To Die For - 9) The Taste of Poison

Episode Date: June 4, 2024

"If they would have a proof that you are the enemy of the country, they would usually take you to the sauna, which is banya in Russian, and then you just give you a drink with the poison. That's it. It's easy."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 contains graphic descriptions of violence and sexual assault that may be too intense or triggering to some listeners. Discretion is advised. One of my friends asked me, have you ever been in love? And I said, yes, of course, every single time. And he said, no, really.

Because of my trainings, I feel that sometimes every single man in my life, even for the romantic relationship or something, I still look at them as my targets. I have different targets in my life. It's a different period of times. And man is the tool to achieve your goal. I know it sounds really bad, sorry. That's me.

Welcome to my world. You didn't guess that behind I was holding my gun I got you, I tell you more I had to kill you Was it so much fun Episode 9, Chapter 19 The Story So Far the story so far. So I just finished listening to the first eight episodes of To Die For. It was the most compelling thing I've listened to in a long time. And this is not my genre I typically listen to

because it's what I lived and it was just spot on fascinating. This is Robin Dreek, the FBI agent whose voice you heard at the beginning of this podcast. He's just finished listening to the first eight episodes and called to share some thoughts from his experience of 22 years recruiting Russian spies for American intelligence. It's completely conceivable and believable, everything she said. Your heart just breaks for the trauma that not just she, but I mean, they take traffic in human beings. I mean, that's exactly what they're doing. They corrupt them. They destroy these women.

Robin is talking about Aliyah's experiences in the FSB, the Russian intelligence agency formed as a successor to the KGB. During her training, Aliyah was selected for a secret program for seduction agents taught by a female major there, who Robin sees as a victim of the system forced to create new victims. And the other thing that struck me too is how congruent that behavior has been through time. I worked against the Russians my entire time in the FBI. Never once did I ever see a Russian female intelligence officer. They don't do it. Nope.

It is not their culture. And if someone rose in the ranks, it was because they were doing what her major was doing, training other females just to be tools and, you know, I call them screwdrivers and wrenches, you know, to be thrown away. It's totally objectified. I want to ask you something that I've thought about and talking to you has bring that thought to the surface, which is part of me thinks, assuming this all checks out, was this a real institutional program to train sex spies

or was this a way for the higher-ups at the academy to create a ring of abuse with these women by pretending it's that. I'm going to say yes to both. And here's why I frame it like that, because from our context in the West, it looks like it's one or the other. But from their context, from where they come from, it's all the same. We talk about the colonel who ran the academy that Aaliyah went to, how he abused her on the first day, and she was put in a position where she had to seduce him and make him think she was his girlfriend in order to protect herself. There's no checks and balances whatsoever. Their checks and balances is, I'm the colonel, I say what goes. And unless

you're a colonel that's closer to Putin than me, and that's exactly what this entire program to me looks like, is that they got a colonel in there that was, you know, needed his sexual needs fulfilled. So I'm going to create a program that satisfies me. And I'm glad she's getting good counseling and therapy for it, too, because they destroyed her. This is not about nation states. This is about, you know, nation state making excuses for disgusting human behavior and excusing it because it's serving the greater need of our country. With FBI agent Robin Dreek's thoughts here in mind, we return now to Aaliyah's story.

There have been some comments questioning Aaliyah, and as mentioned in episode two, we will of course get to that. But for now, let's just listen, because this story takes some unpredictable turns. Chapter 20. The Bait In 2003, President Putin signed and founded a special department, FSKN, and that department was established only for one reason and one mission, to stop drug trafficking from Afghanistan. This was the new department that Aliyah would be working in. Angry that Aliyah had rejected his marriage proposal,

the colonel had handed her off to his friend, a lieutenant general in the FSKN, to start working under him and be his next victim. So, next day, I went to the new department. It was two floors building, white walls inside. And it was a really small department. So we had maybe around like 15 agents. No women, only male. So the new department welcomed me, and we had our morning report routine,

where we had our tasks, our assignments, and it was...... Ilya's first task in the FSKN, the Federal Drug Control Service of the Russian Federation, was to shadow the other agents as they staked out houses where drugs were sold. I would need to go with my team, who would be like two or three other agents, and we would walk on the streets and find out places where drugs would be sold.

It's really tough to go there back. Among Aliyah's many challenges there was her new commander, the lieutenant general, who repeated a pattern Aliyah was now tragically familiar with. The first time, he phrased it as a question. Less than a week, I served in that new department. The Lieutenant General called me and he said to me that, all right, so how do you like your new department? I said, yeah, it's pretty nice, thank you. And he said, well, let's go for a dinner.

And I said, oh my God, like, I can't do it today. I have, like, some things to do. He noticed that I was bullshitting him to do he noticed that I was bullshitting him he noticed that I was lying but I just didn't I just was scared he gave me this weird feeling

the feeling that I should run away but then he said okay if not today when is the next time? You tell me, so we go out. And then I called to the colonel. I said, you know, he wants to go out with me.

And the colonel said that you have to accept his offer. And I understood that I don't really have anywhere to go and anyone to ask. Anyway, the whole week I was trying not to be seen by my commander. Even every morning at the reporting, like, I always looked, like, down. At one of those morning meetings, Aliyah received her first actual assignment to stake out a decrepit apartment building where drugs were likely being sold and send in an undercover informant to get evidence. And I remember it was my first mission. I never done anything like this. So we had like one man, he was a drug addict. He used to help agents to buy drugs and tell us what kind is it, is it good or bad. He was like a bait.

He's probably dead already. So we would organize this operation where we would give him money, which were marked previously by us. Here's how this thing worked. Once their informant bought the drugs, the team would then raid the house, make arrests, and gather evidence, including the marked money. However, when Aliyah entered the house, she saw more than drugs and weapons. She saw evidence of a human trafficking operation that would haunt her for the rest of her life. Listener discretion is highly advised.

That boy, he bought heroin, those, he paid, and then we were waiting, and we saw that he was giving this money. We came to the house, myself, three other agents, and another agent, and when we entered the house, when we entered the house, I saw, like, killed over there, like like bodies of kids like many and it was the whole floor was like full of like

this used heroin doses and kids were like five years old and another was just like a little baby and then we checked the rooms and there was like other girls sitting in the rooms like i guess like they all were overdosed and some of them they were they were like metallic beds and they were they had like bracelets on the on the wrist so they couldn't do anything but they couldn't even they couldn't even speak they were completely high and overdosed, and we just couldn't even talk to them. And I saw their hands. They had huge bruises in their hands and legs. I don't know how many men these poor girls had to be with.

And some of them, after the embassy took them, some of them, they just died before they started, before they went to the hospital, they died in the car. It was awful. I was crying then the whole evening. There also was one guy who was almost like my age. He was actually from Kazakhstan too. When I was crying, he supported me. He said, I know what you're going through. It's never okay to see dead bodies, especially children's bodies. But he said, you know what, we can change it. Let's make it happen. And every single day when we

find these houses, when we arrest these motherfuckers, we changed the world and when I heard this my father's words that I I have to protect people especially children and especially women and all this learning in the academy I felt like I really can do something and I just I just wanted to change that shit I was so angry so that what made me strong I promised myself that I'll do everything to to help whatever it takes. With this new sense of mission and purpose, Aliyah decided that she would stop avoiding the lieutenant general and tell him directly that she would not be going

out with him. She was here to work and make a difference. So I decided to speak with the general. I knocked his door. I came to his room in the office and I said, Sir, I cannot go with you for dinner. I cannot even go out with you because I'm not available. I have commitments in front of a man.

And he said, no, I already spoke with him. It's all fine. He passed you over to me. So it's okay. So now it's my turn. And I was like, my God, I just hated that situation. And he said, you don't understand how privileged you are because I am willing to have sex with you. Not relationship, not commitments, not love. And I said, you know what, I'm not doing that. Like, I'm not becoming against someone's, you know, like a hole for like, whatever. If like, Cornell doesn't want to protect me anymore, I'll do it myself so no and he said to me I just want to warn you young lady

if you think that you can be cleverer than me this is not possible and someone might tell you the story what really happened with the female employee, his former employee, when she rejected me. And he said, so if you will reject me, you'll be dead. But I thought that moment he's trying to make it more dramatic. I would never imagine that he really meant it. He did.

After Leah left the meeting, she asked the colleague she trusted most, the one who is also from Kazakhstan, what had happened to the last female agent who'd rejected the lieutenant general's advances? So he said a few years ago, in that department, there was a female agent.

And she was beautiful. And he called her a black swan. Because she had this beautiful long black hair and beautiful eyes. And she studied in the same department where I did. He said this lieutenant general approached her to have with her some sexual relationship, and she rejected him.

So he sent her to one mission where she was shot. So she was killed. And he said, like, just be careful because this dude definitely killed so many people. He's so cruel. 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 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 21. The Banya. Shortly after her meeting with the Lieutenant General, and likely not by coincidence, Aliyah's missions became even more dangerous. My colleagues arrested one criminal,

quite a young boy. He was so violent, he would just kill people around him just without any reason. For example, if they would loan money from criminal gang and they wouldn't pay on time. He would kill them and their families. He could kill even kids.

My colleagues arrested him. Then they didn't have any evidences. They couldn't get any confession or whatever from him, so they had to let him leave. And I prayed to God they wouldn't send me to seduce him or whatever because, like, I mean, I didn't want to deal with this guy. He was completely out of his mind and he was just scary and they asked me to set him up. For the first time Aliyah was asked to use her special training. They hoped that where their traditional police tactics

including violence had not, seduction would. When I received that assignment, they said you just need to basically make him to come to the place. It would be sauna. You won't be alone. We will be with you. We will follow you. So it will be fine. The sauna, because of its all-purpose use as a bathhouse, social club, and meeting place

in Russia, was the site of many intelligence operations, not all of which ended well for the target. If they would have a proof that you are the enemy of the country, they would usually take you to this sauna, which is banya, Russian banya, and they would give you some drinks with the poison. That's it. It's easy. which is banya, Russian banya, and they just, like, give you some drinks with the poison. That's it. It's easy. With this particular mission, Aliyah would not be giving her target poison.

She would be slipping something else into his drink. We drove to the nightclub, very kind of, like, underground, where everybody can basically took drugs in front of everyone. He had like a small little army with him, his gang people, criminals. And we decided that next night we'll get prepared and I will come to that club. And I will try to make him to go with me to sauna,

where I would need to give him a drink. It wasn't a poison, but first of all, it had the indigrant, which makes you talk a lot. You can give answers to any questions. So I was supposed to give it to him in a drink. Then I had to open the door to my team to come in. And then they would continue with him to do whatever they needed. Sergey, her team leader, gave her an unnamed drug in a small bottle with an eyedropper and then dropped her off at the club.

I took that bottle, which my colleague gave me, in the bag. I took some condoms as well with me. And I was ready. So I arrived there by taxi. And then I knew that my team was waiting in the car. I came in. And I saw him sitting at the table with two other guys. And they were like two girls.

They looked just perfect. You know, just like clothes, makeup, everything. So I had to attract his attention, and I started to dance. One of the most important techniques of sexpionage is to never approach your target directly because if he suspects you're an undercover agent it could be a fatal mistake

So instead, once Aliyah caught her target's eye she started a conversation with his two female friends about their clothing I started to speak with the girl first and I said, oh my god, where did you buy yours and she said oh I bought it like in this shop so we started to talk really enthusiastically so he looked at me I noticed and I remember I did like this long look into his eyes, really long so he could feel it. This girl who was next to me, she's like,

oh, sit down with us. Aliyah sat there and spoke with the women, ignoring her target, except for the occasional seductive glance. And then they were continuing like partying and everything. And I was thinking like, how can I approach him where... I mean, it would be just simple to say, hey, would you like to fuck? But I had to intrigue him.

Just, like, a couple days ago, he was in an interrogation room. So he definitely understood that potentially he'd been watched. Eventually, an opportunity to lure her target to the sauna came when one of the women she was talking to started mentioning after parties and asking if anyone had cocaine. So I said, oh, by the way, I have some good drugs. And she said, really? Like, yeah. And she told all her guys, like, oh, she has like good drugs.

She's like, okay, where is it? This is like with you. I said like, oh no, I can call my guy. Like he will come and bring it. He usually brings it to like the sauna, so and so. And like, do you know this sauna? She's like, oh yeah, I know. I know the sauna.

Like I've been there. I said like, yeah, why don't we have a party there? So I wanted this proposal would come from her mouth rather than mine because I was the new girl who like nobody knew so she passed this information to him and he seemed like agreed to that so I went to the toilet I texted to my my, Sergey, to my guy, and I said, listen, so we are going to that sauna, but he wants drugs. What about drugs which we have in the department? Sergey agreed to go to the evidence locker, get some cocaine,

and bring it to Aliyah before she left the club. My other colleagues, they were following us. We came to the sauna. Everybody got undressed. I took the bag of cocaine to the table. I put it on the table. They started to sniff it. So there were like two girls.

They started to swim in the swimming pool. And two guys hanging out with them. So my target for a while, he was like by himself. What I had to do, I had to take him separately to another room, so it would be just me and him in the room. Aliyah wasn't sure how to get her target, this gang enforcer and murderer, into the other room. Until she remembered something else she'd been taught in her training.

Something that was very unusual to learn at a military academy. I said, like, would you like some massage? And he's like, yeah. And I started to massage his shoulders. He drank that cocktail with vodka, but he didn't drink that much because he was more like using drugs. I didn't really know when and how to pour these drops into his glass. And I was telling him, oh my God, like, you're so strong. You're so like masculine and you have so much tensions. And if you would lay down, I can do a good massage for you for the whole back. Ilya suggested to her target that they move into a more comfortable room,

hoping that his friends would just assume they were hooking up and not worry about him. He said, yeah, let's do it. So when we were walking into the room, I pick up his glass. And I pick up also like my glass, but it was same looking cocktail with cola. And coke has a quite strong taste, right? So if you use any poison or you use any type of drug, coke taste is so strong that it's just cover it all so you wouldn't feel the taste of poison so he lay down and I said like let me give you the drink and when he was laying I just like took the drop and put like three drops into his drink and I put my glass like nearby but I didn't touch it and then I just gave it to him.

I said like just drink it and I will do like massage straight away. So he drank it, he put it like on the side and he laid down and then I went on top of him and I started to massage his shoulders. While I was massaging, I felt like that his muscle were like relaxing, relaxing, relaxing, and then he basically stopped reacting, and he was completely out. So I took his hand, it was completely limp, so I was like, okay, so he's ready. And when I stood up, I took my glass and when I went to the main lobby, I just washed it, basically.

I didn't tell anything to his friends and they were still in the swimming pool. I just left and when I was leaving I texted to Sergey the commander of the group of this team. Okay it's done. He's like he passed over. That's it. And I took a taxi and I went home. 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 would 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. Aaliyah assumed that her first seduction mission had been a success. That is, until a few days later, when the criminal's family said that he'd gone missing that night and began accusing the police of having done something to him. So Aliyah asked a colleague about it. He's like, I don't know, but I know that Sergey was working on this case and it's not good for him.

And I thought, okay, so if this criminal is missing, I am involved in this case, perhaps in this murder. And I thought, you know, it could be really bad to me too because I was the one who gave him this drink with who knows what liquid. As Aliyah reckoned with the possibility that she might have killed him she thought about how many innocent people

this criminal had killed himself just literally because he enjoyed it And by that time I didn't feel bad about him He was just like a zombie who brings only nightmare to everyone As for whether she accidentally overdosed him or something else happened afterward, Ilya would never know.

I mean, in the end of the day, I never know if they would still straight like that or not because it was the job of the cleaners. We used to have cleaners, people who, like government people who would come and clean. Even her colleagues from the mission that night refused to talk about it.

The only one thing what he said to me, never tell anyone about what happened. So I never said anything. And day by day, I would come to my office, to my department and work and go to all these operations and just do my job. And I've seen more and more crimes on the street. I would see more and more dead bodies. And it was really dangerous and it was risky. As Aliyah continued

receiving new missions, she noticed that the Lieutenant General hadn't propositioned her again. So she thought she was safe from him. I thought he would just leave me. You know, just, okay, it is what it is. But like the predator he was, the Lieutenant General was just waiting

for the right time to strike. And a few weeks later, he's struck in a way Ilya never saw coming. Everybody were leaving his office after the reporting. And then he said, oh yeah, you're staying. I have a special assignment for you. And I was like, shit. So I stayed in his room. He closed the door and he said, so what did, what did you decide? And I played stupid. I said like, um, about what? Sorry. Like, I don't understand. And he's like, okay. So I see like like you don't get it right all right you can leave now

i pretended that nothing happened really that he's not pissed like he's okay but in fact he was really So, the next morning, we had our reporting as always, and he said, By the way, agent, you have a chance to pay back to your country by going to the war. Make us to be proud of you. And when he said it, I heard all my colleagues were like, oh my God, she is fucked. Good luck to her. Like, when will you go to the funeral?

Inside of me, I started to shake of anger and hate. He is sending me to the Chechen war for me to be killed over there and never come back. Aaliyah's story continues in episode 10, which is available now. Continue listening for free on Apple Podcasts. For full credits, check out our show notes. If you or someone you know is a victim of human trafficking,

please contact the Human Trafficking Hotline at 1-888-373-7888 to get help and support. 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.