HEARING about the cold-blooded murder of a preacher’s wife in Minnesota, Eileen Ormsby’s blood ran cold.
Just six months before, victim Amy Allwine was named as a target on a ‘murder for hire’ site, uncovered by Australian journalist Eileen during an investigation into the dark web.
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A sum of £10,000 had been paid to have 44-year-old Amy killed.
Despite being handed around 60 pages of chilling correspondence between dark web user Dogdaygod – who wanted her dead – and the ‘hitman site’ Besa Mafia, the FBI only took the threat seriously when Amy was shot through the head in her own bedroom.
Amy’s husband Stephen was eventually jailed for her murder and is now serving life – but Eileen believes she could have been saved if the chilling hit list had been taken more seriously.
“We first heard about her death after Stephen Allwine got arrested, and we realised that one of the people on the kill list turned up dead,” she tells The Sun, ahead of new Channel 4 documentary How to Hire a Hitman.
“That was a massive shock and really quite distressing, because when we first brought Amy to the attention of the FBI, she was still alive.
“If they’d looked through the correspondence, and the level of detail Dogdaygod knew about her everyday life, they would have had an inkling of who wanted her dead enough to pay £10,000.
“But somehow they didn’t suspect the husband. It was crazy. But because it was such a novel thing for them, they just didn’t know how to treat it.”
Dark web expert Eileen acts as a guide for presenter Yinka Bokkini as she takes a deep dive into the world of murder for hire sites in the two part documentary – which airs on Monday.
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Yinka scrawls through a horrifying list of 282 hits, in 60 countries, ordered and paid for on the Besa Mafia site in one year – from a 17-year-old in Canada who wants a love rival murdered, to a shooting ordered in New Cross, South East London.
The site, which claims to be run by Albanian gangsters, has a shopping list of services ranging from £4,000 for a “basic” killing, up to £50,000 for high profile sniper murders – all paid for in bitcoin.
“Death by shoot and run” averages £10,000, but the site advises the “exact amount depends on [the] difficulty of each job, including location and whether the target has bodyguards, carries a gun or other things that can make the job more difficult”.
Kidnapping is priced between £4,000 and £25,000, and arson is £3,000.
As in all dark web transactions, encryption protects the IP address and identity of the user to ensure anonymity.
£10,000 contract for murder
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The man behind the site is a mysterious figure called Yura, who appeared in disguise on TV to claim responsibility for Amy’s death in 2016.
In fact, it was a huge marketing ploy. The twist in the tale is that husband Stephen Allwine pulled the trigger himself after realising the whole site is a scam.
Over a period of six months, he posed as the scorned wife of Amy’s fictitious lover, claiming “this b**** has torn my life apart” and saying “I want this b**** dead”.
In fact while the deeply religious couple, who had an adopted son, appeared to be the perfect match to friends and family, Stephen was having adulterous affairs and using the services of escorts behind her back.
In the chilling messages, he coldly discussed the different ways in which his dog trainer wife could be killed, but instructed the hitman to “make it look like an accident” and “only get her and not the dad or kid”.
He also provided Besa Mafia with exact movements on a daily basis – down to where she would stop and buy food and petrol on an out-of-town trip.
In the days leading up to her death, Stephen – using his Dogdaygod tag – bought the powerful sedative scopolamine, found in large quantities in Amy’s body after her death.
Incredibly, when the FBI were told of the death threat, they warned the couple together and never asked Amy if she suspected her husband.
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‘Ordinary’ people pay for hits
After Stephen was charged, however, the hits for hire sites were taken more seriously and a slew of arrests of those who had conspired to murder by paying for the services on Besa Mafia were made.
One, Beau Brigham, was the son of a rich Hollywood restaurant and bar owner who tried to get his stepmother killed after his father’s death in order to cash in on the inheritance. He was jailed for three years.
Another, Illinois nurse Tina Jones, was sentenced to 12 years after attempting to get her lover’s wife killed, and, in a third case, a soldier put out a contract killing on his pregnant lover.
The people going on the dark web are those you would consider to be ordinary people that have beef with someone… The ones that have actually been caught so far could be your next door neighbour
Eileen Ormsby
“These are not people who have gang rivalries in the criminal world, because they would already know a potential hitman in real life,” says Eileen.
“The people who are going on the dark web are those you would consider to be ordinary people that have beef with someone. Quite often, it’s a former spouse or former spouse’s new partner, or it could be a business dispute.
“The ones that have actually been caught so far could be your next door neighbour.”
Death and rape threats
Eileen, who began researching the dark web in 2011, reveals she faced her own death threats from Yura, after revealing Besa Mafia as a scam site.
“We were chatting daily for a time when he was trying to get me to take down all my articles, asking me to please tell the world that his site was real because he was losing money,” she recalls.
“At one point he was threatening me, saying ‘I’m going to send my operatives around to beat you up, to rape you, to kill your family.’ He sounded quite unhinged.
“But at the same time, I knew that he didn’t have any operatives and he wasn’t going to send anyone around to kill me. I also knew that he didn’t really want anyone hurt, so I wasn’t particularly worried.
“In the end he even offered me a job, wanting me to make his site look more professional.”
It was absolutely shocking to me when I realised just how many people believed the website was genuine and were prepared to pay money to kill people
Eileen Ormsby
Eileen says the murder for hire sites are almost inevitably run by con artists who know their users can’t report the fraud without facing a long sentence themselves.
“For most things to be sold on the dark web, they have to be something that’s easily transferable to a repeat customer,” she says.
“Drugs are perfect because the drug dealers want people to come back over and over again, they can put it in the mail and no one needs to know who the dealers are.
“But most people don’t want more than one hit and once they’ve paid a huge amount of money anonymously to a hitman, he has absolutely no incentive whatsoever to carry out the hit.
“For that reason, it was absolutely shocking to me when I realised just how many people believed it was genuine and were prepared to pay money to kill people – and how normal these people otherwise seem to be.
“It could be anybody taking out a hit on you, and most people had no idea that they had this enemy somewhere that wanted to kill them.”
Targeted over divorce
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In the documentary, Yinka meets Nevada web designer Gabe Scott who was shocked to discover a hit had been ordered on him. The Besa Mafia site killer promised to shoot him in his car and “not stop until he’s dead”.
Kristy Felkins, his ex-wife and mother of his two children, pleaded guilty to plotting to kill him in March and is now facing a 10-year jail sentence.
“Finding out that someone had hired a hitman… made me want to live life and not just work and enjoy life later,” Gabe tells Yinka.
“Later might not come.”
He denied claims he was abusive, saying Felkins had made the accusation because she was “trying to save her own skin”.
He insists they were going through an amicable divorce at the time of the plot, and that she may have wanted to cash in on life insurance.
“What really bugs me is not me, it’s the kids. I’m their parent, someone they are going to lean on for the rest of their lives,” he says.
“So to say ‘this money means more to me than something that is so valuable to my kids’, that’s a line that’s crossed.”
How to Hire a Hitman airs on Channel 4 at 9pm on Monday June 20.
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