transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:03] On May 1st, 2023, I went to the Federal Courthouse in downtown San Francisco. My cousin Allen was on trial for hiring someone to kill his ex-wife, Priscilla. The man he hired was actually an undercover FBI agent who worked out of the San Francisco office, so the trial was in California. No way was I going to miss this. Nine months had passed since Allen was arrested in my father's backyard. Now, in the courtroom, he looked like he had aged 20 years in that time. Allen used to be fat and shiny, his bald head shown, as did his gadgets and his cars. He used to wear cowboy boots and big leather hats. Now, he was dressed in a white shirt and a gray blazer. Defense attorneys often counsel their clients on what to wear to trial. The plain white shirt could communicate respect for the court. The blazer was non-threatening. But it was Allen's physical transformation that struck me. He was thin, something he had never been. He was stooped. He had let his beard grow long and gray. Well played, Allen, I thought. We both grew up with stories of our very talented, very entrepreneurial and somewhat famous great grandfather. When he was arrested in Stalin's Russia, he grew a long gray beard to make sure he was perceived as an old man by the court. That didn't help our great grandfather. But maybe Allen thought it was worth trying in an American court. My family had learned a lot in the months since Allen was arrested. We already knew about the time he took his son, Oh, from Russia and moved to the US without telling Priscilla. And the time he took Oh from the US and went to Canada, again without telling Priscilla. Now we also knew about all the things that had happened to Priscilla during their separation. How she was evicted, beaten by hired thugs, arrested twice, held for two weeks. All of it, she believed, orchestrated by Allen. Hiring a hitman, if that's what he did, was just the latest thing and the worst one. The mind kept looking for a way to make what Allen did seem maybe a little less bad. Family and friends, especially those who were talking to my aunt, Liana, Allen's mother, were convinced or hoping to be convinced that Allen had somehow been set up. One of the men in my family told me that he'd heard that the undercover agent called Allen himself and said, I hear you have a problem. Would you like us to take care of it for you? Is there a murder for hire or a wallet found on the sidewalk? If he didn't intend to steal it, maybe it wasn't a crime? I knew what he was getting at. He thought Allen had been entrapped. But entrapment isn't much of a defense, morally speaking. I mean, wouldn't most people have said no? My father, he never voiced a theory of the case, but he kept texting me when I was in San Francisco. Tell me what's happening, he brought it. Don't make me wait for your write up. I knew that this was his way of saying, please tell me something to help me believe that Allen is innocent, or at least not guilty as hell. Even Priscilla, when I spoke to her on the eve of the trial, said that she felt sorry for Allen. The prosecutors had brought her to San Francisco to testify. And yet, I sensed she still didn't quite believe that Allen was capable of this. When I say that the mind kept looking for ways to absolve Allen, I do not mean my mind. My mind was at peace. In my mind, I had already tried and convicted Allen. My motivation for attending the trial was to watch the prosecution lay out the case so I could bring it back to my family, so they'd finally set aside their misguided doubts and misplaced sympathies. From Serial Productions and The New York Times, I am M. Gessen, and this is The Idiot. A jury trial is a play, put on for an audience of one dozen people. In Allen's trial, notably, all three of the lead roles, the judge, the prosecutor, and the public defender, were played by women. The judge was kind and unusually personable. She encouraged members of the jury to use the time during breaks to get to know one another, and suggested icebreakers. Maybe that's why, during the jury selection process, people were surprisingly open and detailed telling the stories of their own divorces and custody battles. The prosecutor, Ilham Husseini, seemed angry, like she was personally affronted by the details of the crime. Her star witness was the undercover FBI agent, the man Allen had hired to get rid of Priscilla. Allen knew him as David, so that his cover wouldn't be blown when David testified, members of the public, me and a couple of local crime reporters, had to leave the courtroom and watch a video feed from an adjoining room. The camera was trained on the witness box, but in such a way that we couldn't see the agent's face. By which I mean, we were staring at David's crotch. Gray pants, the edge of a striped teal tie, projected onto a large screen, while the prosecution played clips of surveillance audio. David testified that the investigation didn't start with Allen. It started with a different Russian speaker, a man named Alexei Kiselev. Kiselev was a sometime business partner of Allen's. A schemer in and around Washington, the sort of guy who leverages tenuous connections against imagined projects and very occasionally manages to make a buck. In 2019, Kiselev caught the FBI's attention. They suspected he was looking for someone to help launder billions of dollars. Those billions supposedly belonged to pro-Russian Ukrainian politicians who had been facing sanctions. The money may or may not have existed, and the case against him was eventually dropped. But for a couple of years, David had been posing as someone who could facilitate such transactions. And Kiselev was talking to David.

Speaker 2:
[06:02] Hello. Brother, how are you? It's Dave.

Speaker 1:
[06:05] And David was recording their conversations.

Speaker 3:
[06:07] Hey, Dave.

Speaker 1:
[06:09] In February 2022, just a couple of weeks after Allen got out of jail after being arrested for taking O to Canada, Russia invaded Ukraine. Kiselev floated a new business idea in his conversations with David. He wanted to get US government funding to make bulletproof vests for Ukraine.

Speaker 2:
[06:25] Where are you now?

Speaker 3:
[06:27] I'm a little bit from the Polish side. We just crossed here. We're helping with some supplies.

Speaker 2:
[06:35] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[06:35] And taking it over and, you know, it's a war.

Speaker 2:
[06:40] Yeah.

Speaker 3:
[06:40] We can work.

Speaker 1:
[06:43] War, bombs, bulletproof vests, money laundering. But also, Kisilev pivots to the subject of his friend, Allen. Our Allen. Allen needs help with something.

Speaker 3:
[06:53] So I was kind of bugging you a little bit about that issue that actually it's a guy who works without helping with moving stuff. He's in the US., he's in Boston. And he had his ex pretty much making hell out of his life. And she is from Africa. She got visa, I don't know how she took his kids. And basically, if anybody would look into really the reasons for her being in the US., there is none.

Speaker 2:
[07:20] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[07:21] David needs to change your subject.

Speaker 2:
[07:24] Let me ask you this. In a perfect world, right, what would be the best case scenario that your friend is looking for? I mean, because we have a range of options.

Speaker 3:
[07:38] Her visa will get revoked and she gets kicked out of the country, that's it.

Speaker 2:
[07:42] Okay. We do have a connection with somebody within... I don't know the specific agency. I don't know if it's INS or if it's the Customs, Immigration Customs Enforcement. I know we do have contacts. We've used these people in the past.

Speaker 1:
[08:02] David doesn't seem to know the intricacies of the US. Immigration system. The INS was disbanded more than 20 years ago. But no matter, he and Kisilev are quickly hatching a plan. A bribe will be sent to this person at INS or ICE or wherever who had arranged for the deportation. The bribe would be $100,000. David testified that he came up with a price tag on the spot, figuring that's what it would cost for some imaginary, highly placed government official to risk their imaginary job.

Speaker 3:
[08:30] Okay, it's great.

Speaker 2:
[08:31] Thank you very much for taking time.

Speaker 3:
[08:33] Yeah. It's important.

Speaker 2:
[08:34] Okay.

Speaker 3:
[08:35] Bye-bye. Bye.

Speaker 1:
[08:37] The FBI now had a new angle to explore, in addition to the possible money laundering, a potential bribery scheme. In the courtroom, David explained that the character he was playing was a money launderer, a gangster, the kind of person that in real life he would despise and actually try to put behind bars. But in his pretend life, David could launder billions of dollars, facilitate a bribe, get someone deported. He was there for all your illegal needs, and now he was there for my cousin Allen. A couple of months after this conversation, Kicillof set up a meeting for David and Allen in Florida.

Speaker 2:
[09:14] This is UCE 4735, and today is Thursday, June 2nd, 2022. It's approximately 11:55 AM. And this is a recording with Allen Gessen. The meeting's taken place at the Boca Raton Resort, Boca Raton, Florida.

Speaker 1:
[09:36] David had told Allen to meet him at the Boca Raton, in Boca Raton. You know, those places that added the to the name of the actual place to indicate that it's everything you ever imagined, but so much more. This resort has 19 bars and restaurants and four beach options. The Boca Raton. Allen drives up in a white rental car, an Audi sedan. The jury was shown surveillance photos. He meets David in the lobby, which is like an Italian castle, Florida version. David is wearing a wire. Which, as you're about to hear, is not great for field recording.

Speaker 4:
[10:10] Yeah, Allen.

Speaker 5:
[10:11] Hey, sorry.

Speaker 6:
[10:12] How are you?

Speaker 4:
[10:13] How are you?

Speaker 5:
[10:13] How you doing?

Speaker 6:
[10:14] Good.

Speaker 1:
[10:15] They fist bump. Allen is wearing what looks like a black cashmere sweater. David is dressed in all black. Polo shirt, shiny pointy black shoes. They're not dressed for Florida. Everyone around them is wearing light colors, but they're dressed to perform their roles. Allen is being international man of mystery. David is going full mafioso. They're macho. They're gangsters. They are the Allen and the Dave at the Boca Raton.

Speaker 6:
[10:40] Yeah.

Speaker 5:
[10:41] How are you?

Speaker 7:
[10:41] Excellent.

Speaker 5:
[10:42] Thanks for coming out.

Speaker 7:
[10:43] No, 100%.

Speaker 6:
[10:44] Yeah.

Speaker 7:
[10:45] Yeah.

Speaker 4:
[10:45] I read in my picture that a longer beard is in the end.

Speaker 5:
[10:48] I was like, what's going on?

Speaker 1:
[10:49] They take a shuttle to one of the Boca Raton's restaurants, the Marisol, where the seating is couches in earth tones and the view is beach umbrellas as far as the eye can see. On the way, Allen summarizes his very impressive career.

Speaker 4:
[11:02] In 2010, I started a massive diamond mining project in South Africa. It's sued to Congo and Gola.

Speaker 1:
[11:12] Millions of dollars, some misadventures, and a triumph or two later. Allen gets to the story of his marriage.

Speaker 4:
[11:19] But I went to Zimbabwe once to explore some opportunities there and met this incredibly beautiful woman, which was the end of me. Ms. Priscilla?

Speaker 5:
[11:31] Listen, I always say it's the bitches that will get you.

Speaker 1:
[11:34] It sounds like your problem. David testified on court that the character he was playing was crass. He seemed to have that part down. At the restaurant, it's David's turn to talk about how impressive and real he is.

Speaker 5:
[11:47] So, we have a lot of obviously business in South America, I'm sure. Alex has told you, so my clients are in Cartel Hanna, they're all, I'm gonna tell you right now, they're all Cartel level guys, they're all badasses. They are the real deal. They, when I talk, they don't have fuck you money, they have fuck everyone money, right? Like, you're talking hundreds of millions of dollars. I don't touch the product side, I don't want to have any fucking deal with the fucking coke, I don't want to do anything with any of that shit, but I just do the money stuff, I set up companies and we launder money and that's it. And it's been great, I've been doing it for 15, 20 years.

Speaker 1:
[12:25] Having established their gangster bonafides, Allen and The Undercover talk business. There are two items on the agenda, the bulletproof vest factory Allen wants to build, and Priscilla.

Speaker 5:
[12:36] Look, I understand, you know, through Alex that you have some problems. You know, I get it. You know, we have a solution for you, but I guess the question is, like, in a perfect world, tell me what you want.

Speaker 6:
[12:53] Tell me what you like.

Speaker 5:
[12:54] And there's a blank slate. Just tell me what you want.

Speaker 1:
[12:59] Allen says he wants Priscilla deported. He needs this for peace of mind.

Speaker 6:
[13:03] And you know, be able to come and harass us.

Speaker 4:
[13:05] Okay. All right.

Speaker 1:
[13:07] He doesn't want her to, quote, be able to come and harass us ever again. He then explains what he means by harass. A few months earlier, Priscilla had the nerve to tell the police that he had kidnapped Oh. But he had, in fact, been arrested for taking Oh across the border to Canada and spent five weeks in jail and was now awaiting trial and kidnapping charges. He tells David, let's just say that I'm a little bit pissed off.

Speaker 7:
[13:31] Let's just say that I'm a little bit pissed off.

Speaker 5:
[13:33] Yeah, yeah. No, I get it. Yeah.

Speaker 7:
[13:34] But it's a woman who will go the length of the world to make my life miserable.

Speaker 1:
[13:41] But it's a woman who will go the length of the world to make my life miserable, Allen says. Women, am I right?

Speaker 5:
[13:47] Yeah, I'm telling you, man. Yeah, like I said, historically, over time, men have made the worst decisions when it comes to women. I don't know what it is. They're that aphrodisiac. It's that weakness or Achilles heel. But yeah, I understand that. I wish I had known you earlier because a lot of that shit we could have cleaned up. There's no doubt about that. Let's just put it this way. That would never have happened in my family.

Speaker 1:
[14:20] Amid all this bro-y, gang-stree, hot air, the vaguest outlines of a plan appear. A bribe will be paid. Some government officials will pull some strings, and Priscilla will be ordered to leave the country. And it will cost $100,000. At first, Allen seems taken aback by the price tag.

Speaker 6:
[14:39] Now, I'll need to pitch that to Allen, because he's going to handle the material side of things. Because he never mentioned to me any, like he didn't mention to me the payment side.

Speaker 1:
[14:50] Kiselyov didn't discuss the money with Allen, he explains. But he quickly recovers from the sticker shock.

Speaker 6:
[14:55] The price is eminently reasonable for what it's worth, so there's no question that it's a good investment.

Speaker 1:
[15:04] Allen's done the math. He'd pay more in child support.

Speaker 7:
[15:08] I'll pay more in child support.

Speaker 5:
[15:09] Oh, yeah, you would. Yeah, I can guarantee you.

Speaker 1:
[15:15] After everything Priscilla had gone through to get to the US to see her son again, Allen was going to send her back to Zimbabwe. After everything Oh had gone through, being separated from his mother for two and a half years, meeting her again, watching his father get arrested, going to live with his mother and a sister he barely knew, Allen was going to yank him away from Priscilla again. And he was going to deprive Elle, who was three, of the only parent she had ever known. All for the eminently reasonable price of $100,000. And we hadn't even gotten to the Murder for Hire plot yet. On the tape, Allen and David move on to the details of the bulletproof vest factory scheme. This part of the conversation goes a little less smoothly. Allen had it all figured out. They'd get US government funding and build a factory, and he thought David was in a position to get him that money. David though is much more interested in the bribe part. In court, he testified that he went to the meeting expecting to talk about the deportation scheme, not the factory. But he is nimble. He tells Allen that he could bring in money from the Colombian drug cartels to invest in the factory. Remember, the FBI has been trying for years to get Kiselyov and now Allen on money laundering. But Allen isn't really incriminating himself. He actually expresses some concerns about the drug money. After an hour or so, the conversation turns back to Priscilla. Allen says, quote, the first order of business is to get her the fuck out of here, end quote, to get Priscilla deported. Or, and this is where he suddenly, offhandedly, turns the conversation in a different direction. This is the heart of the prosecution's case. Let's listen carefully.

Speaker 7:
[17:04] Yeah. But instantly, there's a cheaper way to get rid of her, is not that it looks cool.

Speaker 1:
[17:08] If there's a cheaper way to get rid of her.

Speaker 5:
[17:10] I mean, I have, listen. I have family in your area.

Speaker 1:
[17:18] Remember, David is supposed to be a mafioso. That's the kind of family he's talking about. A minute later, he will refer to Friends in the North End, historically an Italian neighborhood in Boston. His opening for Allen, A Door to the Underworld.

Speaker 5:
[17:34] So I don't know how to say this, but like there is a cheaper way and probably a more permanent way to do it, but...

Speaker 1:
[17:43] A more permanent way. In case Allen didn't understand what David was getting at.

Speaker 6:
[17:47] Is this?

Speaker 5:
[17:48] Yeah. I mean, that's up to you.

Speaker 6:
[17:51] I'm pretty much afraid to proceed.

Speaker 1:
[17:53] Allen would like to proceed. The time that elapses between the agent saying, that's up to you and Allen's agreement to proceed with the more permanent option is a fraction of a second. He doesn't take a breath. He doesn't pretend to consider the decision. He doesn't double check that he understood the agent correctly. He doesn't even ask how much money he'll save by going for the cheaper option. He jumps right in with both feet. And then it gets worse. Allen says that he had looked into this more permanent option before. That he talked to Israelis and Eastern Europeans and Italians, and the lowest estimate he got was $220,000. The prosecutor stopped the tape and repeated what Allen had said. I researched my sources, the lowest price was $220,000, and then that is run through the Israelis and Eastern Europe and Italy. She asked the undercover agent what he had understood Allen to be saying. The agent answered, my understanding was that Mr. Gessen had already researched the option to kill his wife, and had been in conversation or had done some research with other organized crime syndicates, in this case Israelis or Eastern Europe, for the price of $220,000. The agent, who had worked on Murder for Hire cases before, testified in court that it hit his cheek. He'd seen people agree to kill someone for as little as $200. On the tape, David assures Allen that his friends in the North End are more dependable and affordable than those other guys, the Israelis or the Eastern Europeans, and adds that they can get the job done quickly. Allen likes this, and he clarifies, more definite.

Speaker 5:
[19:37] And more definite. Permanent.

Speaker 1:
[19:41] The prosecutor asked, When you heard Mr. Gessen say and more definite, what was your understanding of that? The agent answered, More definite is permanent, dead. I'd seen FBI agents testify in court before. Often I've been skeptical. Their interpretations of what people say to them can be far-fetched. Their entrapment techniques are often crude and mendacious. I've seen cases where the undercover agent talks a person into a crime they had no intention of committing. But this was different. I couldn't imagine any alternative interpretation of the tape I'd just heard. Allen wanted Priscilla killed, and he wanted David to know that he wanted Priscilla killed. He said that with the bribery scheme, he was worried that Priscilla could fight her deportation in court and maybe even win. Murder is better than deportation that way.

Speaker 5:
[20:32] Of course, we can handle that. I just didn't know what your appetite for that was. But if you feel that way and we can make that happen, it will be very clean, it'll be quick, and it will be final. But you got to tell me if that's the route that you want to take.

Speaker 6:
[20:48] My single concern is, are you to be sure that you can knock off for the kids?

Speaker 1:
[20:54] This is the only thing that gives Allen pause. He doesn't want the kids to see their mother getting killed.

Speaker 5:
[21:00] No, no, no.

Speaker 4:
[21:00] God, God, please.

Speaker 5:
[21:02] Yeah, no, no, no. You know, we're all family, man. Like, this is strictly business.

Speaker 6:
[21:06] Okay, no, because, like, if that was my one concern, that's really easy. You know, I want to make sure that, like, forever, obviously, I'm not sure.

Speaker 5:
[21:15] No, no, no, no, no, no. No, this would be, this would be a very clean, professional job.

Speaker 1:
[21:20] Reassured, Allen asks about the cost.

Speaker 5:
[21:23] I think it's probably half the cost, to tell you the truth. Yeah.

Speaker 6:
[21:27] Much easier. Much easier.

Speaker 5:
[21:28] Okay.

Speaker 6:
[21:29] Very happy to proceed with it.

Speaker 5:
[21:30] Okay.

Speaker 6:
[21:31] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[21:31] Very happy to proceed with it. What a productive meeting for the undercover agent. He came for bribery and was leaving with Murder for Hire. Now, he just needed Allen to confirm that he intended to go through with it, so that when Allen eventually went to trial, he couldn't say that he was misunderstood. And now, here we were, at that trial, listening to and looking at all the times and all the ways, Allen said that yes, he really meant it. He wanted Priscilla killed.

Speaker 5:
[22:04] But you have to be sure that this is what you're... Okay.

Speaker 1:
[22:07] This is the first time. The agent asks Allen if he is sure, and Allen says, I'm sure. And he adds, I'm sure.

Speaker 2:
[22:17] And this is more like spur of the moment than just the reaction.

Speaker 5:
[22:20] This sounds like it's been well thought out. Listen, yeah, I didn't want to. I'm glad we talked about it, because that's honestly, that's the way I would have handled it. But that's the guy. You got to be comfortable. Okay, good. All right.

Speaker 1:
[22:33] Allen says that this is not an emotional decision, not spur of the moment. He's comfortable with it.

Speaker 5:
[22:38] Sometimes they dig their own fucking pretty. Right, yeah.

Speaker 7:
[22:42] Don't fuck with me.

Speaker 1:
[22:44] There's a bit more back and forth. David will need pictures of Priscilla, location, everything for the people who will do the job. And then, just like that, Allen is showing David pictures of the kids.

Speaker 7:
[22:56] This is my son.

Speaker 5:
[22:57] Ah, what's his name?

Speaker 6:
[22:58] His name is F***.

Speaker 7:
[23:00] And then, this is my daughter. Beautiful.

Speaker 6:
[23:06] Gorgeous.

Speaker 7:
[23:07] I can get you to know each other.

Speaker 5:
[23:08] Yeah, gorgeous. As long as that.

Speaker 1:
[23:13] Beautiful kids, beautiful poodle, beautiful life. The only problem is Priscilla. Surely, after seeing these photos, David would see what a great father Allen was. Surely, he would feel even better about helping Allen get rid of the fly and the ointment. But David has a question. What is this going to do to the kids emotionally?

Speaker 5:
[23:35] How do we protect the kids? Like, I guess they're too young to, they're young too. But how do we, how do we protect the kids?

Speaker 6:
[23:44] Look, they're going to lose their mother, right? She's fucking gone.

Speaker 5:
[23:47] How do we protect the kids?

Speaker 1:
[23:52] As long as they're not witnessed to violence. That's the word he used, violence.

Speaker 5:
[23:56] No, they're not. They won't be. Yeah, they won't be. I mean, she'll be, she'll be taken out without them present. Then I guess you can explain it, how you explain it. But just know that, you know, like, I, I, now that I'm seeing pictures of that, I just want to make sure that they're okay. I got a heart, too, you know? Like, I, you know, don't get me wrong, I'll put the light switch when I need to. But, you know, when I look at those kids like that, you know, they're beautiful to me. I just want to make sure they're okay, you know?

Speaker 1:
[24:23] The undercover agent is methodical. He keeps coming closer to saying she will be killed. And he keeps pushing Allen to consider the hypothetical stakes. The children will lose their mother forever. Allen blithely keeps incriminating himself. As long as the kids wouldn't see the murder happen, he didn't have other concerns. They wrap up their meeting. Allen has a plane to catch. The undercover agent has a lot to work with.

Speaker 2:
[24:49] This is UC 4735, and today is Thursday, June 2nd, 2022. And this is the conclusion of the recorded conversation with Allen Gessen.

Speaker 1:
[25:07] Normally, after hearing someone testify for hours, especially if the testimony was colorful, which this certainly had been, I tried to chat with the other reporters in the courtroom. But this time, I didn't feel like doing that, because I didn't feel like explaining why I had come all the way from New York to cover this case. I didn't feel like telling anyone that the defendant was my first cousin. The one person in the audience that I really wanted to talk to about all of this wouldn't talk to me. My aunt Lena, Allen's mother, was there dressed as she usually was in elegant and hip all black. I saw Allen smile warmly to her when he was brought into the courtroom, but she generally sat out of my line of sight. It had been almost a year since she'd spoken to me or my father. Soon after Allen was arrested, she became furious with my father for inviting Priscilla and the kids to Cape Cod for Labor Day weekend and not inviting her. She accused my father of siding with the FBI, which she thought had framed Allen. In a huff, she left the family Facebook chat. Weeks and months later, my father tried to reach out to her to offer help. He'd heard that she was struggling financially, but she rebuffed him. At the end of the first day of the trial, Liana wrote a long post on Facebook about how Allen had been framed, and even though I, a journalist, was in the courtroom, I wasn't doing anything to help him. She was not wrong. In a different case, I might have spent time wondering why Kiselev hadn't shown up for this meeting with David, and why the undercover agent had seemed to think the meeting was organized to discuss Priscilla, while Allen thought they'd be talking about the bulletproof vest factory. I might have focused on how manipulative the undercover agent had been, how he kept fanning the flames of Allen's fury with his comments about women who ruined men's lives. But Allen was just so happy to be led down this road. He seemed to care about only four things, speed, permanence, the price of course, and not having the children witness their mom's murder. Three weeks after the conversation in Boca Raton, Allen and David met again, this time at a kosher steakhouse in the financial district of Manhattan. The recording of that conversation was played in court too. They went over logistics. David advised Allen to get out of state when the operation goes down. Later, he told him to use his credit card to establish his alibi. They discussed the price again, $50,000, half upfront, half upon completion. As a show of good faith, Allen gave David a gold coin. He had been carrying it around in his wallet.

Speaker 5:
[27:38] I haven't touched gold in a while.

Speaker 3:
[27:41] Good, it's funny.

Speaker 5:
[27:41] Yeah, it's heavy.

Speaker 3:
[27:42] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[27:45] They Googled its market price, $1,950. The undercover agent agreed to round up. So Allen would now need to transfer $23,000 for the job to get done, and another $25,000 when it was over. The contract was for consulting. And once again, the undercover agent gets Allen to reconfirm who really wants to go through with having Priscilla killed.

Speaker 5:
[28:07] Again, this is a serious business, right? You open that window, you can't close it, right? So I just want to make sure you're comfortable with it, and know that it is a permanent solution, right? Because this is final, and it'll be done, and you can handle your business after that, and get on with your life.

Speaker 1:
[28:29] Allen is good with the final solution.

Speaker 5:
[28:35] 100%. We're not massage, but we're good.

Speaker 1:
[28:41] A few days after this meeting, Allen and Lana brought the children to the fourth birthday party for my brother's kid in Brooklyn. The theme of the party was Frozen. Priscilla was on her way to New York, too, to spend a few days in the city with Owen and Al. I noticed that Allen and Lana were unusually subdued during the party. The party was at a playground. Kids ran in sprinklers and then ate frozen cake, and the birthday child changed in and out of frozen dresses. Allen and Lana, who brought their poodle, took turns sitting on a bench just outside the playground with the dog, because dogs weren't allowed inside the fence. And, Allen explained, while he was awaiting trial on the kidnapping charge, he had to be on his best behavior. He also asked me and my brother Keith, who is also a writer, for advice on selling a memoir of his weeks in jail. It was sitting in the courtroom listening to the wire recordings that I realized, by the time of that birthday party, Allen had already had his second meeting with David, the undercover agent. It had probably happened during the same trip to New York. And two weeks after that birthday party, Allen sent David a target package. Priscilla's address, the license plate of her car, the name and location of the man she was then seeing, with comments like, when children are with ex-husband, subject stays at her boyfriend's house in Cambridge. When without children, subject goes out. Over the next two weeks, texting over signal, Allen and David finalized the date of the planned hit. They discussed the importance of a solid alibi. Allen would be out of town with the kids. I knew where that was, at my father's house on Cape Cod. Then David texted this, one quick question. If there are any guests present, do you have any problem with showing them the exit? My guys said we need to plan for extra guests at the show. In court, the undercover agent explained what that meant. I was asking Mr. Gessen, if there was anybody with his ex-wife at the time we were going to conduct the killing, would he have any problem with us killing that person as well? Allen responded, I am absolutely ambivalent to the modalities and circumstances as long as we achieve project objectives. Additional unexpected expenses are part of doing business. This message would be quoted over and over again during the trial, so I'm going to repeat it too. I am absolutely ambivalent to the modalities and circumstances as long as we achieve project objectives. Additional unexpected expenses are part of doing business. By ambivalent, Allen seems to have meant indifferent. By unexpected expenses, he meant dead people. By doing business, he meant having Priscilla murdered. In between arranging the details of Priscilla's murder, Allen sent David pictures of the kids vacationing with him. After he signed off on killing extra people as necessary, Allen texted, When sailing today, oh, steadying yachting. David responded priceless. What more can I say? Allen, that is a father you appreciate another father who cares. David, 100%. Your kids and your grandchildren will appreciate you and honor you in the way you deserve. Allen, thank you, my brother. Our cause is just. The prosecutor asked, any response from you to that? I couldn't say any more, the agent said. I was just stunned. I wished I could see the agent's face rather than his crotch. Was he really stunned? Maybe. He did seem to have a reaction whenever Allen talked about his kids. A reaction that didn't seem to be tied to the needs of the investigation. I mean, even I was kind of stunned. But mostly, I was mad. My father texted 10 minutes before the court ended for the day, asking for a recap. I summed up the undercover agent's testimony. My father texted back, thank you. I felt like I could hear that thank you. It was the kind of thank you you say when you lose hope. I couldn't give my father anything to make him feel better. No excuse or explanation or even the slightest bit of understanding for Allen's actions, because how can you understand someone who says or causes just about killing his children's mother? I mean, what was there to understand? A few more people took the stand. The police detective from Concord who investigated Allen's kidnapping case, Priscilla. The jury heard more crazy and horrible things about Allen. Not that they needed to hear anymore, after the day of listening to the undercover recordings. It seemed crazy to think that anyone could try to defend themselves in the face of, well, in the face of themselves, incriminating themselves on tape over and over and over again. But Allen, being Allen, was going to try. That's after the break. Many criminal defendants don't testify at their own trials. The jury has already heard the prosecution's case, and they're thinking there's at least a good chance that the defendant is lying. Most people, even when they're telling the truth, struggle to sound consistent, convincing, and sympathetic. And it's hard to keep your wits about you under cross-examination. So most defense attorneys advise most of their clients to leave the talking to the professionals. The public defender, Candace Mitchell, had decades of experience in public service. Mitchell was also a black woman like Priscilla. Lucky Allen to have her addressing the jury on his behalf. But this was Allen, the guy who was fired from his one and only law firm job for basically acting like he knew better than everyone else. The guy who wrote a two-page email to a police detective trying to convince him that taking him to Canada in violation of a court order was innocuous behavior. The guy who had never been in a room he didn't expect to win over. Of course Allen took the stand and stayed on it for a day and a half. To be sure, this was a very different Allen than I'd seen before. This was thin Allen, old Allen, stooped Allen with a long beard. The Allen I knew was the biggest presence at any family gathering and were not exactly a group of wallflowers. This Allen spoke so softly that even with amplification, everyone's trained to hear him. Within a couple of minutes of taking the stand, Allen was crying. He was recalling the first months of O's life. O was born in Zimbabwe at 26 weeks. No one knew if he could survive. O spent 78 days in the NICU. Allen asked for tissues. And a few seconds later, led by his defense attorney, he was talking about money, about paying off the security guards at the hospital in Harare to bring in equipment, and as he claimed, quote, rebuild the whole neonatal unit. He said that he installed oxygen tanks and humidifiers and changed the lighting to make it more diffused and covered the incubators and installed speakers in the incubators to play Chopin and Debussy. The defense seemed to be trying to show that Allen was a devoted father, but also more important, that he was used to solving his problems by bribing people. So this was Allen's defense, that he bribed his way through life and that all he ever wanted was to bribe someone to get Priscilla deported, but not to have her killed. Only he didn't think it would cost so much money. Quote, well, my first thought was that I didn't have a hundred thousand dollars. In fact, he had no money at all. He was in debt. But he couldn't say this to David because he had to project success. Instead, after talking about the bulletproof vest factory and after coffee, Allen asked David about a cheaper way to get rid of her. What do you think that would be? His defense attorney asked. Quote, I think it's the Immigration Customs Enforcement who actually take people and physically remove them from the United States. Meaning, he thought that instead of bribing some highly placed official to deport Priscilla through the immigration court system, Allen would be bribing ice officers to remove her from the country physically. This was long before just this sort of thing. Masked ice officers physically grabbing people, shoving them into unmarked vans, and having them transported to third countries, was in the news all the time. Rather, Allen testified, he got the idea from movies. What about throwing the words definite and permanent around? Here, Allen offered a whole linguistic analysis. It was David who used the word permanent. Allen had said definite. And he said, quote, for me, the word definite means something that is certain to happen, that is more likely to happen. Now David's response to it is permanent, which is very different from definite. Permanent is something that's irreversible, unquote. As for his concerns about not exposing children to violence, he meant just the grab and drag Priscilla out of the room for some kind of violence, not the killing kind. Allen claimed that he didn't write some of the signal messages that had been entered into evidence. But yes, he did write the I am absolutely ambivalent one. He explained that the tone of my response is kind of I'm on holiday with kids, why are you bothering me? And he explained what the exchange supposedly meant. There may be other illegal immigrants present when the raid happens, and they will be exited, meaning removed from the country. Like maybe they'd grab Priscilla's sister who was also in the US., or the Zimbabwean family she was staying with. So yes, he didn't want Priscilla killed, only stuffed in the trunk of a car possibly with other people who happened to be around, and driven out of the country. And once Priscilla was eventually back in Zimbabwe, they would quote, co-parent internationally. Ilhan Hosseini, the prosecutor, seemed really angry now. Outraged that Allen, a lawyer, would do everything he appeared to have done. Kidnap Oh, kidnap Oh again, and then arranged to have Priscilla killed while claiming that he wanted her only well kidnapped. I was right there with her. I couldn't believe Allen's chutzpah in taking the stand, in expecting anyone to take his defense seriously. I mean, I literally couldn't believe most of what he said. Neither could Ms. Hussaini. On cross-examination, she had these kinds of exchanges with Allen. Question. Once she was deported yesterday, you said you planned to co-parent with her internationally. Answer. Correct. And that made sense to you? At the time, yes. You both lived in Boston, and you want her deported to Zimbabwe so you can both co-parent internationally. Um, yes. The two of you living in Boston, is that closer in terms of geography or the United States and Zimbabwe? Definitely in Boston is closer than Boston and Zimbabwe. Nonetheless, your goal was not to separate Priscilla from the children, was it? When she was done with him, Ilham Hosseini hadn't just destroyed Allen's defense. She thoroughly humiliated him. This made me happy. What the hell was wrong with me? I think I can honestly say that I had never before enjoyed seeing someone humiliated in public. If a movie or a play contains even a hint of ridicule, if the director is mean to their characters, I find it unbearable to watch. And here I was, rejoicing in the ritual shaming of my cousin, a person I can still see as a naked pudgy baby with a full head of curls. And the person I identified most with at the trial was the prosecutor. This too had never happened to me. I'd never thought you'd go girl when watching an assistant US attorney pound away at a defendant whom she wants to get locked up. I have covered dozens of trials in this country and elsewhere. I spent a couple of years immersed in American terrorism trials, where most of the evidence came from FBI agents. I'd seen defendants who had done monstrous things, like set off bombs at the Boston Marathon. And stupid things, like dispose of the evidence. And I'd never before wanted anyone, anyone, to get the maximum sentence. I had never before disregarded defense arguments so completely. And I'd never before trusted the testimony of an undercover agent so fully. If I pause to think about it, I'd have to note that there was something very odd about some of those signal messages, which were shown not as screenshots, but as pictures of a phone taken with another phone, and which contained incorrect ages for both kids. But even though I have known the FBI to manufacture evidence, I had no patience for the public defender's focus on these strange messages. And also, no empathy. The jury deliberated for just a few hours. There couldn't have been much of a disagreement. Guilty, I texted my father. Understood, he responded. Nine minutes later, he added, As you might have guessed, I am not surprised. None of us had any doubt anymore.

Speaker 8:
[42:36] When she said guilty, I literally, I just burst into tears. I didn't expect that. But I felt it was like a huge sense of relief.

Speaker 1:
[42:50] I had been checking in with Priscilla throughout the trial. At the beginning, she was reserved, focused on her own testimony. Then she finally got angry that Allen valued her life, or I guess her death so little that he had haggled wanting to get rid of her on the cheap. Her sense of relief now came from having other people see what she had been through, but also what she hadn't wanted to see, what she had tried to push away by feeling sorry for Allen. The verdict said Allen is rotten, objectively rotten. It was no longer her private war with Allen. It was now the United States versus Allen Gessen. I could hear the relief in Priscilla's voice, and I thought I could hear something else too. Priscilla had done so much waiting for documents, visas, court decisions, then for this trial, and now finally, Allen would be locked away, and Priscilla could start living her life.

Speaker 8:
[43:44] I think that the one thing that I lost throughout this experience was the feeling as though my life was valuable. So the amount of care and attention that's been given to investigating this, to protecting me, kind of made me start feeling like I was a person. I didn't have to deserve to be alive, and that is something that I am forever grateful for.

Speaker 1:
[44:24] This is going to be the first story in my career where the FBI are the good guys.

Speaker 8:
[44:30] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[44:40] What sentence do you want for him now?

Speaker 8:
[44:42] The maximum, really like the maximum.

Speaker 1:
[44:46] Me too, Priscilla, me too. The maximum sentence possible was 10 years. And assuming he gets 10 years or thereabouts, have you given any thought to what happens when he comes out of prison?

Speaker 8:
[45:01] I'm hoping they find something else. He should just remain where he is.

Speaker 1:
[45:06] Priscilla was hoping that Allen would serve his time somewhere far away from her and the kids, because she was afraid he'd get someone, maybe someone he met in prison, to come after her. I couldn't understand why. She had felt haunted by Allen for almost four years now. She hadn't felt safe walking or driving or even being in her own apartment. The one time she let her guard down, when she thought they'd reached an agreement, he hired someone to kill her. If I were Priscilla, I'm sure I would want Allen to be locked up forever. If I were Priscilla, that would feel like justice. But I'm not Priscilla. I should be able to see the bigger picture. And in this bigger picture, things had shifted. It was Allen who was alone now, fighting for his life. Yes, I thought that his soft voice and his tears might be an act, and his long beard and stooped posture at least in part a costume. But I also knew that he had been in jail for almost a year, that he had lost his adored son and his nifty life full of gadgets and Tinder matches, his businesses, his ambitions, and would surely lose his law license. I knew that the American prison system is inhumane, that it doesn't help people become better, and that in the end, it offers victims almost nothing too. I wasn't even a victim in this case, and yet, I wanted vengeance. Was it time to admit that I was a hypocrite, who opposed carceral justice only when it was about strangers, not when it was about my own family? As a journalist, I try to exercise what's called strategic empathy, to understand why people do what they do, even if what they do is ultimately unjustifiable. And maybe I had to admit now that this approach was always more about being strategic than about feeling empathy. But when it came to my cousin Allen, I couldn't even find my way to strategic empathy. I couldn't even imagine what he was thinking, much less what he was feeling when he did all the horrible things he did. But then that changed. I came to know, or at least think I know, what was going through Allen's head. I even came to feel a kind of affinity for him. I mean, it got to the point where, on the morning after my own wedding, I picked out some photos of O and L to send to Allen in prison so he would see how beautiful they looked. All it took to get there was 35 hours of phone conversations with Allen, some of the strangest interviews I've ever conducted. That's next time on The Idiot. The Idiot was reported and written by me, M. Gessen, and produced by Daniel Guillemet with Andrey Barzemka and Lika Kremer of Libra Libra Studios. Our editor is Julie Snyder. Additional editing by Ira Glass and Sarah Koenig. Research and fact checking by Ben Phelan and Marisa Robertson-Texter. Original score by Alison Leighton-Brown. Additional music from Dan Powell and Maryan Lozano. The show was mixed by Phoebe Wang with additional mixing by Katherine Anderson. Additional production by Fieh Benan. At Serial Productions, Ndei Chubu is our supervising producer. Mac Miller is our associate producer. Video production by Sean Devaney. Art direction from Kelly Doe. Art by John Kern. Credits music by Bob Dylan. At The New York Times, our standards editor is Susan Westling. Legal review by Alamin Sumar, Dana Greene, Jackson Bush, and Tim Tai. Our senior operations manager is Elizabeth Davis-Morner, and Sam Dolnik is deputy managing editor of The New York Times. To find out about our upcoming shows and more about this show, sign up for the newsletter at nytimes.com/serialnewsletter. Special thanks to Andrew Sainzling and Tobin Love. The Idiot is a production of Serial Productions and The New York Times.