is very, very clear that they don't want anything to happen to his boyfriend Enrico. And this detail about Enrico comes up again and again.

It is of utmost importance that his boyfriend finds out about his death, so I wish for his body to be found sometime later. Since I have a steady communication contact with this boyfriend, I will get the verification once it is done that way. This part of the message raises so many red flags for us. Why is SIDA so keen to ensure that Enrico isn't around when the murder happens? We've seen before in other cases that people using the site can spin elaborate webs to try and cover their tracks. They'll adopt a persona talking about themselves in the

third person trying to create a camouflage that they hope will protect them should the messages ever come to light. And reading these messages, I can't help but think of Andreas' boyfriend, Enrico, as the primary suspect. Why else would Cider be so insistent that he shouldn't be harmed? And that suspicion puts us in an incredibly sticky situation. Because we need to warn Andreas and the police about the threat. But we need to do so in a way that doesn't risk his boyfriend Enrico finding out.

We decide that the best way forwards is a two-pronged approach. We hand the case details over to the FBI. They will forward them on to the police in Germany. We have no idea though how the German police are going to react and at what speed. That is, if they're going to react at all. So the second prong of our plan is to contact Andreas directly. The idea is to warn him of the threat and then help him in whatever way he wants. We can alert the authorities locally and, if we really need to, get him to a place of safety.

But we absolutely cannot risk tipping off his boyfriend Enrico. So first we try sending an email to Andreas, using the email address supplied by SIDA in the kill order. But we never hear back. So we hire a local reporter to see if she can convince Andreas to talk to us alone. I'm still in the area of the potential victim. I'm just around the corner from his house. Janina Thindycen is a reporter and documentary filmmaker living in Berlin. She's got a track record as a fearless investigative journalist.

She's broken stories exposing far-right militias and whilst working in Syria, she was kidnapped by a jihadist group and held hostage whilst pregnant. She wrote a book about it, called My Room in the House of War. And now she's sitting around the corner from where we believe Andreas lives, ready to make the call that may well change his life forever. Junina starts by keeping things vague. She tells Andres she's a journalist and that she needs to speak to him urgently. She asks if he's read the email we sent him and he seems utterly confused.

seems utterly confused. I know you must think that this is a joke, she tells him, but it's not. Andreas hasn't got our email. It seems like the account we sent it to is not one he checks. Janina offers to resend it to him, but she warns him, don't show it to anyone. The call ends and Janina sits in her car, not at all reassured that the message has gotten through. I offered we can meet at a safe place, you can choose the place and so on. It was really a bit difficult to make the connection with him because he was just saying

things like, I think you are totally wrong. I think you misunderstand everything. I'm not the person you are looking for. I think he's really not feeling unsafe. Yeah. I think he doesn't know anything about the threat. That's bad. That's really bad news.

I would much prefer him to be somewhat in hiding. It's much more anxiety provoking that he doesn't think it's him and is therefore taking really no steps at all yet to make himself any safer. That evening, I watch as Andreas does his regular Twitch stream. It's as if nothing has happened. He's just building a house in a game called Animal Crossing and chatting away about the

room he's furnishing for Enrico. Whilst Andreas is building a digital house for his boyfriend, I am tearing my hair out in London. Because there's another piece of information that makes us realise that we don't have time to just sit and wait to see how this all plays out. We've been looking into the username CIDA, trawling the internet to see if it shows up anywhere else. And it turns out there's a match. There's a social media account with the same username.

And just as we feared, that account belongs to Andreas' boyfriend, Enrico. I'm Matt Ford. And I'm Alice Levine. And we're the hosts of Wanderer's podcast, British Scandal. Now, our latest series is big. I mean, huge. You could say the biggest scandal ever to happen on British soil. It's political, it's religious, it was an extreme act of defiance.

We're talking about a next level assassination attempt. Members of the royal family, religious leaders, as well as a load of big names in society. And they very nearly succeeded. So close, we're going to be telling you the story of the gunpowder plot and how 13 men set about planning to blow up the Houses of Parliament. The stakes were impossibly high. There were rifts in the group, a load of swords and drunk men swigging beer in hostelries.

Which always ends badly. To find out the full story, follow British Scandal wherever you listen to podcasts or listen early and ad free on Wondry Plus on Apple Podcasts or the Wondry app. Hi everyone, it's Millie here. And it's Liam. And this is our brand new podcast, Liam and Millie. Why Liam and Millie? Because it's just us. So we are going to take you into the reality of our little love story from that very first

chat on Love Island. But now we navigate in our long distance relationship. You may not know, but I live in Wales. And I live in Essex. So each week we'll be catching up on each other's lives. We also will be answering your relationship questions and tackling your juiciest dilemmas. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts or watch the full episode on YouTube. After our failed attempt to warn Andreas, we contact the Berlin police directly. Our immediate, overwhelming concern is that Andreas could

be sleeping next to the person who's actually trying to kill him. And within four days, the Berlin police call us up, asking for more information. They seem serious and polite, but it's hard to tell what they're thinking. German police are not, as you might expect, particularly effusive. What's become clear to me over the course of this investigation is that the fate of each of the people on the kill list rests on which detective happens to pick up the case, how seriously they take it, and how hard they're able to push to get the evidence needed to prosecute a dark web crime. My name is Philip. I'm a member of the homicide unit in Berlin.

At the Berlin Homicide Unit, Detective Philip Ostrowitzki is examining the messages we've sent the police. He's scouring Zyder's words for clues about who could be behind the kill order. What does the suspect want? Is there anything we can take out of this conversation give us the possibility to identify him or to, I don't know how to say in English, but to make the circle smaller from potential suspects?

Philip looks like a detective out of a crime drama. He's handsome, with short dark hair, and is a lot younger than you might expect a German homicide detective to be. I'm 34 years old and born and raised in Berlin. Philip is unlike any other investigator we've met before. His skill is less in the world of cybercrime or technical evidence as it is uncovering the truth through human sources, probing with questions and using his powers of deduction to uncover the truth of the crime.

And the reason this case has landed on Philip's desk is that homicide detectives in Berlin don't just investigate murders, they also deal with attempted murders. And in the digital age, that means Philip has to deal with online death threats. Yeah, these cases are hard. This is quite often the case with attempted murders. Is it serious? It's not easy. But Philip can see that SIDA is serious.

It's not just the money they've paid, but also the calculating way they've tried to set the murder up, the precision of the methods by which they wanted to happen, and the obsessive way they keep pushing to find a hitman. As he pours through the kill order, there's one detail in particular though, that stands out to Philip as potentially significant.

Sider doesn't seem to know Andreas's exact location. Unfortunately, I don't know the exact number of the address. And it was hard enough to find the street out without raising suspicion. But it should be very close to that area. That is, I think, one of the key information in there. So who knows your name, the name of your partner, knows that you live in Berlin, but don't know your real address. Up until now, it seemed to us that Enrico, Andreas' boyfriend, was the most likely suspect. But if Philip is right and this clue is significant,

then it looks good for Enrico. After all, he lives in the same apartment as Andreas. If he's involved in the plot, then Sider should know precisely where Andreas lives. At this stage of the investigation, Philip doesn't know exactly what the clue about the address means for sure, but he files it in the back of his mind, and his next step is to speak to Andreas himself. It happens not a lot that people just kill somebody on the street who they don't know before. And in this case, we're quite sure that there has to be any contact or a chain of knowledge of him even through some friends around him.

Philip thinks that whoever wants Andreas dead must be someone he knows personally. And so if Philip is going to crack this case, he's going to need to understand Andreas' life and the lives of those closest to him. It's a cold Friday evening in Berlin when Philip and his colleague ring the doorbell to Andreas' apartment. They're both in plain clothes and when Andreas opens the door they flash their ID badges to let him know who they are. their ID badges to let him know who they are. So I think he was pending between, can I believe this? Can I believe this? A police officer. Philip and his colleague spend about an hour and a half talking with Andreas.

They tell him about the kill order and the fact that they're concerned for his safety. And interestingly, they don't separate him from Enrico, at least not at first. That is very important to have them with him at the beginning as a psychological support. It's quite important that there's somebody else from the family that they're not alone. But after a while, they interview each man separately. They start with Andreas. Philip's trying to work out if there could be anything in his life which could explain why someone would want him dead. Do you have financial problems?

Are you politically active? Could there be a reason why somebody has a problem with you? But he had no clue where this can come from. There was nothing where we really thought this could be a reason for somebody to kill him. Next, they turned their attention to Enrico, and they put the question at the heart of the case directly to him. Was it you who did that?

Given the connection between the username CIDA and Enrico's own social media account, this moment is a real test. And it's clear that Filip is scrutinizing Enrico's to do with that." Philip's impressed by Enrico's denial. It's calm, assured and mature. Either he's innocent or he's an incredibly good liar. Philip and his colleague leave the apartment feeling more confused than when they arrived. They have no idea who wants Andreas dead, and with that, they cannot keep him safe. The following Monday, Philip sends the Bitcoin wallet information to the cybercrime unit. He's hoping they can tell him who owns the wallet that paid for the hit. And he invites Andreas down to the station to give a formal witness statement.

They spend almost a day together tearing apart every aspect of his life, particularly his online presence. Maybe the person who wants him dead is one of his followers. There are sometimes strange people online and they're arguing and discussions raising up quite fast in social media so maybe there was there some discussion he has but he said no I don't have any idea. There are no leads and by the end of the day Philip is no closer to uncovering the suspect. So he goes back and looks at what little evidence he does have,

the kill order and the clues in the messages. But when Philip looks at the evidence, all roads seem to lead back to Enrico. So there we thought, OK, maybe we have to look on this side to see if this is maybe, if he is maybe the connection for the suspect to enter in this intrusive way into the life of them both. Philip invites Enrico down to the station to give a witness statement to test his theory.

Whoever is behind the order, Philip thinks, Enrico might hold the key. After Enrico settles into his chair in the interview room, Philip asks him to take out his phone. They go through every meet-up, phone call, every text message, every interaction in real life all on social media and they write down each name to create a list of potential suspects. Philip has an idea of how to narrow the list down and it's that detail from the kill order, the one about Cider not knowing Andreas's precise address that he sees is on. So that is a very good thing to talk to somebody

who could be this person. So as you can imagine, most of your friends know where you live. So like colleagues from this work, they would be easily able to get his address. They work down the list, crossing off names as they go. They're looking for people who have a direct contact with Enrico

who know he recently moved to Berlin and roughly where he lives. Close friends and family, his colleagues, they're all off the list. There's the guy who helped him move his stuff to Berlin, but he knows their address for sure. Then there's people Enrico only knows online, but he's not in direct contact with any of them. Or the stranger he chatted to at the bar. They're not in direct contact either. All of them get crossed off. After a few hours of eliminating suspects, finally, they're left with just one, the only person Enrico can think of who fits all the criteria, a man called Nico F. Nico F is a friend of Enrico's from the city of Dresden.

It's the place where Enrico used to live until he moved to Berlin with Andreas a few months ago. Nico F is 27 years old, with spiky black hair and the same emo dress scent as Enrico and Andreas. They met on a dating app and used to hang out together at the gym. They also slept together once, a mistake that Enrico told Andreas about immediately. There was no big drama, no breakups, no big falling out. Andreas and Enrico stayed together. In fact, they decided to move in together in Berlin.

So it's hard for Enrico to believe that Nico F. would either want or be capable of Andreas' attempted murder. There's also no real evidence linking Nico F in any way to the crime. And if Philip is going to investigate this lead properly, he's going to need a search warrant. And for that, he does need hard evidence. I thought about it immediately. Okay, how can we get another evidence? I have to be 100% sure if I present that to the judge. It's at this point in the investigation that Philippe gets a stroke of good luck. His phone rings. His colleagues in the cybercrime unit have been investigating the Bitcoin wallet

that was used to pay for the hit. By tracing the wallet, they might be able to find out who paid for the kill order. So now, as Philippe's phone rings, the investigation stands at a crossroads. It has to turn either towards Enrico, Andreas' boyfriend who has the same username as the kill order, or to this new lead, Nico F. A man who knows just enough, but not too much, about where Andreas lives.

Enrico was in our office for this statement. At the same time, we got information from the cyber investigation unit with a name. And it was a perfect mesh. 24 hours after the call from the cybercrime unit, Detective Philip Ostrowitzky is standing in Nico S. Living Room in Dresden, calmly and politely, reading him his rights. We are from the police. You are arrested now. You have the right for a lawyer. Meanwhile, two of his colleagues get to work searching the apartment. They're looking for anything they can find to back up their suspicions about his involvement in the kill order.

There were notes about bitcoins, darknet, escrow as well, I think, where he just noted some things down. We found this immediately and we thought, okay, it well, I think, where he just noted some things down. We found this immediately and we thought, okay, it is, of course, it has to be him that is the suspect. They start to pick through Nico F's electronic devices. We could see in his mobile phone that he was moving to Berlin.

And on his laptops, they find that in the previous weeks, Nico F has been searching local news sites in Berlin, trying to see whether there have been any unfortunate accidents, like the kind CIDA was paying to have happened to Andreas. But then, the police uncover something that brings a whole new layer to the crime, something we've never seen before on the kill list. something we've never seen before on the kill list. First, they find evidence on Nico F's laptop that he's been researching witchcraft.

Then they find little pieces of paper on the wall with incantations. Not about Andreas, but about Enrico. And finally, as they move through all the rooms of Nico F's flat, Not about Andreas, but about Enrico. And finally, as they move through all the rooms of Nico F's flat, they find a human figure made out of Play-Doh. It's a voodoo doll. Again, not of Andreas, but depicting his boyfriend, Enrico.

Now as you can imagine, as soon as we heard about the voodoo doll, we wanted to find out more about it from Philip. But his lips were sealed. He told us he felt like it was too invasive of Nico F's privacy. For me it's a bit too intrusive, too private to talk about that thing from the suspect. Now, I hope you understand that it's a very private thing. I mean, the minute you hear there's a voodoo doll involved in something, you want to know more, right?

That's Caroline Thornton, my producer. But while it is frustrating, I do also appreciate that he's so sensitive to the privacy and welfare of everyone involved in this story. But this means that if we're going to get to the bottom of this case, there's only so far Philip can take us. So to really get under the skin of the story and figure out what motives Nico F could possibly have for this bizarre behaviour, we sent our local reporter, Janina Fendyson, to Nico F's trial. She's the woman who helped us first get the word to Andreas that he could be in danger. When Janina walks into the courtroom,

she immediately spots Nico F sitting next to his lawyer. He's dressed head to toe in a black hoodie, jeans and shoes, and he's got three-day stubble around his face. He's looking straight down, doodling on a piece of paper in front of him. I saw him totally different than just from the chats. When I read the chats, I also thought he's a monster. He wants to kill someone, but I changed my mind about him. As part of the hearing, a forensic psychologist who evaluated Nico F. takes the stand.

She doesn't find that he was suffering from any mental illness like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia. Instead, Nico F was gripped by a powerful jealousy, one that could be traced all the way back to his childhood. Nico F grew up in a small village near to Lake Constance in the south of Germany, that's close to the border with Switzerland. In many ways, it really sounds like quite an idyllic place to live. This kind of bucolic image of rolling landscape with green and blue, dotted with red roofs of traditional German resort towns and villages. But the reality of Nico's childhood was anything but idyllic.

His father had a massive problem with alcohol and he was also aggressively towards him. The way the psychologist describes it, his dad instituted this strict hierarchy in the family, with himself at the top and Nico F at the bottom. The father was beating the mother and his son Nico, but the sister on the other hand was the father's darling child and every time like the sister was like the princess and he was the bad son. Nico's father would also instrumentalize his mother against him as another form of abuse. He would order her to beat Nico F herself. So at the end this little Nico grew up in a family where he had no one who was protecting

him and all members of his family were against him. Beyond the alcoholism, his dad seems like he essentially terrorized the family for years and his mum attempted suicide when he was only 14 years old. With nowhere to turn in his own family, Nikkof found refuge in school. He was smart and a hard-working student. He was a bit of a loner but he did well enough in his exams to study law after he graduated. After finishing college, he got a job working as a restaurant manager and this is the point at which Nico F, shy, little troubled but smart, meets Enrico, Andreas' boyfriend, on an online dating platform. Now Nico F knew he was gay from quite an early age but he was also extremely insecure.

Niko F knew he was gay from quite an early age, but he was also extremely insecure. He'd had a relationship with a much older man when he was 18, but aside from that, it doesn't seem like dating came naturally to him. So it's easy to imagine that Niko F wasn't used to cute guys chatting with him. So this meeting with Enrico, straight away, feels really significant, and he quickly developed a really serious crush on Enrico. However, Enrico was already in a relationship with Andreas. At this point, the two were long distance with Enrico in Dresden and Andreas in Hanover. So when Enrico and Nico F hung out, it was only as friends. But one day they went out to a dance party together and it was only as friends. But one day, they went out to a dance party together.

And it was then that Enrico and Nico F slept together for the first and only time. After that, Andreas and Enrico moved to Berlin, and Nico F seemingly starts to lose control. The feeling of losing Enrico seems to have been utterly devastating for him, and that devastation turbocharges his obsession. He begins not just to want to be with Enrico, but to actually like become him. He started to imitate Enrico, wearing the same clothes as him. He wanted to be close to Enrico. It was kind of pop star phenomenon. Like he was obsessed like with the pop star. It was this love for Enrico turned into obsession

that ultimately transformed into a violent jealousy. According to Janina, the forensic psychologist started to get kind of poetic about this in the courtroom. She says the psychologist likened Nico F's violent jealousy to the kind that has fueled tragedies throughout time and literature. And it was this that led Nico F to start to look for a higher power to solve his problem. It started with magic and voodoo. These spells were directed towards Enrico, trying to bewitch him into falling in love with Niko F. When that didn't work, he moved on to the hitman for Hire Sight. Niko F sunk pretty much everything he had into trying to get Andreas killed, and even then he still seemed to be imitating Enrico.

Like he's using his online username when he's placing the kill order. It's hard to know whether he was doing this to try and frame Enrico, or whether it was another attempt to become him. Well, the contours of this story sound at the same time, both quite familiar and also quite unusual.

Cause on the one hand we have real intent, clinical, meticulous planning, sustained determination, money on the table. But on the other hand voodoo dolls, an imagined relationship that he never had, an unrequited love that the other person didn't even know existed. Yeah, it really seems to me like so much of this relationship between Nico F and Enrico and, you know, how it turns into this obsession is all just happening independently within Nico F's pet. And it's such an extreme example with the voodoo dolls and everything else that I wanted to get under the skin of this case a bit more. So to that end, I've got in touch with Dr. Howard Fine,

who's a psychologist who's worked with us on lots of different cases on the Kill List. Dr Howard Fine I'm a clinical psychologist and not a forensic psychologist. So, you know, there is a difference in how we approach things. I'm primarily focused on diagnosing and treating mental health issues through therapy with the goal of enhancing an individual's mental health well-being. But both disciplines are primarily interested in the why of human behaviour. Why do people behave the way they do? What's the function of such a behaviour? During the court case, Nico Earth claimed that he was suffering from some form of psychosis.

Specifically, he claimed he was hearing voices. Now the forensic psychologist who assessed him rejected that. She didn't find that he was suffering from any mental illness, but she did diagnose him with a personality disorder. Now Howard stressed to me that he can't offer any form of diagnosis without having assessed Nico himself. I wanted to draw on his expertise to try and get my head around why Nico would resort to using black magic, of all things. Like, why would someone even believe that that could work? If you think about cases of unrequited love or unfulfilled romantic fantasies where you create an idea of a certain situation, individuals can become quite obsessed or fixated. And

this obsession can then lead to irrational thoughts and behaviors. You mentioned voodoo dolls, you know, this idea that I have a certain sense of added control beyond this world. So if we're threatening somebody that gives us a sense of control over somebody else. I'm now controlling you. You know, I guess it kind of raises the question, how many of those people on your list, they're asking these questions, but it's more of a fantasy than a real intent to harm and murder someone. And I think the more you move across towards real intent, on some occasions, the harder it might be for some to differentiate between this is my real self and this is my

fantasy world. I think Howard's explanation there is really interesting because although this is an extreme example, right, I think all our perpetrators are in some way at some level delusional. And I think that tells us something about the kinds of people that the kill list attracts, right? Like often they're smart, well-educated, they've got some kind of technical savvy, people who you wouldn't expect to be hoodwinked by such an obvious scam. But all of them have, to some extent, lost their grip on reality. And while that can sometimes

involve mental illness, often it doesn't. Nico F's delusions about black magic and voodoo might seem really extreme, but they're actually indicative of a much broader pattern that we see across the list. Our perpetrators are, in one way or another, all delusional fantasists. So as fantasy and reality then collide, what is ultimately the reality now for Niko F? Well, Niko F is sentenced to four and a half years in prison. He seems to be genuinely remorseful. He says that he's glad he was caught before anything worse happened.

And I actually think, you know, he's very lucky because had any of his fantastical plans actually, you know, been followed through on and been enacted, he would be looking at a much longer sentence. And we have to hope, I think, that this kind of drastic intervention has broken the spell, maybe, and that it's the end of that fantasy and of his murderous intent. Whilst Nico F might be just the most extreme example, he shares something I think incredibly important to understand about so many of the people who have resorted to put someone on the kill list.

They're all driven in one way or another by a sort of fantastical delusion. It's narcissism or its desire for control, some have sexual fantasies, others financial fantasies, but they're all dreaming of something which ends up consuming them. But what makes them so dangerous is that they're not just dreaming. They're delusional, but they're also meticulous. In one sense they're disconnected with reality, but in another they're really determined to change that reality itself. And ultimately, in each of these perpetrators, we find someone willing to do something really almost none of us actually are. Which is not just to bring to life their own dreams and fantasies, but to do so by extinguishing those of another person.

Next time on Kill List, we go to the city of Nonsi in France, where a young waitress is shouting for help, but no one seems to be listening. In the past, she's put official complaints with the police against her ex-boyfriend, who was violent with her and who stalked her. Police officers discovered a file named People to be Eliminated. You son of a dog, I will find you now and no way to leave. You think you can take a picture of me?

You're going to see what happens. If you like Kill List, you can binge all episodes ad-free right now by joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondry.com slash survey. From Wondry and Novel, this is Kill List. From Wandery and Novel, this is Kill List. Kill List is hosted by me, Carmilla. The reporter for this episode is Janina Finn-Dyson, and it was produced and written by our series producer, Tom Wright. Kill List is also produced by Caroline Thornton and Jaka Tyovic.

Our assistant producer is Amalia Sortland, and our researchers are Megan Oynke and Lena Chang. Additional research from Chris Monteiro. For Wanderi, our senior producer is Mandy Gorinstein. Fact-checking by Fendel Fulton. Our managing producers are Cherie Houston, Sarah Tobin, and Charlotte Wolfe for Novel. Sarah Mathers is our Managing Producer

and Callum Plues is our Senior Managing Producer for Wandery. Original music by Skyler Gerdeman and Martin Linebelle. Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander, Max O'Brien and Caroline Thornton. Sound design and mixing by Andy Partington. For novel, Willard Foxton is creative director of development. Our executive producers are Sean Glynn, Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan. For novel, executive producers for Wandery are Marshall Louis and Erin O'Flaherty.