To Die For - 13) Russia's Murder Lab

Episode Date: June 25, 2024

"When big money is involved, we usually see some killings." See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To have a murder as gruesome as Jade Beasley's doesn't happen very often down here. In Marion, Illinois, an 11-year-old girl brutally stabbed to death. Her father's longtime live-in girlfriend maintaining innocence, but charged with her murder. I am confident that Julie Beckley is guilty. They've never found a weapon. Never made sense. Still doesn't make sense. She found out she was pregnant in jail.

The person who did it is still out there. Listen to Murder on Songbird Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. He was a Boy Scout leader, a husband, a father. But he was leading a double life. He was a monster, hiding in plain sight. Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. All eight episodes of To Die For are available now to binge absolutely free.

But for ad-free listening and exclusive bonuses, subscribe to Tenderfoot Plus at tenderfootplus.com or on Apple Podcasts. Warning. The following episode contains explicit language and sexual themes. Listener discretion is advised. Can I ask you, when you talk about Vladimir, it's different than when you talk about other targets in the past. Absolutely. He was special.

And when I'm listening from my position, it sounds not just like a target, but it sounds like there's a romantic feeling when you're describing him. No, I honestly, I liked him. I liked his personality. Whoever, like, say to me about Vladimir that, oh, he's a killer, he's a murderer, he's a criminal. But I've seen by myself, like, how he was so respectful to other people and, like, just honest. He was justice. I realize, as Aliyah is speaking, that ever since she'd been sent to Chechnya as punishment for rejecting her commander's advances, she's constantly told me that she

didn't want to live anymore. But suddenly, she stopped saying this. Now, she seems to want to live. The problem is that she's finally found her happiness on the wrong side of the law. It kind of sounds like to me like you're getting lost in the role. You know, when I was sitting in the car with all these guys, Vladimir in front, and all of them, they were armed and they have a lot of cash in their pockets

in a big black car with this like crazy loud music. And I felt I'm like in a movie. I live another life which I never had before and I never even knew that this life may possibly exist. I'm sorry. I had to kill you Was it so much fun? Episode 13, Chapter 28, Lost in the Roll. I stand up slowly so he wouldn't wake up. I didn't go downstairs because I didn't know exactly where these guys were sleeping. But upstairs on the second floor... Aliyah's mission was succeeding all too well.

She was now at the home of her target Vladimir, who had just fallen asleep. This gave her the opportunity to search his home and discover any potential evidence that could take down the drug trafficking and extortion gang that Vladimir was running. It also gave her a very good opportunity to get caught. I wanted to see what was there. One room was just a bedroom. I quickly checked the wardrobe and everything.

I think it was just empty bedroom and i opened the door of another room and i saw that it was full of cash. Lots of lots of money in these black trash bags. I've never seen anything like that. I was shocked. And then I opened the wardrobe and I saw an automatic Kalashnikov guns just like in the line. And I saw some Tete guns as well. And I kind of like even got jealous because it was expensive and the aim is just perfect. It's a perfect gun. I walked outside, and I went to the door, which was on the corner. And I opened the door, and it was kind of like an office,

because it was a table there, a big map on the wall. And I saw there was like some little pins on the map of the city. There's a lot of papers on the table. Worried that she'd been out of the bedroom too long and might get caught searching the house, Aliyah decided to return

to Vladimir's room. However, as she's about to walk inside, Vladimir opened the door. Vladimir just walked out of the bedroom and he said, like, where have you been? And I said, like, I woke up and you were not in the bedroom. I said, like, I'm so thirsty. I don't know where to find water.

He said, oh, I'll bring you. Don't worry. Go to bed, it's fine. And I was thinking, oh my God, he almost caught me. If he would walk around the house and see me in that different like doors, checking everything, he could kill me that moment straight away. I didn't sleep at all all night. I was thinking about what I'm doing next and what should I report exactly to my commander. Aliyah had discovered, no doubt much to her relief, that there was some evidentiary benefit

to spending more time in Vladimir's home. In order to help ensure that she'd be invited back, that morning she tried one last seduction gambit. In her bag, she had a small vial of a perfume that she'd learned to formulate in her seduction training. I sprayed on the pillow. So every time he would go to his pillow and sleep there, he would remember me,

like remember my smell. And I said to him, well, I have to go home because I have to study and my lesson starts very soon. And I walk outside and then his security drove me home. I came back home and I called to Sasha. I just said that, listen, we need to meet and I will explain you everything in person. Later that day, Aliyah left her apartment. In case she was being followed, she walked to the university campus where she claimed to be studying. There, she waited for her colleague in the FSKN, Sasha, to arrive. They met at a table

in the student common area, and she filled them in on her progress the night before. I told him everything, and he said, if he would caught you like in the night, do you understand what he would do to you? I said, like, I know. And he's night, do you understand what he would do to you? I said, like, I know. And he's like, please be careful. Don't do this again. Listen, for now, just try to be close to him as you can. Listen to his conversations.

Listen to his telephone calls. And he said that you should start to bring more information about next places of heroin supplies. I said, okay, I'll do my best, but just in the beginning, give me some time. And I went back through the university and then I returned to my house. So just in case I tried to make it look like I was really a student there. That night, around 10, she received a text from Vladimir. He said to me, how are you beautiful? I'm thinking about you. Well, I knew that he was thinking about me because the smell was there. He invited her out that night, but she said she needed to stay home and get her homework done.

So I thought it's good that I didn't come straight away the minute he called me, because in this case I show him that I'm not so desperate about our communication and so needy. A few days later, her colleague Sasha called. He said that the team had decided that she should try to get photos of the map and papers she'd seen. The next morning, he brought me a small little tiny tiny camera which I could put to my purse. And he brought me a wire as well.

The wire which you basically put into the room and you can hear it on the distance. And I had to put this device somewhere where people would hang out the most. So I thought that it would be better to put this device into the dining kitchen area rather than to his office. Aliyah's plan was to cook dinner for Vladimir and his friends as a way to get some alone time in the kitchen and plant the bug. First of all, they say, if you wanted your man to fall in love, you need to cook for him.

And I got some potatoes, some tomatoes, I got some meat. Then the driver came and I brought the bag with the food with me. And they were finishing some conversations while I was cooking. So I searched the kitchen very well. I only found a good place which was underneath the vase. There was no flowers or something but there were like some kind of like decoration. So I put this device inside in the vase like in the very bottom. And then I put back this decoration. And then the next task was to photograph all the important papers in his office. I served the table and I call everybody

and say like, the food is served. And while they were eating, I was standing and just like looking at them and thinking, okay, so if they eat it, so they trust me that I wouldn't poison them. After dinner, Vladimir took Aliyah upstairs. On the way, she asked for a tour of the house. So he opened every door and he showed me, oh, this is like the bathroom. He even showed me the room where I saw these like bags of cash, but they were not there anymore. And then he said, like, this is my office. He didn't open it. I said like I would love

to see the place where you work and I would love to learn more about you he opened the door and then I said like oh that's where like the whole magic happens and I I, oh wow, this table is so solid, do you think it can handle us both? He's like, what do you mean? And I started to kiss him. And then I went into the position where he can take me from behind, where I was leaning at the table so in this case I could see the map and I could see exactly where it was and it wasn't too dark so I could read numbers streets names on the papers and when he was taking me from behind, I was looking at the table and just trying to read these names on it and what exactly was there.

I couldn't remember everything, but I remembered some names. The next morning, Vladimir's driver brought Aliyah home. Shortly afterward, she walked to the university in case she was being watched and waited for her colleague Sasha to arrive. He said, since you installed the microphone,

like the back, let's just see what will happen and then we'll give you more details. And he asked me for pictures, which I didn't do. And I told him, listen, I didn't do it because it was not possible that time, but I'll do it later. But for now, I gave him names,

and I gave him addresses. Sasha and his team researched this information and got back to Aliyah with the news These properties were in the exact same area that Aliyah had seen on her first horrible mission with the FSKN He checked the streets and these buildings He said it's exactly where we were having our operation

Exactly in some houses there, we saw all these overdures, young kids and teenagers. And there were the places where there was sex slavery, prostitution, basically, where also they sold some hearings. At Vladimir's map, there were like three pins in that area. I asked Aliyah how she felt, knowing that the target she was developing feelings for

was complicit in the horrible things she'd seen, even if he was just taking protection money from the traffickers. I knew that he was my target, and I knew I was doing this for my job, my mission my country

for those kids who were killed and overdozed and kidnapped for human trafficking I knew all that I just wanted to I wanted to succeed in my mission but at the same time I just wanted to understand

is he really so much deeply involved in that? Sasha told Aliyah that if she wanted answers and to complete her mission, it was important to get the photos he'd asked for of all the documents in Vladimir's office. When Aliyah explained that she was worried that Vladimir would wake up and find her there, Sasha came up with this solution. He said, why don't you do it while he will be sleeping, like really, really deep. And I said to him, like, so how are we supposed to do it?

And he said, like, just give him some sleeping pills. And I was like, okay, which one? He said, like, next time I'll give you some good sleeping pills. It just, like, kills you for, like, 10 hours straight. To have a murderer as gruesome as Jade Beasley doesn't happen very often down here. In Marion, Illinois, an 11-year-old girl brutally stabbed to death. Her father's longtime live-in girlfriend maintaining innocence, but charged with her murder.

I am confident that Julie Beth Lee is guilty. This case, the more I learned about it, I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Murder on Songbird Road dives into the conviction of a mother of four who remains behind bars and the investigation that put her there. I have not seen this level of corruption anywhere. It's sickening. If you stab somebody that many times, you have blood splatter. Where's the change of clothes?

She found out she was pregnant in jail. She wasn't treated like she was an innocent human being at all. Which is just horrific. Nobody has gotten justice yet. And that's what I wish people would understand. Listen to Murder on Songbird Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. He was a Boy Scout leader, a church deacon, a husband, a father. He went to a local church.

He was going to the grocery store with us. He was the guy next door. But he was leading a double life. He was certainly a peeping Tom, looking through the windows, looking at people, fantasizing about what he could do. He then began entering the houses. He could get into their home, take something, and get out and not be caught. He felt very powerful.

He was a monster, hiding in plain sight. Someone killed four members of a family. It just didn't happen here. Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Chapter 29, Two Friends. What city do you live in? I'm in Los Angeles. If I didn't like you and I found you in Los Angeles and stabbed you on the sidewalk, I would immediately have heat on me.

I'm speaking with Matt Tipton, an Army Ranger veteran and internal medicine doctor trained in chemical and radiological weapons response. I'll explain why in a second. But first, let's listen a little more. In minutes, somebody's going to find you and they're going to see that you've been stabbed. And they're going to do what's called a geofence. And they're going to look at what cell phones were in that little area at the time. So they're going to nail me.

But if you have a drunken interaction with a guy outside a bar and he shoves you or coughs on you or smears something on you, you're like, gross, that guy's hand was wet. And you don't think anything of it. And then you don't feel sick for 48 hours and you don't get really sick

for 72 more hours after that. You're not going to meet him and say, hey, I bet that strange guy that bumped into me outside the restaurant poisoned me. So it's a way for the spy to get in the country, do that, and then they go to the airport, you know, decon themselves,

take an antidote if there's one needed. Aliyah has talked often about poisons, about sleeping pills, and about so-called truth serums. So I decided to speak to a few experts to get a better understanding of one of the most sinister aspects of Russian intelligence.

Its deadly use of chemical compounds to silence its enemies around the world. Why does this seem to be such a common Russian state security tactic that it's in the news all the time? Poison sends a message and it gives you a way to put more time between you and the victim

before there's a body involved. It's a cheap way to do it and it's also terrifying. If you're actively speaking out against Putin and you start to get a tummy ache, you're like, is this it? Am I dying? It's a psychological warfare aspect to it. And it's cheaper than a predator drone with a satellite guided missile. As an example of the intimidating psychological effect that Matt Tipton is talking about, this is journalist Amy Knight, author of several books critical of the Putin regime, most recently, The Kremlin's Noose. In the early 2000s, I wrote for the Globe and Mail fairly

regularly. And I was terribly, terribly critical of Mr. Putin. And at some point, the Russian embassy phoned up the Globe and Mail and said that they were going to kick their journalist who was in Moscow out of the country, and they were going to do all sorts of repercussions if Amy Knight didn't stop writing about Putin. Amy Knight was eventually banned from entering Russia. But before that, while she was in Moscow, something strange happened to her that she still wonders about. I was writing about Boris Nemtsov.

I spoke with him. Russian politician Boris Nemtsov, a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin, is shot dead on a bridge in the shadow of the Kremlin. Second last day that I was there, I had lunch with my research assistant, who was Russian, at the hotel. And about three hours later, I got so violently ill that I just couldn't do anything. Just, you know, terrible stomach issues. And I was able to get myself on the plane a couple days later, but that stomach thing took a long time to go away. And they couldn't figure out why I,

you know, had this terrible stomach thing. And I was thinking to myself that, you know, it's unlikely that it was like standard food poisoning in a very upmarket hotel like the Marriott with lots of foreign tourists. And after that, I wondered whether somebody had slipped something into my food, not to kill me, but to warn me. So poisoning doesn't just work for eliminating a specific political target. It also creates fear and uncertainty in every other enemy and potential enemy. I haven't really mentioned that in any of my writings because it's speculative. And, you know, it could have just been bad luck. But I do wonder.

Poisons, of course, have been used throughout history for political ends, taking down kings, emperors, religious leaders, and philosophers. But why, I ask journalist Amy Knight, does Russia seem to employ this method more than any other country in modern times? In Russia, this seems to be the method of choice if you want to assassinate someone, either within the country or abroad. The Russians started way back when, in the Soviet period, what they called a secret poison lab. They have a technical expertise that has continued and been passed on. And the original poison lab was set up under Stalin's secret police, and it continued on through the KGB. And now, of course, there are secret laboratories that belong to the FSB.

The poisoning of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has taken an even more bizarre turn. A Russian agent sent to tail opposition leader Navalny has accidentally revealed how he was poisoned in August. The agent, a member of an elite toxins team in Russia's FSB security service, said the lethal nerve agent Novichok was planted in Navalny's underwear. You heard that right, underwear. One of the experts who's perhaps been the closest

to an actual poisoning is Dr. Yuri Falstinsky. We'll get into that exact story in the next episode. But for now, I called Dr. Falstinsky, a leading Russian historian and author, to better understand why literally part of the core curriculum for an FSB agent is learning the use and concealment of poisons. Now, drugs, of course, have a great advantage. Number one, and this is extremely important, it gives you time to escape.

And, for example, if we take recent poisonings, in the case of Litvinenko, who was poisoned, and in the case of Skripal, who was poisoned. Both of these are former FSB agents who were poisoned in England for betraying Putin. One survived, along with his daughter, who was also poisoned. The other didn't. Those people who poisoned him had time to escape back to Russia. While, for example, Mr. Krasikov, who killed a Chechen military leader in Berlin in the middle of the day using a gun, was arrested. Or those people who killed former president of the Chechen Republic, Zelyam Khan Yandarbeev,

in Qatar using bomb, they successfully killed him. But they were arrested. So you see, this is the advantage. When you poison a person, but number two, it is not always known that the person is poisoned. We know some, of course, in some cases. But in some other cases, who knows? Maybe we even do not know why the person was found dead.

And there are some questionable deaths in London as well, where we still do not know why the person actually left his life and was found dead. So this is the advantage, and that's why they're using it successfully. Considering all these poisonings, not to mention shootings and bombings, and we didn't even mention the Putin critic who fell to his death out of a hotel window, I tell Dr. Falstinski that this is a lot of assassinations. His answer, to my surprise, is to explain to me that it's the law.

The Russian parliament passed the law which allowed Russian special services to kill enemies of the state abroad. I asked Dr. Falstensky how the Russian government determines whether someone should be assassinated without a trial or arrested and put on trial. And here's his answer. They kill, I have to say, in three cases. The first case is when the person commits treason from the point of view of the government. And this is a case of both Litvinenko and Skripal, for example.

The same was true about that helicopter pilot who was recently killed in Spain. Prior to this, he defected to Ukraine with his helicopter. Case number two, when people are competing for power against Putin. And in this case, they kill preventively. And this is an order of, for example, Boris Nemtsov, who was killed right at the walls of Kremlin. And the same is true, of course, about Alexei Navalny, who was killed because he was competing for presidential power. And the third case, I think, when it's connected to big money.

Then we're probably going back to the mafia aspect of political life in Russia. But yes, when big money is involved, we see usually some killings. Clearly, Russian intelligence is a deadly world that operates by its own rules, which sound a lot closer to the code of the Vori, the mafia, than that of an elected government. Even Aliyah, who was working on what she felt was the right side of the law, had already been involved in a possible poisoning. We'll go deeper into Russia's poison factory next episode. But for now, let's return to Aaliyah's experiences with these chemical agents.

To have a murder as gruesome as Jade Beasley's doesn't happen very often down here. In Marion, Illinois, an 11-year-old girl brutally stabbed to death. Her father's longtime live-in girlfriend maintaining innocence, but charged with her murder. I am confident that Julie Bethely is guilty. This case, the more I learned about it, the more I'm scratching my head.

Something's not right. I'm Lauren Bright Pacheco. Murder on Songbird Road dives into the conviction of a mother of four who remains behind bars and the investigation that put her there. I have not seen this level of corruption anywhere. It's sickening. If you stab somebody that many times, you have blood splatter. Where's the change of clothes?

She found out she was pregnant in jail. She wasn't treated like she was an innocent human being at all. Which is just horrific. Nobody has gotten justice yet, and that's what I wish people would understand. Listen to Murder on Songbird Road on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. He was certainly a peeping Tom, looking through the windows, looking at people, fantasizing about what he could do. He then began entering the houses. He could get into their home, take something, and get out and not be caught. He felt very powerful. He was a monster, hiding in plain sight.

Someone killed four members of a family. It just didn't happen here. Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Aaliyah had just been asked to administer sleeping pills to her target Vladimir. She agreed to the mission, but first asked for more time to build trust with Vladimir and his gang before taking the risk and potentially blowing the operation. After all, the FSB agents who poisoned Navalny had supposedly been following him for years.

I said to Sasha, I said, I need more time to just like literally become his right hand. And I would need like at least a month to do that. He said like, well, you have time as long as you give us places of the distribution. There is like one technique which agents use sometimes when they try to infiltrate like, you know, big circles. The technique calls like shadow. So in this technique, you had to be really invisible for everyone.

But if like Vladimir needs something, I'm there, always ready to do what he wants. So I had to make myself to be like a shadow of Vladimir. So everybody would start to feel that, okay, so where is Vladimir? There's his girl. But as Aliyah spent more time with Vladimir and his fellow gang members, there was one person she couldn't win over. Vladimir's old friend. The gangster who was always looking at her in the club with cold, dispassionate eyes.

Even though I knew some techniques, NLP techniques and everything, for me it was super difficult to establish connection with him. I just couldn't. And he was always remaining silent. And he always gave me this very kind of like disgusting feeling. And then through the conversation, I understood that he was the one who was controlling the whole distribution, all these tones of heroines coming from Afghanistan to Russia at that time. As the weeks passed, and Aliyah and Vladimir began to go on proper dates,

and even take short trips together, he began to trust her and open up more. Eventually, Aliyah was able to find out more about this silent, ominous friend. Eventually, slowly, slowly, but he opened up and he told me his story. So he was sent to Afghanistan war. And it was a moment where he met this guy with shark eyes, this cold guy. And apparently, they were in the same troop, and that's how they met. And he said to me

that I trust him so much because he literally saved my life. After leaving the army, Vladimir's friend became part of an operation smuggling heroin from Afghanistan to Russia on military airplanes.

Meanwhile, Vladimir joined the police, where, like Aliyah, he was disappointed to find extensive corruption and very few financial opportunities for a low-ranking officer. Soon, he found better opportunities on the other side of the law. So when Vladimir started to go to the gym and he met some of criminal members of the gang at that time. And then eventually Vladimir just basically was recruited into the same gang. He said that I wanted to help my mom. She was sick. My father was like, you know, just drinking every

day. And he started from the very low position, kind of like a soldier in the gang. But he gained He gained a lot of respect from others. And eventually, he was actually crowned to becoming a boss of others. Then his army friend approached him again. And he said, listen, I have one business, which your criminal gang would be happy to collaborate. And that's how he brought the heroin supplies from Afghanistan to the gang. As she spoke with Vladimir about this, Aliyah struggled to reconcile the seemingly kind, charismatic man she was developing feelings for with the drug trafficking gang leader she was developing feelings for with a

drug trafficking gang leader she was there to bring down. I was laying in bed and I looked into his eyes and I asked him, I said, like, do you really know what's happening, you know, with these drugs? And he's like, like, what do you mean? And I said, like, did you know that so many young people dying because of, like, bad quality of drugs? He said, well, I don't know anything about it,

but I'm not responsible for this part because my army friend, he is controlling the whole thing. Like I'm more focusing on businesses like factories and more like government businesses. In other words, probably protection money, bribery, money laundering, and who knows what else. And when I said like, why don't you just check it out and just know it yourself, I wanted just him to understand that one of the businesses which he was doing,

it was just like killing other young, innocent people who were really just children. Vladimir told Aliyah that he actually wanted the gang to get into more legitimate businesses anyway, where people maybe lived a little longer and easier. And because of that, they had some kind of, like, arguments with the army friend. He felt that it's becoming too risky. Meanwhile, Aliyah continued delivering information to her colleague Sasha,

until he told her they were ready to make a move and raid some of the addresses that Aliyah had given him. When the operation happened, Sasha asked Aliyah to stay close to Vladimir, so she made up an excuse to go shoe shopping with him. And only when he sat into the car, he noticed that he has so many missed calls from his army friend. And he called him back and he said, like, what's going on? And I heard that his army friend, who never really gave any emotions that moment,

I heard him screaming. It was something about, like, where the hell were you? I couldn't reach you. Like, what the hell are you doing? And Vladimir was like upset, but I think like he was more upset because of his partner screaming. And he said to me,

sweetheart, I have to deal with something right now. Let's go to the club a little bit later, okay? And he dropped me home. And I texted Sasha. I said, like, is everything okay? He's like, yeah, you did a great job. I will give you all the information when I will see you in person. As Aliyah tells the story, I ask her if it seemed too risky to bust Vladimir's drug operation while she was still undercover in the gang and also relatively new there. Was it sloppy at all for them to act on the information that's accessible in the house while you're still maybe in the relationship

and B, while this is happening for you to do something that breaks your normal pattern of what you do with them? Was he risking the asset at all? The asset being you. Me? Yeah. Nobody cares about, okay, I did explain this in the beginning, but like you can fail and you can be killed, but nobody really cares because the whole mission is the most important. As a human being, you're nothing. And Sasha was just a good professional agent, even risking my life. At our next meeting with Sasha, Leah asked him how the operation went. He said, like, it was one of the big places which were distributing drugs. So I wrote the report to our commander. Do you want to read it? I'm like, whatever, I trust you. So he's like, okay, so just behave as normal and do everything you do, just like in the same way, just nothing happened.

So Aliyah continued to get closer to Vladimir, planning specific kinds of dates to the movies and the beach. I wanted to bring him to that memories, to that period of his life where he was a happy boy without knowing that it will be Afghani war or him becoming criminal gang leader. That's how I established that trust. However, it's hard to tell sometimes as Alia speaks who was seducing who. It's also interesting to think that this was her first relationship with someone she

actually liked. She shares many memories of this time, including a trip to the countryside. He said, this is my land. This is my motherland. I was born here. I will die here. I belong here. And it's very sad what's happening right now in my country. And I want to do right, you know. And I looked at him and I thought like, you know, he speaks exactly like my dad, but he was exactly on the opposite side from my father. Aliyah would soon find out that maybe these two worlds, the military and the mafia, weren't so different after all.

I met Sasha on Monday, and he was completely lost. He said, so I came to the department, and I found out that instead of these, like, four kilos of the heroin, they are only like just a few grams left. So apparently the whole report which Sasha provided to our commander was changed by him. And the whole report was given to the upscale commander that Sasha's group only confiscated just a few grams of heroin.

Sasha went on to tell Aliyah that he'd just checked the evidence locker and almost all the heroin was gone. Just a small bag remained. And I was, like, having this kind of, like, you know, like, when your brain basically is stuck and you just cannot accept information. And after a couple minutes, I said, like, do you think that he actually reported instead of like four kilos just a few grams because he basically took this heroin for himself Sasha said

well I just don't understand what to do and you know like do you think we should spy on our commander? I said, well, if you can't do it, do it from your side, because I'll do from my side what I can do with Vladimir. And just it will be between us. And I left with this kind of like understanding that it's something shady. There's the whole big thing going on just behind our eyes, which we don't know. And I couldn't obviously speak and ask Vladimir, even though I really wanted, but I decided that that night I really need to put him to sleep to find out what the hell is in these papers. Aliyah's story continues in episode 14.

Sasha was the first who entered as the commander of the team. He was the one who received the first bullet. To Die For is a production of Tenderfoot TV in association with iHeart Podcasts. The show is hosted and written by me, Neil Strauss, with additional writing assistance by Tristan Bankston. Executive producers are myself, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsey. For iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are Matt Frederick and Alex Williams. Lead producer and editor is Tristan Bankston.

Additional editing by Miles Clark and Christian Brown. Supervising producer, Tracy Kaplan. Consultants include Nushin Velizadeh, Chelsea Gooden, and Jamie Albright. Artwork by Byron McCoy. Original music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Mixed and mastered by Dayton Cole. Our theme song is Killer Shangri-La by Psychotic Beats featuring Patti Amore. Special thanks to Oren Rosenbaum and the team at UTA, Beck Media and Marketing, Oren Siegel, Becky Jensen, The Nord Group, Meredith Stedman,

Rose Baruch, and Alex Vespestad. To have a murder as gruesome as Jade Beasley's doesn't happen very often down here. In Marion, Illinois, an 11-year-old girl brutally stabbed to death. Her father's longtime live-in girlfriend maintaining innocence, but charged with her murder. I am confident that Julie Beckley is guilty. They've never found a weapon. Never made sense.

Still doesn't make sense. She found out she was pregnant in jail. The person who did it is still out there listen to murder on songbird road on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts he was a boy scout leader a husband a father but he was leading a double life he was a a monster, hiding in plain sight. Journey inside the mind of one of history's most notorious killers, BTK, through the voices of the people who know him best. Listen to Monster BTK on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.