To Die For - 16) Is This Freedom

Episode Date: July 23, 2024

"On the ninth of July, with a few shots to the neck and the head, he was shot at about 11p.m. near the preschool."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.

This is a scary case, actually. Tell me what you mean by that. This is scary because the implications are pretty profound, I think. So let's assume everything... This is Robin Drake, who spent 22 years working Russian counterintelligence for the FBI. You heard from him in the first episode of this podcast. I've circled back to get his thoughts from an intelligence perspective on what he's heard so far. Let's assume everything Aliyah has said is true. That would mean that this country is won by warlords.

That each one of these generals is a fiefdom under themselves, and they're all serving the greater warlord, Putin, and they each have their cadre of enforcers that are in uniform, that are under state kind of control. I'm only analyzing the information she provided, but they're not as a nationstate trying to counter drugs, they as warlords are going after their adversaries. And if it's a general that's at the top of yours, that means the general on the top of another. So in other words, this to me looks like a feudal system of a bunch of fiefdoms trying to take out each other's supply chain and monetary structure. That's kind of scary if you're thinking about it. This is actually the truth of how this nation state, a world power is supposedly being run. So it's either one or the other. Either she's making all this up or this country is a country of warlords. To kill you I'm really sorry I had to do it

Got a gun on my own You didn't guess That behind I was holding my gun I got you I tell you now I had to kill you Was it so much fun? Episode 16, Chapter 33, Downward Spiral

He put me into the car. I drove away and I felt like something died inside of me. I felt like I just lost him forever. But I was trying to tell myself, no, no, no, I will see him again but it didn't feel like I will really see him again. Aliyah had just left the home of Vladimir her former target and now her ally. He was sending her to Moscow for the time being

to hide out until it was safe. She had no idea how long that would be and whether or when she'd hear from the general she met with. The driver, he drove me to Moscow, and he opened their apartment for me. Quite like small, but very clean and nice apartment. The driver brought me some food, and then he left. And I remember I just wanted to sleep. I think I slept like a few days straight.

I woke up, I drank some water and I just went back to bed and I was just sleeping, sleeping, sleeping, recovering, you know. Sleep is the best recovering medicine. I just wanted to forget everything. I was thinking about Vladimir a lot, about what he's done for me, about Cornell and about, you know, my former commander. And I didn't go out for like a few days. And then at some point, life was starting to come back to me, and I was wondering what's happening outside.

And I decided to go out just to buy some food, buy some newspapers. It was a dark time. I knew that I couldn't contact anyone. But I thought if I will contact one person, it wouldn't be bad. Aliyah decided to contact an old high school classmate of hers who had moved to Moscow. I was just alone, lonely and bored. Her friend invited her to a party, and against her better judgment, Aliyah decided to go. I knew I couldn't do it, but yet I did it. And I remember, like, first time for, like, so long. I saw so many people in one place, and it was so weird. There were, like,

access to drugs everywhere. Despite everything she'd seen, Aliyah quickly found herself swept into this culture of drugs. It wasn't because she didn't know how they ruined lives. It was because she did. And then at some point, I just couldn't understand why the week just was gone in one day. It was just like only one scene.

Club, dog, dancing, drugs, alcohol, and it just was like non-stop. And then you come back to the reality and you cannot accept it again. And you just go back. I think that time I felt so much guilt. I felt guilt for Vladimir. I felt guilt for Sasha. I felt guilt for my father that I didn't succeed in my career. I failed. The feeling of guilt, it was so deep inside of me that I just couldn't handle it. And I just thought that moment that maybe this will help me to stop this pain. When I try that, I do understand people when they become drug addict because they have so much pain inside of them. So much. So they just cannot handle it in a normal life. It's like too much. Everything what Vladimir told me about the big life and the big world, I didn't see it. And I was still waiting. Maybe he will come and he will know what to do.

Because I was completely lost. Completely. Unfortunately, Aliyah never saw Vladimir again. So his driver, his friend, he called me. He said, do you know what happened? I said, like, no. I didn't know what was happening. I stopped even reading newspapers.

And I was just in another world. And I asked him, what's happening? Do you know anything about Vladimir? Vladimir and he said well he he said he is his dad and for a quite long time I was I was silenced he's like are you okay are you okay and I asked what what happened? How? And he said, I don't know a lot of details, but he was murdered. And I don't know how and where. I just wanted to tell you so you know. And I said, when is the funeral?

And he's like, well, it will be soon, like in a couple of days, but you can't come here. Don't even think about doing that. And he switched off the phone. And I couldn't even cry. You know, it was almost like the last my hope of the future, the last my connection with the past. It was just gone with him. I found some newspapers, but they wrote like in the very like facts kind of thing. So-and-so was killed at this place, that's it. But they wrote like in the very like facts kind of thing. So-and-so was killed at this place.

That's it. And I just took some drugs. Just to escape. Because I felt even more guilty. I felt like now it's time for me to leave the world. I felt so disgusting that I'm not

allowed to leave. Aliyah soon fell sick. A combination of the psychological toll of Vladimir's murder and the physical toll of her lifestyle. I have a very high fever. I couldn't walk. It was something really bad.

I thought, like, this is the time when I may finally die. Like, I felt death so close to me. And I was thinking about my parents. And you know what? I decided to call them. My mom remembers that call still now. She sounded really sad. And I said, mom, that's me. I just wanted to tell you that I really, really love you. And I want to apologize for everything, like everything I've done. And I just tried to do my best.

And he said, oh my God, you sound so sick. Like, where are you? What's going on? I said, like, tell my dad that I'm really sorry for everything. And I think this would be my last call. So I just wanted to tell you that I love you and thank you for giving me this life. That's it.

And I switched over the phone. I thought like, oh, this is just absolutely pointless life. You know, I live a pointless life. So I took the razor blade. I didn't even like write a letter or whatever they say, like sometimes they write a letter, you know. I didn't do anything like that. I just took the laser and just cut my wrist. I thought, okay, so now I can be free. This is my freedom. Now this is the end of my suffer, of my guilt, of my negative experience.

And at some point I just fainted. I woke up. I looked at my wrist and either I didn't do the deep cut either my blood it dried so fast so I saw blood on the floor on my hand but in my hand the blood stopped bleeding

Somewhere in the state of being half awake and half asleep, half alive And the blood stopped bleeding. Somewhere in the state of being half awake and half asleep, half alive and half dead, Aliyah saw a vision that to her seemed very real. It was Vladimir. And I saw him sitting next to my bed. And he looked at me, he come on wake up you have to go you have to leave you have to go and live your life and he told me do you remember I gave you all these numbers? Call them. They will organize for you everything.

Call them. And he was saying it like, Come on. Stand up. You have to go. You have bigger goals, bigger mission. And he just disappeared. The next morning, when I woke up, I found a note with all these numbers,

all these addresses, names, everything. Switzerland, Italy, France, Turkey, Greece. His friends, people he relied on them, he trusted them. And I called one number and I said that I'm from Vladimir and I asked for the help.

And they arranged everything. So I fly away. First country was Turkey, and I had at that time Russian passport, so it was very convenient and easier to fly to Turkey first. I wanted to find the light in this dark tunnel, and Vladimir showed me that light. And I stopped doing drugs or alcohol.

Just like that. In one day. Where I am right now, it's thanks to him. You know, he pushed me and he didn't let me die. Seriously. I feel this way.

While Aliyah was in Turkey, she discovered the fate of her former superiors, the colonel and the commander, who assaulted her and abused her and sent her to die. So both of them, the colonel and my previous commander, they got retired. And it was quite quick after the whole operation was finished. Usually, if you do something bad while your career, but not too bad,

then they just read of you like, okay, so here is your pension, here is your retirement, good luck. And it gives me understanding that they obviously lost the income of their bribery and the power which they had while they had high rank. 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, 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 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 34, Fairytale Endings. With a few shots to the neck and the head, the criminal leader, which is in Russian called

44 years old Vladimir Kostin, was shot about 11 p.m. near to the preschool. Ilya Roza is reading an article on the death of Vladimir. It's still a mystery what happened, but she believes that his former partner and friend had something to do with it. There are a lot of unanswered questions left at the end of Aaliyah's story, so I ask her about a few of them.

In the last episode, we discussed your meeting with the general and him saying, take a rest, I have some other missions and things for you. And the story got

a little squirrely there. But now that we're talking together, I wanted to get your answer to what happened there. I, okay, so I still, you know, like I still scared. I mean, I was scared a lot of times when I was there,

but this was the most scariest meeting in my life because you, I, that time and even now I kind of like, you know, like the power of the person. Aliyah seems to be struggling here. I try to ask again what really happened at that meeting with the general, why she was allowed to leave the country, whether he had new assignments for her, and whether she escaped the system and how. For the next half hour, I struggled to get a clear and direct answer that makes sense. I'm not sure if something is lost in the translation, or if there's something she's hiding. And it turns out, there is. Am I free now? Am I free now? Like, I don't know.

Where is the guarantee they will not, like, do anything to me or my son? And I have this thought every moment I leave. Is it a freedom now? I ask Aliyah why she doesn't feel free and if there's anything she's had to do since. My general, my new commander, the unofficial commander, gave me a new task to become whom I never wanted to be, and it was low to my pride and betrayed to my body and my soul.

But I don't want to end up on this note because it's such a... It's like breaking every hope for every person who listened to it that the life is not what, like, you know. Aliyah trails off here. It's clear that she's conflicted. She wants to be the hero of her own story. And she is. Just for starters, she's here and she survived it.

But it's a different kind of hero than perhaps her father raised her to be. This desire to give her story a happy ending for the audience helps explain who she's become today. Throughout this podcast, some listeners have written in struggling to reconcile the story she's telling with her social media presence, which portrays a lot of red carpets,

expensive sports cars, paparazzi, fame, and glamour. She wants, she likes everybody to see... The success. The success. The success. The final story, yeah. The fairy tale which I create in my illusory world, which actually fucking doesn't exist.

I pretend. The Instagram is just all for me. It's like I look at it and I feel better. I want to believe that this is the result which I created for myself. Do you think part of that illusion also is not just for you, but like showing your dad that even though I didn't choose this path, look at me and look at my life? To my dad, of of course to show him that without military and without

following your order i still pretend that i'm successful because i feel i feel like it's my armor and I protect myself in certain ways where I cannot, I don't have power enough to be open and live in real world because it scares me a lot. Let me pause. Is it okay if I call Emily? You've been working with therapeutically. So if I kind of loop around this discussion. Yes.

Okay. Hey, Emily, you there? Yeah, I am. So as I'm sitting here sort of unpacking stuff with Aaliyah, I just thought I'd sort of bring you in and get some thoughts. Okay. What I'm learning as I talk to Aaliyah more is the happy ending isn't exactly...

How would you put it, Aaliyah? The happy ending isn't... There is no happy ending, to be honest. At this point, I've spent a year and a half with Aaliyah and unpacked her story, not just with Emily Mockus, the trauma counselor we're speaking with now, but with Russian intelligence sources and experts. And I could go over it point by point

and share what the FBI says was believable, what the CIA says was credible, and so on. But I think we could do that with any story. Every True Crime podcast is a collection of narratives that we're trying to pick the best path through. And I think the path that is best to take with Aaliyah, given everything we've heard, is a trauma-informed one. People see Aaliyah's Instagram and they think of it from an influencer point of view.

But I'm curious, what does it look like from a trauma point of view? Part is dissociation. It's part of her coping mechanism and what she, it was, and it's involuntary detachment from reality at times. And it's a way that she protected herself and most of the time is unconscious. With that dissociation, when we experience trauma, some of us want to feel like it doesn't define us, that we're not victims, that we... Winners. Winners.

Trauma does affect the way we perceive ourselves, the way we act and react, because it affected our brain, it affected our nervous system. When you look at dissociation, it's part of the fight-flight response. It's even your memory that can be affected. I start to understand, as Emily speaks, that after surviving such a disempowering experience, there's a need to find a way to empower ourselves through our narrative. As the author Isak Dinesen once said,

all sorrows can be born if you put them into a story or tell a story about them. And look at even the way Aliyah was raised by her father in the military. She was raised not to feel, not to be connected. But she was also raised to be the superhero in the story. I just want to remind you, Aliyah, that you can change your past. But you can change the narrative of the story. You are a superhero in your life story. What are your thoughts on that?

I was thinking that, I think this podcast actually gave me freedom. Because first time in life, I started to feel. I felt a strong guilt. I felt anger. I felt hate. I felt pain. And then I started to feel love. I started to not to be ashamed of my vulnerability.

And first time in life I noticed that I started to be open to people in general and men especially. And it's very scary. Like it's so many fears that I don't know if I can handle it. But I take a deep breath and try to move on and not to close my heart. And continue feeling, which is so hard. 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 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 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. Epilogue. A Russian Story. So I just called to ask, what are your thoughts now that you've heard the rest of Aliyah's story? It took me on a journey, really. And the journey that it brought me on was such a conclusion that she is a product of a father who is part of the state. She was, and then put into this odd school of sparrow training because that is just, as we've said before, was that a real school? Was it a state-sponsored school?

Or was it a bunch of dirty old men that were justifying their actions on behalf of the state as an excuse? Could be all. There lies the Russian state at its bedrock. This is Robin Treek again, former chief of the FBI's counterintelligence behavioral analysis program. They keep you in a state of chaos, personally, emotionally, psychologically, and physically. They traumatize you. They trauma bond you to them.

This is the case where they give you a little bit of love bombing. We love you. You're great, you're awesome. And then they beat on you, beat on you, beat on you, beat on you. And then the beatings become more and the love becomes less. And then you get addicted to that one time out of a million you might get a kind word or a promotion or a good posting from someone. Or maybe even not being traumatized tonight by someone. This is what they do and that's what she is a product of, of the state. It's pretty profound that she was able to do what she did to rescue herself.

The amount of bravery she had to start recognizing, basically it's the matrix, that I have to get myself out of this matrix, and that's where therapy comes in, and that's where rescuing ourselves from the trauma with the great healthy relationships we can forge around us and getting that narrative and that story out there for people to see. What is a hero? Is it Black Widow? Is it Red Sparrow?

Is it James Bond? When I first sat down with Aaliyah, that's the type of story I imagined hearing. And I think that's the type of story Aaliyah imagined telling. But real life is not so clear-cut. And I learned through this process at least three things I will never forget. The first is that life in a totalitarian system, whether it's a country or one's own family, is a prison with bars made of fear and duty. And even if we manage to escape physically, it's much harder to escape psychologically. The second is that sexpionage is anything but sexy. The third is that most stories of abuse don't have happy endings. The perpetrators often get away with it.

The victims rarely get justice or resolution. And even if they do, the healing process is often messy and incomplete. All these things in here do happen, and these are the tragic results of them. So what is a hero? In this case, and so many others, it is a person who survived to tell their story. Not necessarily the story, their story. And what is healing? It's being heard.

So thank you for listening. 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 Vespested. Thanks also to our additional guests.

Robin Treek, author of the upcoming book, Unbreakable Alliances, A Spy Recruiter's Authoritative Guide to Cultivating Powerful and Lasting Connections. Alex Finley, author of the Victor Caro series. Dr. David Lewis, author of Triumph of the Will, How Two Men Hypnotized Hitler and Changed the World. Dr. Joel Dimmesdale, author of Dark Persuasion, A History of Brainwashing from Pavlov to Social Media. Professor Mark Gagliotti, author of Downfall, Preclusion, Putin, and the New Fight for the Future of Russia. Mark Hollingsworth, author of Agents of Influence, How the KGB Subverted Western Democracies.

Dr. Ian Garner, author of Z-Generation, Into the Heart of Russia's Fascist Youth. Robert J. Lifton, author of Surviving Our Catastrophes, Resilience and Renewal from Hiroshima to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Amy Knight, author of The Kremlin's Noose, Putin's bitter feud with the oligarch who made him ruler of Russia. Yuri Falstinsky, author of From Red Terror to Terrorist State, Russia's Secret Service and its fight for world domination. Dr. Joe Serio, author of Being Resilient, 50 Lessons on Leaving Chronic Stress Behind. Holly McKay, author of The Dictator's Wife.

Emily Mockis, author of The Naked Truth of a Healer, The Path to My Authentic Self. Luke Harding, author of Invasion, The Inside Story of Russia's Bloody War and Ukraine's Fight for Survival. And Svetlana Stevenson, author of Crossing the Line, Vagrancy, Homelessness, and Social Displacement in Russia. Federico Varese,

author of Mafia Life, Love, Death, and the Money at the Heart of Organized Crime. And Matt Tipton, Army Ranger veteran and internal medicine doctor, trained in chemical and radiological weapons response. Wow, that was a very Russian story. To have a murderer 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.