13) Russia's Murder Lab

"When big money is involved, we usually see some killings." 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
All eight episodes of The Die For are available now
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Speaker 2 (00:18):
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.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
Absolutely, yeah, it was special.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
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.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
No, I honestly I liked him. I liked his personality.
Whoever likes say to me about Vladimir that, oh he's
a killer, he's a or he's a criminal. But I've
seen by myself like how he he was so respectful
to other people, and like, just honest, he was justice.

Speaker 2 (01:13):
I realized as Aleah is speaking that ever since she'd
been sent to Cheeshnya 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

(01:36):
kind of sounds like to me like you were getting
lost in the Role.

Speaker 4 (01:39):
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 fogets, and then the black car with this
like crazy loud music, and I felt in the movie,

(02:02):
I live another life which I never had before, and
I never even knew that this life may possibly exist.

Speaker 5 (02:12):
To kill you, I'm really sorry I had to do that.
I could on my juty away, how my God like

(02:33):
to like you. I had to treat you versus so
much for.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Episode thirteen, Chapter twenty eight, Lost.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
In the Role, 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 steeping, but upstairs on the

(03:29):
second floor.

Speaker 2 (03:30):
Well, Leah'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.

Speaker 3 (03:52):
I wanted to see what was there. One room was
just a bedroom. I quickly checked the warp and everything.
It was just empty bedroom. And I opened the door
of another room and I saw like so far and
a big wardrobe. Near to the wardrobe, they were like

(04:14):
huge black trash bags. So I walked and I slowly
opened it and I saw that it was full of cash,
lots of lots of money in these black thrash bags.

(04:35):
I've never seen anything like that. I was shocked. And
then I opened the wardrobe and I saw automatic Kalashnikoff
guns just like in the line. And I saw some
the ten guns as well, and I kind of like
even got jealous because it was expensive and the aim

(04:58):
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

(05:19):
like some little pins on the map of the city.
They saw a lot of papers on the table.

Speaker 2 (05:29):
Worried that she'd been out of the bedroom too long,
I 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.

Speaker 3 (05:42):
Vladimir just walked out of the bedroom and he said, like,
where have you been? 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. Oh too bad, It's fine.

(06:06):
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 and everything, she could
kill me that moment. Straightway. I didn't sleep at all
all night. I was thinking about what I'm doing next

(06:27):
and what should I report exactly to my commander.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
Leah 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.

Speaker 3 (06:56):
I sprayed on the pillow, so every time he would
go to his and sleep there, he will 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 woke outside

(07:16):
and then his security drove me home. I came back
home and I called to Sasha. I just said that Lisa,
we need to meet and I will explain you everything
in person.

Speaker 2 (07:34):
Later that day, Eliah 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 our progress the night before.

Speaker 3 (07:54):
I told him everything, and he said, if he would
call to you like in the 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.
He listened. For now, just try to be close to
him as you can. Listen to his conversations, listen to

(08:15):
his telephone calls, and he said that you should start
to bring more information about next places of hearing 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,

(08:38):
so just in case, I tried to make it look
like I was really student there.

Speaker 2 (08:45):
That night, round ten, she received a text from Vladimir.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
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.

Speaker 2 (09:01):
He invited her out that night, but she said she
needed to stay home and get her homework done.

Speaker 3 (09:08):
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.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
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 paper she'd seen.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
The next morning, he brought me a small, little 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

(09:58):
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.

Speaker 2 (10:10):
Elia'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.

Speaker 3 (10:18):
First of all, they say, if you want to your
men 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 back with
the food with me, and they were finishing some conversations

(10:38):
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, is like in the very bottom,

(11:02):
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 said, like the food is served, And while they

(11:23):
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.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
After dinner, Vladimir took Alia upstairs. On the way, she
asked for a tour of the house, so.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
He opened every door and he showed me, oh, this
is like the bedroom. He even showed me the room
where I saw there's like bags of cash, but they
were not there anymore. And then he said, like, this
is my office. He didn't open it, and I said, like,
I would love to see the place where you work

(12:05):
and I would love to learn more about you. He
opened the door and then I said like, oh, that's
why the whole magic happens.

Speaker 6 (12:18):
And I.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Said, oh, wow, this table is so solid. Do you
think it can handle us? Boss? 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

(12:44):
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 like just trying to read these,

(13:08):
like you know, names on it and what exactly was there?
I couldn't remember everything, but I remembered some names.

Speaker 2 (13:20):
The next morning, Vladimir's driver brought Alia home. Shortly afterward,
she walked to the university in case she was being
watched and waited for a colleague, Sasha to arrive.

Speaker 3 (13:32):
He said, since you installed the microphone like the bag,
let's just see what will happen, and then we'll give
you more like details. And he asked me for pictures,
which I didn't do, and I told him, like listen,
I didn't do it because it was not possible that time,
but I'll do it later, but for now, I gave

(13:53):
him names, and I gave him addresses.

Speaker 2 (14:00):
And this team researched this information and got back to
Aliyah with the news. These properties were in the exact
same area that Alah had seen on her first horrible
mission with the FSKN.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
He checked the streets and these buildings. He said, it's
exactly where they were like having our operation exactly in
some houses there we saw all this overdose young kids
and teenagers. And there were the places where were sex, slavery,
prostitution basically where also they sold some hearings at Vladimir's map,

(14:40):
there were like three pins in that area.

Speaker 2 (14:45):
I asked Aleah how she felt knowing that the target
she was developing feelings for was complicit and the horrible
thing she'd seen, even if he was just taking protection
money from the traffickers.

Speaker 3 (14:58):
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 overdoors and kidnapped
for human trafficking. I knew all that. I just wanted
to I wanted to succeed in my mission, but at

(15:18):
the same time, I just wanted to understand is he
really so much deeply involved in that?

Speaker 2 (15:27):
Sasha told Leah that if she wanted answers and to
complete her mission, it was important to get the photos
he'd ask for of all the documents in Vladimir's office.
When Alee explained that she was worried that Vladimir would
wake up and find her there, Sasha came up with
this solution.

Speaker 3 (15:45):
He said, why don't you do it while he'll be
sleeping like really really deep. When I said to him, like, so, Howe,
I'm supposed to do it? And he said, like, just
give him, just give him some sleeping pills, and I
was like, Okay, which one? He said, like, I'll next time,

(16:05):
I'll give you some good sleeping pills. It just like
kills you for like ten hours straight.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
Chapter twenty nine, two Friends, What.

Speaker 7 (16:38):
City do you live in?

Speaker 2 (16:39):
I'm in now a Los Angeles.

Speaker 7 (16:41):
If I didn't like you and I found you in
Los Angeles and stabbed you on the sidewalk, I would
immediately have heed on me.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
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.

Speaker 7 (17:03):
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 geo fence, 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 when the guy outside
a bar and he shoves you or coughs on you,
or smears something on yourly cross, that guy's hand was
wet and you don't think anything of it, and then

(17:25):
you don't feel sick for forty eight hours, and you
don't get really sick for seventy two more hours. After that,
you're not going to meet you 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 into the country. Do that, and then they go
to the airport, you know, decon themselves, take an antidote,
if there's one needed.

Speaker 2 (17:47):
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 is
deadly use of chemical compounds to silence its enemies around
the world. Why does this seem to be such a

(18:07):
common Russian state security tactic that it's in the news
all the time.

Speaker 7 (18:12):
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

(18:35):
with a satellite guided missile.

Speaker 2 (18:38):
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.

Speaker 8 (18:50):
In the early two thousands, I wrote for the Globe
and Mail fairly regularly, and I was terribly, terribly critical
of mister Putin. And at some point 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

(19:12):
sorts of repercussions if Amy Knight didn't stop writing about Putin.

Speaker 2 (19:18):
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.

Speaker 8 (19:28):
I was writing about Boris Nimpsov. I spoke with him.

Speaker 1 (19:32):
Russian politician Boris Nimptsov, a fierce critic of Vladimir Putin,
is shot dead on a bridge in the shadow of
the Kremlin.

Speaker 8 (19:41):
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, ter
stomach issues. And I was able to get myself on

(20:04):
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 had this terrible stomach thing. And
I was thinking to myself that, you know, it unlikely
that it was like standard food poisoning in a very
upmarket hotel like the Marriotte with lots of foreign tourists.

(20:28):
And after that, I wondered whether somebody had slipped something
into my food, not to kill me, but to warn me.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
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.

Speaker 8 (20:48):
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.

Speaker 2 (21:01):
Poisons, of course, have been used throughout history for political ends,
taking down kings, emperors, religious leaders and philosophers. But why,
I asked journalist Samy Knight, does Russia seem to employ
this method more than any other country in modern times?

Speaker 8 (21:18):
In Russia, this seems to be the method of choice
if you want to assassinate someone, either within the country
or abroad. The Russian started way back when in the
Soviet period what they called a secret poison lab. They

(21:40):
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.

Speaker 9 (22:01):
The poisoning of Russian disson and Alexi Navolney has taken
an even more bizarre term. A Russian agent sent to
tail opposition in a leader Navolney, has accidentally revealed how
he was poisoned. In August. The agent, a member of
an elite tocsins team in Russia's FSB security service, said
the lethal nerve agent Novachak, was planted in Avalney's underwear.

(22:22):
You're that right underwear.

Speaker 2 (22:26):
One of the experts who's perhaps been the closest to
an actual poisoning is doctor Yuri Thalshtinsky. We'll get into
that exact story in the next episode, but for now
I called doctor Falshtinsky, 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.

Speaker 6 (22:48):
Now, drugs, of course have a great advantage now one
and this is extremely important. It gives you time to escape.
And for example, with take recent poisoning some case of
Lithuanianka who was poisoned and in case of Scripwall who
was poisoned.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
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.

Speaker 6 (23:18):
Those people who poisoned him had time to escape back
to Russia, while for example, mister Krasikov, who killed a
Chichen military leader in Berlin in the middle of the
day using gun, was arrested. Or those people who killed

(23:38):
former President of the Chechen Republic William han Jin Darbiev
in Katar 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. Know some of

(24:00):
course in some cases, but in some other cases who knows.
Maybe we even do not know why is a person
was found dead. And there are some questionable death 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. That's why they using it successfully.

Speaker 2 (24:24):
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
doctor Falshtinsky that this is a lot of assassinations. His answer,
to my surprise, is to explain to me that it's
the law the.

Speaker 6 (24:41):
Russian parliament was the law which allowed Russian special services
to kiel anymess of the state abroad.

Speaker 2 (24:52):
I asked doctor Falshtinsky how the Russian government determines whether
someone should be assassinated without a trial or arrested and
put on trial. And here's his answer.

Speaker 6 (25:04):
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 the
case of both Lithuanianka and Scripal. For example, the same
was true about that a helicopter pilot who was recently

(25:24):
killed in Spain. Prior to this, he defected to Ukraine
with his helicopter. Case number two, when people are competing
for power against putting, and in these cases they kill preventively,
and this is an order. For example, Boris niaimself, who

(25:45):
was killed righted the walls of Kremlin, and the same
is true of course about Alexei Navalni, 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

(26:08):
in Russia. But yes, when the mournia is involved, we
see usually some killings.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
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

(26:43):
to Alia's experiences with these chemical agents. Aliyah had just
been asked to administer sleeping pills to her target. Vladimir
read to the mission, but first ask for more time
to build trust with Vladimir and his gang before taking

(27:05):
the risk and potentially blowing the operation. After all, the
FSB agency poisoned boll Me has supposedly been following him
for years.

Speaker 3 (27:16):
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 months 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

(27:37):
infiltrate like you know, big circles. The technic 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,

(28:00):
so everybody would start to feel that. Okay. So whereas Vlaiemir,
there's his girl.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
But as a Liah spent more time with Vladimir and
as 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.

Speaker 3 (28:20):
Even I knew some techniques and allp techniques and everything,
for me, it was super difficult to establish connection with him.
I just couldn't and he was always remaining silence, and
he always gave me this very kind of like disgusting feeling.
And then through the conversation I understood that he was

(28:42):
the one who was controlling the whole distribution all these
tones of heroines coming from Afghanistan to Russia. That time.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
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.

Speaker 3 (29:07):
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 sharp eyes, this cold guy, and apparently they were

(29:32):
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.

Speaker 2 (29:41):
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 Aaliyah, he was disappointed
to find extensive corruption and very few financial opportunities for
a low ranking officer. Soon he found better opportunities on

(30:03):
the other side of the law.

Speaker 3 (30:06):
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

(30:27):
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 a lot of respect from

(30:50):
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

(31:15):
he brought the hearing supplies from Afghanistan to the gang.

Speaker 2 (31:23):
As she spoke with Vladimir about this, Eliah struggled to
reconcile the seemingly kind, charismatic man she was developing feelings
for with a drug trafficking gang leader she was there
to bring down.

Speaker 5 (31:36):
I was.

Speaker 3 (31:38):
Laying and bad and I looked into his eyes and
I asked him. I said, like, do you really know
what's happening, you know, with these trucks? 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 trucks. He said, well, I don't know

(32:01):
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.

Speaker 2 (32:21):
Other words, probably protection, money, bribery, money laundering, and who
knows what else.

Speaker 3 (32:28):
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.

Speaker 2 (32:53):
Vladimir totally that he actually wanted the gang to get
into more legitimate businesses anyway where people maybe lived a
little longer and easier.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
And because of that they had some kind of like
arguments with the army friend. He felt that it's becoming
too risky.

Speaker 2 (33:13):
Meanwhile, Leah 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 Aliah 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.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
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, look,
like what's going on? And I heard that hiss an

(33:53):
army friend who never really gave any emotions that moment.
I heard him screaming or something about like where the
hell were you? I couldn't reach you, like the hell
you're doing. And Vladimir was like upset, but I think

(34:13):
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

(34:35):
I texted Sasha. I said, like, I said everything okay,
He's like, yeah, you did a great job. I will
give you only permission when I will see you in person.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
As a Leah tells a story, I asked her if
it seemed too risky to bust Vladimir's drug operation while
she was still undercovering 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 be while this is happening,

(35:07):
for you to do something that breaks your normal pattern
of what you do with him. Was he risking the
asset at all? The asset being you me?

Speaker 3 (35:15):
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

(35:36):
my life.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
At our next meeting with Sasha, Leah asked him how
the operation went.

Speaker 3 (35:42):
He said, like it was one of the big places,
which was distributing drugs. So I wrote the report to
a commander the want to read it. I'm like, wherever
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.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
So Leah continued to get closer to Vladimir, planning specific
kinds of dates to the movies and the beach.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
I wanted to bring him to that memories, to that
period of his life where he was happy boy, without
knowing that it will be Afghani war or him becoming
criminal gang leader. That's how I established that trust.

Speaker 2 (36:34):
However, it's hard to tell. Sometimes Leah 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.

Speaker 3 (36:50):
He said, this is my lent, this is my mother land.
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

(37:13):
looked at him. I thought, like, you know, he speaks
exactly like my dad. But he was exactly on the
opposite side from my father.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Aliah would soon find out that maybe these two worlds,
the military and the mafia, weren't so different after all.

Speaker 3 (37:33):
I might 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 killers of
the heroine, they're only like just a few grums left.

(37:57):
So apparently the whole report which Sasha provided to have
a commander was changed by him, and the whole report
was giving to the upscale commander that Sasha's group only
confiscated just a few grumps.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
Of hearing, Sasha went down to tell Alia that he
just checked the evidence locker and almost all the heroine
was gone, just a small bag remained.

Speaker 3 (38:33):
And I was like having this kind of like you know,
like when your brain basically stuck and you just cannot
accept the information. And after a couple of minutes, to said,
do you think that he actually reported instead of like

(38:53):
four killos, just a few grums because he basically took
this heroine for himself. Asha said, well, I just don't
understand what to do, and you know, like do you
think we should we should spy on our commander. I said, well,
if you can't do it, do it from your side,

(39:15):
because I'll do from my side what I can do
with Vladimir. Then 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

(39:35):
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.

Speaker 2 (40:02):
Elia's story continues in episode fourteen.

Speaker 3 (40:07):
Sasha was the first who entered as the commander of
the team. He was the one who received the first bullet.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
To Die For is a production of Tenderfoot TV in
association with iHeart Podcasts. The show was hosted and written
by me Neil Straus, with additional writing assistants by Tristan Bankston.
Executive producers are myself, Donald Albright, and Payne Lindsay. For
iHeart Podcasts, executive producers are Matt Frederick and Alex Williams.

(40:55):
Lead producer and editor is Tristan Bankston. Additional editing by
Miles Clark and Christian Brown, supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Consultants
include Nushin, Valiza Day, 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

(41:19):
Killer Shangli Law by Psychotic Beats featuring Pattiamore. Special thanks
to Aorn Rosenbaub and the team at Uta Beck Media
and Marketing, Aren Siegel, Becky Jensen, the Nord Group, Meredith Stedman,
Rose Baruk and Alex Bespustad