13) Russia's Murder Lab

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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, yeah, it 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 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.

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 kind of sounds like to me like you were 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 fogets, and then the black car with this like crazy loud music, and I felt in the movie, I live another life which I never had before, and I never even knew that this life may possibly exist.

To kill you, I'm really sorry I had to do that. I could on my juty away, how my God like to like you. I had to treat you versus so much for.

Episode thirteen, Chapter twenty eight, Lost.

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 second floor.

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.

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 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.

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.

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. 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

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.

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 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.

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.

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 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

That night, round ten, 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 paper she'd seen.

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 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.

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.

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 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

After dinner, Vladimir took Alia 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 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 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.

And I.

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 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.

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.

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 him names, and I gave him addresses.

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.

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, there were like three pins in that area.

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.

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 the same time, I just wanted to understand is he really so much deeply involved in that?

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.

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, I'll give you some good sleeping pills. It just like kills you for like ten hours straight.

Chapter twenty nine, two Friends, What.

City do you live in?

I'm in now a 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 heed 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 geo fence, and they're going to look at what cell phones were in that little area

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 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 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 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 Nimpsov. I spoke with him.

Russian politician Boris Nimptsov, 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, ter 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

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 asked journalist Samy 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 Russian 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 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. You're that right underwear.

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.

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.

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, 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 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

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.

Russian parliament was the law which allowed Russian special services to kiel anymess of the state abroad.

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.

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 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,

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 Alia's experiences with these chemical agents. Aliyah had just

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 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,

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.

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 the one who was controlling the whole distribution all these tones of heroines coming from Afghanistan to Russia. 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 sharp 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 Aaliyah, 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 a lot of respect from others and eventually he was actually crowned to becoming a

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.

I was.

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 anything about it, but I'm not responsible for this part because my army friend, he is controlling the whole thing.

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 totally 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, 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.

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 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 like he was more upset because of his partner screaming.

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, 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?

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 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.

So Leah 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 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 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.

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 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.

Aliah would soon find out that maybe these two worlds, the military and the mafia, weren't so different after all.

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. 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.

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.

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 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

Elia's story continues in episode fourteen.

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 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. Lead producer and editor is Tristan Bankston. Additional editing by Miles Clark and Christian Brown, supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Consultants