- 7 minutes ago
Eric Immesberger posed as a hit man in undercover operations to gather evidence against people attempting to hire one. He is a former agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who spent 21 years with the ATF investigating violent crime, including firearms trafficking, organized criminal crews, and murder-for-hire plots.
Movies and TV often portray murder for hire as a clean, professional transaction. In reality, it's rare, emotionally driven, and far easier to unravel than people expect. During Immesberger's undercover work, what he encountered wasn't criminal precision, but panic, unrealistic expectations, and mistakes that often created evidence almost immediately — the very things that allow law enforcement to intervene early and stop violence before anyone is killed.
Immesberger retired in 2019.
For more:
https://www.ericimmesberger.com/
https://www.instagram.com/ericimmesberger
Movies and TV often portray murder for hire as a clean, professional transaction. In reality, it's rare, emotionally driven, and far easier to unravel than people expect. During Immesberger's undercover work, what he encountered wasn't criminal precision, but panic, unrealistic expectations, and mistakes that often created evidence almost immediately — the very things that allow law enforcement to intervene early and stop violence before anyone is killed.
Immesberger retired in 2019.
For more:
https://www.ericimmesberger.com/
https://www.instagram.com/ericimmesberger
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FunTranscript
00:00My name is Eric Immersberger. I'm a retired ATF agent who worked murder-for-hire cases,
00:05and I've spent decades infiltrating, investigating, and working undercover
00:10to disrupt violent plots across the nation. And this is how crime works.
00:17These are targeted crimes. There's nothing random about a murder-for-hire. The public
00:23would be amazed at sometimes the value of human life is so little. I've seen people would be
00:31willing to kill somebody over a lot less than $5,000, a lot less.
00:41The vast number of murder-for-hire cases are the personal relationship. The most common of those
00:48cases are the husband-wife, the husband-girlfriend, another family member. This is an emotional
00:55divorce. This is a child custody dispute. This is a money-driven dispute. Proceeds of a business,
01:02marital assets. There's a question of a lot of money. When we're involved as law enforcement
01:08on doing the undercovers on these, most typically somebody has gotten himself into trouble on a
01:16completely unrelated criminal case. They're now sitting in an interview room, and they want to
01:22help themselves. And they say, I know somebody that's looking to get somebody to commit a murder.
01:29They give the information. They introduce an undercover to the person looking to have this
01:34murder committed, and then we do what we do. On a murder-for-hire investigation, the target that
01:42you're meeting as an undercover, the whole premise of that type of investigation or that type of
01:47undercover is this person wants another person killed, and you're going to find out who that person is.
01:54They believe they're talking to somebody that's going to be able to commit a murder
01:59at their instruction. I've done undercover assignments, purchasing firearms. Really, that's the bread and butter
02:09of what ATF does. But murder-for-hire, as a general type of undercover, it's really a niche type of
02:17case
02:18that ATF has really perfected in how we investigate it, how we evaluate it. I've worked on a few murder
02:26-for-hire
02:26cases, one of which I was the undercover that went the distance, as we say. We had two meetings the
02:34same
02:34night. There were numerous overt acts committed by the target. He paid me to do this. He provided
02:44me a photograph of his estranged wife. He gave me a floor plan of her apartment. We drove together during
02:51the first meeting. He pointed out, there's her apartment window. That's her car. That's where she
02:56works every day. He gave me her daily schedule. So these are all overt acts. This has gone beyond just
03:04talk. He wanted this done. This case came to our attention in the way that most of them come to
03:12our
03:13attention. Somebody got in trouble. So in this particular case with John Clevenger in 1999, a person
03:20had been arrested for a relatively low offense, but it was a crime. He had been arrested multiple times
03:27for DWI driving under the influence. And he was a business owner and he needed one thing. He needed
03:35his driver's license to not be revoked. That was all he was looking for. And when he found himself in
03:43the
03:43interview room, he said, my ace in the hole, I know someone that's trying to find someone to have his
03:51estranged wife killed. I'm willing to make an introduction with an undercover to Clevenger.
04:00He let Clevenger know, hey, somebody's going to call you about what you want done. His name is
04:07Nicky. That was my undercover name. Then I was provided a phone number to call Clevenger.
04:14The initial call had one goal to set up a face-to-face meeting. That call was probably less than
04:22a
04:22minute. Hey, this is Nicky. I heard you need a piece of work done. If somebody ever said a piece
04:28of
04:28work done, there was no mistaking that for anything other than a murder. A piece of work, that's street
04:39reference to murder. Mission accomplished. I set up a face-to-face meeting. My initial contact, the first
04:49time I spoke to the target, John Clevenger, on the telephone was September 7th of 1999 in North Kansas
05:00City, Missouri. I met with him at about 8 o'clock at night in a McDonald's parking lot. I met
05:06with him
05:06again in the same parking lot at 10 o'clock that night. I can't say, all right, think about it.
05:14Call me in a week. I can't have a potential victim out there. I don't know who else he's dealing
05:21with.
05:26The guy I was dealing with, not a passing emotion. He was intent on having this murder committed.
05:35One of the foundational principles when we do these murder-for-hire cases is as the undercover,
05:42we want to dial out the micro-emotional person where the feeling is going to pass.
05:50Every time I gave him an opportunity to back out, end this conversation, end this talk,
05:58end this plot. I'm not backing out. I want this done. Some of the phrasing that he used was,
06:07she ripped my heart out, she threw it in the dirt, and she put a footprint on it. I can't
06:14live with
06:15this anymore. I think she's been unfaithful. He then provided the same night, I've thought about
06:23just going and killing her myself and then killing myself. I have tried to get somebody to do this.
06:32It didn't progress. I found another person to kill my estranged wife. I paid him $4,500. He just hasn't
06:43done it yet. Or he stole my money. Or, you know, a few different excuses he gave of why it
06:50wasn't done.
06:51But the fact is, there is a real victim that there's somebody out there that's already agreed to do this
06:58and taken money. By his admission, I'm hitman number three that he's dealing with.
07:04So this is a person that is far gone beyond the micro-emotional, yeah, I'm a hothead talk tonight,
07:14but I'm going to wake up tomorrow and I don't want this done. This is a guy that's predisposed
07:20to this offense, meaning he has actually tried to make this happen long before I came into the
07:28picture before he met me. Don't make somebody a criminal. We investigate criminals. As they say
07:34in Missouri, we're fishing in the right pond. I'm investigating a real criminal. And we don't
07:39suggest to them at all. They do the talking. And they, in most times, can't wait to unburden themselves
07:48to tell you all about it. This is what I do. This is what I've thought about. This, I think,
07:54would be a good idea. And at that point, you know, all the mental checkboxes, elements of the crime,
08:00the intent, the payment, overt acts, all the emotional statements, all taken together, examined
08:09as a whole, this needs to be stopped immediately.
08:19We provide no advice. If you think about it like I am giving you the stage, I am giving
08:27you a microphone to talk to me. I don't want you to hear me telling you, well, this is how
08:36I would do this. This is how I would do that. I want to know what you've thought about. I
08:42want
08:42you to tell me how do you want this done. This is what you're going to say. This is how
08:46you're
08:46going to get in the front door. This is how you're going to get my wife to open her door.
08:49She'll open the door. Say this. The method that it got distilled down to, I don't want
08:55her to suffer, knock her out, and stab her to death. He believed his wife was involved
09:02in cocaine. She was working in a bar, and I think she's selling cocaine. So when you kill
09:09her, I want you to sprinkle cocaine on a plate, throw it on the floor, throw some money on
09:17the floor. I think it was very specific that he wanted the cocaine diluted or cut up, as
09:23we say, with baking soda. He said, this will look like a drug deal that resulted in this
09:30murder. I asked him, how am I going to get into this locked building and a locked apartment?
09:38The office doesn't open until nine o'clock. At eight o'clock in the morning, you are going
09:44to ring the bell to get into the building. Ring anybody's bell. The maintenance man, his
09:49name is Bernie. Ring any bell. You're going to say, I'm a plumber. Bernie sent me. There's
09:56a leak in an apartment. Can you unlock the door? Typically, who's not going to unlock the
10:01door? Okay, Bernie. I know who that is. Bernie's directed you, plumber, to come into the building.
10:07It's eight o'clock in the morning. It's not two o'clock in the morning. Knock on her door.
10:13And you just say, Bernie sent me. I'm a plumber. There's a leak in the apartment underneath
10:18yours. I just need to get in for a minute and let me see what might be leaking in your
10:25apartment that's going to the apartment underneath you. And he said, she'll open the door. Again,
10:32this was not, you know, let me think of a method. I'm dealing with a real criminal. I'm dealing with
10:39somebody that's committed multiple overt acts in these two meetings. In addition, I asked him,
10:46all right, John, you want cocaine put at this crime scene? Give me some cocaine. He's like,
10:52well, I don't have any. I'd have to go look around. I'm like thinking to myself, he's not a cocaine
10:59dealer. I just told him, I'll get my own cocaine. Give me an extra $500. Okay. That's a good idea.
11:05And I asked him one more question. I already knew the answer to this question. I asked them,
11:11where's the nearest police station? I already knew where the police station was, the North Kansas
11:15City police headquarters across the street from the wife's apartment building. And he answered
11:22immediately, it's right across the street. Another part of this layered, you know, examination of this
11:29plot is he talked about, I need an alibi. Of course, I'm going to be talked to by the police.
11:38I'm the
11:38estranged husband. And we talked about an alibi. Be seen at work, get gas, get a receipt, go get something
11:48to eat. And he's like, well, you're going to do this at eight o'clock in the morning. I'm going
11:52to be
11:52in, and he named Parkville, another community about a 15 mile drive from where the wife lived.
12:01He goes, I'm going to be at work. The guys, they'll see me. They'll know I'm with them. I'm not
12:07at the
12:07scene of this murder. Check. Another check. He's thought about an alibi. He knows he's going to be
12:16interviewed by the police. And that's when I started shaping the battlefield, setting the table
12:24for how we were going to do this arrest. Knowing that the police station is directly across the
12:32street from his wife's apartment building, we got the local police department. Obviously,
12:39they've been briefed in on what happened and what's been going on. We said, we're going to set up
12:46a fake crime scene. Yellow tape, cops with clipboards. In ATF, we call that street theater.
12:54I want to make the bad guy come to an inaccurate conclusion based on accurate information. He sees
13:02a whole crime scene, cops, clipboards, crime scene van, yellow tape. He's going to conclude
13:09he did it. He did it. Look at this. Look at this magic show going on. And I knew he
13:14would have to see
13:15that because he's going to be called to be interviewed at the North Kansas City Police
13:20Department directly across the street. He cannot not see that when he turns into the police department
13:26parking lot. And that is exactly what happened when he was contacted by a police detective.
13:34John, something has happened to your wife. I'm not going to talk to you about this over the phone.
13:39John, can you excuse yourself for more? Come down to the police station just so we can
13:45talk to you. I'll be right there. Drives down to the police department, sees this fake crime scene
13:53that we've set up for his viewing, you know, to make him think, oh, my wife really did get killed.
14:05Murder for hire payment to an undercover or a non-law enforcement actual murderer. I have never heard
14:16of other than a cash payment. Why? Cash is king. I can take this and I can go and do
14:24anything I want
14:24with it. And it's relatively untraceable. And to the point, Clevenger, when he told me, oh, 5,000,
14:33that sounds reasonable. Again, we give them the stage to do all the talking. And he said, well,
14:38I sold the business recently. I have a lot of cash on hand. So there's no records of transactions
14:44of this money going out of a bank account to me, to you. It's the same with when we buy
14:51stolen
14:52firearms. When we buy firearms from violent convicted felons, we buy crack, meth, coke.
14:59Another murder for hire case I was involved with where a federal incarcerated inmate wanted a person
15:07on the outside murdered. That price was $5,000 also. I'll take half up front tonight because I'm doing
15:15this tomorrow morning. And here's how you're going to get me my other half. Crazily enough,
15:20when I told him, because I have to find out who is hitman number two, I'm going to get your
15:25money
15:25back. I'm going to keep half, but I'm going to give you half of the money. I'm going to get
15:30your
15:30money back from this guy. A further component of half down, half after this act is committed.
15:37I wanted to see how do you want me to receive, how am I going to get the other half
15:45of the money?
15:45Well, it was agreed. You're going to mail me to my post office box, the remaining half.
15:50But now how am I going to get half the money that I recover from hitman number two back to
15:57him
15:57and $1,000 of whatever cash I find in the wife's apartment from either her drug sales, tip money,
16:05salary, whatever she squirreled away in the apartment. This is what this guy tells me. And
16:09this gives you an idea of what you're dealing with. Clevenger is dealing with somebody he believes
16:17is going to commit a murder for money. He gives me his parents' name, his parents' home address,
16:25and he goes, I want you to put the money, very specific, in a Velveeta cheese box and mail it
16:33to
16:34my parents' house. If you take an unemotional look at that, you're telling a guy that you just meet
16:43the first time your parents' address. Did the good idea fairy say, oh, mail it to my parents' address?
16:52Why don't I tell this murderer where my parents live? Crazy. In reality, real life, a real hitman,
16:58I'm not mailing anything back to you. I'm keeping everything. $4,500 from hitman number two,
17:03going in my pocket. Everything. Cocaine, money, and any other thing that I want to take out of
17:09your wife's apartment, I'm going to take it all. Who are you going to complain to? Oh, this guy hired
17:13to murder my wife. He didn't give me the money he said he was going to give me. In reality,
17:17I'm keeping
17:17everything. Cases where there is no law enforcement involvement in a murder, let's specifically murder
17:23for hire. An investigative method is going to be, we have somebody that we're starting to like for
17:28this, a potential person that put this plot into motion. We're going to subpoena every financial
17:34transaction they've done in quite some time. Is there any correlation between an agreed upon amount
17:43to a cash withdrawal, a check, money received, then money out? These cases are like any other
17:51criminal investigation. Who stands to benefit? Follow the money.
18:00So how does somebody percolate this plot looking for somebody? They discuss it with people that
18:07they know. Like, hey, do you know anybody that would do this? They may say, yeah, and have a name
18:16to refer. It's literally that simple, the genesis of these kind of plots. There's no website,
18:25www.hitman, hitman r us, call us, we will make your problem disappear. That doesn't exist. And
18:36in these plots, any criminal investigation, if we believe that any electronic device has been used
18:45in furtherance of any crime, that's going to get looked at. And anything that occurs online
18:52is discoverable. You may think you deleted it. You deleted it. You can't see it. You didn't delete
18:58it. Still there. Still on your computer hard drive. Still on your phone hard drive. Still on the whoever
19:03you sent stuff to. And by the way, if we see 25 searches in your Google Schmoogle, how long to
19:13get
19:13a life insurance payout? How deep does a body have to be buried? And the questions go on and on.
19:21Okay, a murder's been committed. Why did you do these searches? Did you have, like, are you writing
19:28a book? Did you have a curiosity?
19:35I have not seen a Hollywood production that is really rooted in reality of how these plots
19:45actually occur. A murder for hire plot is such a small niche, less than 1% of murders in general.
19:56It's not a question of does the public fear the murder for hire scenario. They're not fearful of
20:04it. They're curious of it. It is just a naturally out there subject. Just the word hitman. Tell me
20:11more. I want to hear. I'm curious. I was in the investigative business. And in a murder for hire,
20:17there is no great lag of time. A legitimate hitman, and there have been enough of them,
20:24they don't want to create all of this things leading back to them. I'm not stalking a victim,
20:33a logical, ordered, thinking, actual murder suspect. They want to get the job, they want to get paid,
20:41and they want to commit the act with as limited exposure to them as humanly possible. And that
20:46is reality. Do I want to create breadcrumb trails in all these different directions exposing me when
20:55law enforcement conducts an investigation? Answer, no. So that's where reality and Hollywood diverge.
21:04From the law enforcement perspective, murder for hire investigation, we are moving that quick.
21:12Ricky tick tick, as we would say. I've been hired to burn houses down. And I had one gal that
21:20wanted
21:20her house burnt down for insurance money. She was having a dispute with the family couple and two
21:26little kids. And again, just to see where she was at. Well, what if I have to do this when
21:31they're in
21:31the house? Quote, I'll get over it. If I was a real arson for hire, I'm getting the job. I'm
21:38getting
21:38the money. I'm committing the act. And that's it. In and out. And that's a theme in the general
21:46criminal conduct on the world. From hundreds of arrests that I've made, hundreds, if not over a
21:52thousand interviews, interrogations, talking to my peers, my pals, their cases, their interviews,
22:00their interrogations. Common factor, bad guys want to be in and out with any criminal act.
22:11The case ended the next day with the arrest of John Clevenger, the wife being put in protective
22:18custody until we could arrest John. I wanted the mental feeling in Clevenger that when he walked
22:29into that interview room that he felt invincible, bulletproof. This murder occurred. I'm done with
22:37her. It's in an interview room. John, your wife's been killed. Do you know anyone that would have
22:45wanted to do this? Were you involved in this at all? And he started with the expected emotional
22:55reaction. He's crying. I don't know who would want to do this. Of course, I had nothing to do with
22:59this. I love my wife. And all the things that we would expect to hear. He's laid out his alibi.
23:05Of
23:06course, I wasn't there when this happened. I was over here. You can talk to anybody. After that has run
23:12its course, one of the detectives said to John, John, you are really upset. Would you mind speaking
23:19with our grief counselor? Would that be okay just to, you know, help calm you down a little bit?
23:25Yeah, I'll speak with your grief counselor. Well, I'm the grief counselor. I come into the interview
23:30room. I've got my ATF neck badge on. John immediately looks down at the table. He won't look at me.
23:36And one of the detectives says, John, do you know him? And John goes, no, no, no. I don't know.
23:45I don't
23:45know who that is. And I say, John, Mickey from Brooklyn. And he goes, yeah, I know who he is.
23:51And then we actually had to explain to him that I did not actually kill his wife. I'm like,
23:59we're law enforcement. We saved your wife's life. You wanted your wife murdered. We didn't murder your
24:08wife. That was, it was, the whole case was over in probably less than 16 hours from the meeting
24:19to the arrest, uh, to the wife being informed of everything. These cases have to move rapidly
24:26because we have a potential life in danger. He's told me he's paid somebody $4,500 to kill
24:34his estranged wife. How do I find out who this person is? He gives it right up. He goes,
24:40his name is Mike. This is where he lives. This is his address. This is his car. I think he
24:46gave me
24:47the license plate number. And he said he's done a number of years in state prison on cocaine charges.
24:55So now we know who this other hired hit man is. And we got in front of him the next
25:02day.
25:03He was on parole. We violated his parole. He went back to prison immediately. He explained he was,
25:10he basically just stole the money. He was never going to commit a murder.
25:16Really? Maybe? Who knows? Why take the chance? We know you're definitely not going to commit that
25:22murder because you're going back to prison. The following spring of 2000, John Clevenger
25:27pled guilty in state court to the charge of attempted murder. And, uh, he agreed to a 12-year sentence.
25:41Vast amount of my time, I was the leader of a task force. That's what I did for 15 of
25:46my 21 years.
25:48ATF became really known to me when I was an investigator with the New York City Department
25:54of Investigation back in the 80s. And I was doing a lot of undercover work, a lot of quick hitter,
25:59not dangerous undercovers, but a lot of undercovers posing as a corrupt city official, a corrupt attorney.
26:05And I was getting paid off a lot. My bosses at the Department of Investigation said,
26:11look, we want to put you in a formal undercover training school. You had to have distinguished
26:19yourself as a federal agent somewhere else, or as a police detective, some type of investigative capacity.
26:28And it was a rigorous process to get in. But as we say in ATF, we don't hire introverts.
26:34So they wanted a, just a person that was 110% committed to drilling investigations down the bedrock.
26:46We don't stop. This is what we do. And we're going to make a difference by removing the most violent
26:52segment of society.
26:53So Nikki from Brooklyn, the name Nick or Nikki is, it's almost like John. It's such a common name in
27:05the Brooklyn community,
27:07where I was a detective, where I lived. These were my neighbors. These were people I dealt with all the
27:12time.
27:12Plus the senior leadership that was in charge of me. It just became natural. I'm not Italian, not 1%
27:22Italian.
27:23Within Brooklyn, I can't pass as Italian at all. However, outside the New York Northeast area,
27:33where I've done undercovers in Midwest, Southern state, Nikki from Brooklyn was accepted by the targets
27:44I dealt with unchallenged. Who else talks like that? I've lost, I've been out of New York City probably 11
27:51years now. So I lost a little bit. But when I lived in Brooklyn in early days of ATF, I
27:57sounded like
27:59my cousin Vinny. Literally. Nobody knows anybody's last name. We'd grab somebody and they would want to
28:08cooperate against other people in an organization. And we'd say, what's their name? They go,
28:14psycho, you know, psycho, crazy man, you know, Johnny Wrench. Everybody's got a nickname.
28:23So why reinvent the wheel? I'm Nikki from Brooklyn. This is how I talk, the hands, the whole thing.
28:30Literally, I was almost like a character actor learning from these real Italian guys and gals
28:38and my neighborhood and people I arrested. It just all got blended together. Nikki from Brooklyn.
28:45During training, specific undercover training, it's broken up into two types of training. You have a
28:52classroom training where you're going to hear from veteran undercover ATF agents. These are techniques.
29:01This is how you put survival safety on your side of the table. These are the methods. This is the
29:10equipment. They'll do case studies. There'll be a very detailed examination of some of our most
29:19successful undercover operations and why they were successful, the techniques that were employed.
29:25So there's that classroom portion. The other half is actual training that we do in a public setting
29:36where there will be an actual bar, nightclub, dance club, whatever kind of public location. And this is a
29:44very heavily monitored situation, so it's not dangerous to the public. But we want this training to occur
29:51in a realistic setting. It really boils down to, we like to say, it's not for everyone. But if you're
30:00interested and you want to perfect the craft, literally your appearance is not the factor. The car
30:08you're driving, not the factor. The tattoos, they're all props. The one factor that matters to an
30:17undercover is what tumbles out of your mouth. How do you speak, what you say, how you say it. That
30:26is
30:26what makes the difference. You have to be likable. Nobody wants to deal with an unlikable person. Not
30:35every ATF agent is going to excel as an undercover operative. But the people that raise their hand,
30:42it's a volunteer sport. And my hat's off to every single one of them. Masters of the craft,
30:48and there's just no other way to put it.
30:54The tools available to law enforcement should give anyone pause to being involved in any type of
31:01criminal activity. You leave a digital footprint everywhere you go with everything you do.
31:07Every undercover contact, the minimum is an audio recording. A perfect world situation is a video
31:15and an audio recording. When a target is presented a video of themself engaged in the criminal conduct,
31:25it's cold water to the face. In this particular scenario, it was a audio only recorded meeting.
31:34The technology in 1999 is light years different from the technology of 2026. For that particular
31:45undercover, it was a digital recorder. It was on my person, two microphones, and sometimes the simple
31:56method is the best method. I was 100% confident I was not going to be subjected to a search.
32:07You're seeking me out. I'm not seeking you out. If anything, it would make sense. I want to make sure
32:15you're not law enforcement trying to have a conversation with me. There was one comical comment
32:23that Clevenger made during the second and last undercover contact that night. As I'm counting
32:29out the money, and I'm audibly counting out the money because I want it memorialized. I'm going 100,
32:35200, 300. He gave me $100 bills. He says to me, is this where you pull out a gun and
32:42arrest me?
32:43I kept counting. I kept counting, and I'm like, John, I've been watching too much TV, pal.
32:493,000. Thank you. And no further questions about any of that with him. Almost every undercover,
32:58ATF or the federal agency, police undercover, you're going to have that moment, or you may have
33:05several of them, where you're going to be challenged as to who you really are. I was negotiating a deal
33:16for 20 kilos of cocaine, and this was taking place over several meetings in Kansas City. Again,
33:23Nikki from Brooklyn. And the bad guy challenged me several times, but yet he is the guy that furthered
33:35this deal that he wanted to do. He wanted some arson for profits committed. He wanted this 20 kilo
33:44cocaine deal that he believed I was a New York guy, and I would be able to give him some
33:52fantastic deal.
33:54And I'm challenged, but not immediately. As a matter of fact, the contact that I had with him,
34:01that was probably six hours long between a drawn-out high-end dinner, followed by an evening at a jazz
34:09club,
34:11six hours long between these two meetings one night. And he is pushing this cocaine thing.
34:20But then at the end of the night, he goes, Nikki, I don't know who you really are,
34:27but I'm going to find out. Because I had somebody get your water glass with your fingerprint on it,
34:35and I've got a police officer friend that's going to be able to run your fingerprint,
34:39and we're going to find out exactly if you are who you say you are. Like, knock yourself out.
34:45You got to find out exactly what I told you. And then within 30 minutes of breaking contact, we then
34:52put some safety measures in place that even if he had the resources to do what he said,
35:02they were going to find out my cover story and not that I was a member of law enforcement.
35:09So that challenge happened, and that was well over 20 years ago. I've had some other gentle
35:19challenges, but not where they really think I'm an undercover member of law enforcement. I never had
35:28that. Other than Mr. Kelo guy I just talked about, that guy just wouldn't come off. And then,
35:34as the challenges got more and more, I did what any good undercover would do. Hey, you know what?
35:42Cocaine doesn't grow on trees. Call me sometime if you're for real. And I ended it. And that's what a
35:48real bad guy would do. It's like, how many times are you going to challenge me and I'm not going
35:53to react
35:53to that? Only a member of law enforcement would try everything to salvage that. I'm like, not salvaging
36:00anything. I'm like, move on. Okay, thank you. And there was ultimately a disagreement over price per kilo,
36:08and that was never going to be resolved. So we just said, okay, thank you, enough.
36:19So if we perfect a case on extremely violent individual, they're going to be in prison for a long
36:25time. Should we be concerned about others in the organization that are not in prison that they may
36:33want to exact some type of revenge for their buddy? And the resounding answer to that is nobody wants to
36:43go down with a sinking ship. I'm going to put myself in jeopardy to try to approach the law enforcement
36:51person responsible for my friend's demise. They know we didn't put their friend in that position.
37:00Their friend put themselves in that position. They're in our handcuffs. They put themselves in the
37:06handcuffs. So am I concerned about my identity for the type of work I did? Not a concern that overwhelms
37:15my day, but I'm aware. When those type of cases come up, it's going to get the attention. In the
37:23undercover I did where I got hired to kill an estranged spouse, almost the direct quote from the
37:30estranged husband that hired me, when I asked him, how are you going to know that this happened? He goes,
37:39this is going to be on the news. Nothing like this has happened in 50 years in this
37:45little area. Everybody's going to hear about this. It's going to be on the news.
37:50That's how I'm going to know. And like anything else that gets attention,
37:55it can lead people to believe that this is a much larger occurrence. There have been some very niche
38:04real cases of people that have repetitively committed murders for hire, or so they state.
38:13Richard Kuklinski, also known as the Ice Man, by his admission, he's killed well over 100 people.
38:23And he came to be in prison for the rest of his life through an undercover done by an ATF
38:29agent
38:30out of New York that got into the mix with Kuklinski, got recorded conversations about murders he had
38:37committed, and he was ultimately arrested and he's not going to victimize anybody else. That is not
38:45common for, you know, a so-called hitman. The chances of going the distance and being, again, being
38:53never discovered, never a case made on you, near impossible. There's a lot of things, programs,
39:04formal programs, formal trainings that are in place to deal with the mental aspect, the mental preparation.
39:15We don't need to dwell on the bad all the time on duty, off duty, thinking about it, replaying it,
39:21thinking about it. All the trainings, the preparation, the mental health counselors,
39:26the formal sit-downs that undercovers will have with mental health professionals on a regular basis.
39:36Again, to inoculate the emotional toll and help you realize, okay, understand why I'm feeling like this.
39:47I'm going to talk to somebody. Or I have mechanisms now at my ready to
39:54move through this problem.
40:02When I came on board ATF in 98, the vast majority of people I were hired with were drawn to
40:09ATF,
40:10in particular enamored with the undercover technique. And the majority of people wanted to do undercover
40:16work. Why else would you want to come to this agency? They were really the federal agency doing
40:24the most of it. That has changed a bit to current where it's not the majority of people coming into
40:34ATF that this is why I want to be here. I want to do undercover work. It's a wider variety
40:40of people
40:41that are coming in the door now. We have people that have quite an expertise in the arson, explosives,
40:47firearms trafficking, violent home invasion crews, armed robbery crews. So there's a wide variety of violence
40:54that ATF agents investigate. It's not all undercover work, but there are a collection that have really honed
41:03the craft of how to do this. Are firearms drivers for this particular kind of type of crime, murder for
41:10hire?
41:11Uh, maybe, maybe not. A firearm is a tool and it's a legal commodity, legally sold to the first purchaser.
41:20It's from that point that firearms get diverted to criminal purpose, prohibited people in possession of
41:29them to commit crimes. The gun is not the problem. It is the prohibited person that possesses the gun with
41:37criminal intent. That's the problem. That's who we look at. In this particular murder for hire with
41:43Clevenger, didn't want a firearm involved. We've had cases where people are killed in about every
41:52imaginable manner you could think of. The gun, again, it's not hard to manipulate a trigger,
42:02they're pointed at a human being, and that person is shot or killed. So there's a factor of ease.
42:13If you're going to stab somebody to death, you have to be in less than arm's distance to execute that
42:19type of murder. The main focus, the eyes on the prize in every single one of these investigations is
42:25we're here to save a life. We are here to stop this plot. We take no pleasure in that. It's
42:32the removal
42:34of someone from society that legitimately wanted another human being killed and did multiple,
42:41multiple acts to further that plot.
42:50Hi, I'm a producer on how crime works. If you enjoyed this video, then please subscribe
42:55and comment below with more ideas of topics you'd like us to cover in this series.
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