How Hiring Your Best Friend as a Hitman Destroys Your Life at Every Level: transcript

It's 6:40 a.m. at a Chevron gas station on Fairview Avenue in Boise, Idaho, and you're standing at the counter holding a large black coffee. The bell on the door rings behind you, and a man walks in wearing a camo jacket and a gray trucker hat and goes straight to the energy drink fridge. You know that walk, you know that jacket, and you know that face. Because 4 months ago, you paid $10,000 to have that man killed. on your phone in a hidden folder. There's still a photo of him lying face down on a cabin floor in a pool of something dark red. Your best friend sent you that photo with three words under it. It's done. Delete. Now the dead man is standing 6 ft away from you alive, cracking open a monster energy drink. He turns around. He sees you. And slowly he smiles. And in that second, you understand that the worst thing in your life didn't happen four months ago. It's starting right now. This is how hiring

your best friend as a hitman destroys your life at every level. Level one, the bruise. Rewind 7 months and it's a Sunday night in March and somebody is banging on the door of your apartment in Meridian, just west of Boise. Your name is Ryan Hail. You're 29 and you fix computer networks for a hospital. The quiet guy in the back office who everybody calls when the Wi-Fi goes down. You open the door and it's your little sister Kayla, 26, holding her 5-year-old daughter, Lily, on her hip.

Lily is in pajamas with cartoon dinosaurs on them, asleep with her face buried in her mom's neck. Kayla's left eye is purple and swollen almost shut. You don't even ask who did it because you already know. Derek Vance, 32, her ex-husband, the guy with the lifted Ram truck and the hunting rifles and the temper that turns on like a light switch. They split up a year ago, and he never accepted it. He texts her 60 times a day. He parks outside her rental house in Nampa at 2:00 in the morning, and he shows up at Lily's daycare when it isn't his day. Tonight he came over to talk and it ended with Kayla on the kitchen floor. You drive her to the Canyon County Sheriff's Office and a tired deputy takes photos of her eye and writes a report. A judge signs a protection order the next week, which means Dererick has to stay 500 ft away from her. Derek breaks it 4 days later.

He doesn't touch her this time. He just sits in his truck across the street from her house with the engine running and the headlights pointed at her bedroom window. The deputies come and Dererick is gone before they get there. They tell Kayla to call again if he comes back. He comes back 11 times in two months. Every time, the same thing. A report, a case number, and ma'am, there's only so much we can do until he actually does something. One night in May, Kayla calls you at 3:10 a.m. whispering, and you can hear the rumble of a big diesel engine outside her window. Ry, I think he's going to kill me. I really think he's going to do it. You drive 25 minutes to Nampa in your socks, and by the time you get there, the street is empty and quiet, and there are fresh tire marks on her lawn. Kayla is sitting on the kitchen floor with a steak knife in her lap and Lily asleep in her arms. You sit next to her on the cold tile until the

sun comes up. And somewhere in those 3 hours, a thought shows up in your head that you've never had before in your life. If the law won't stop him, maybe somebody else has to. Level two, the ask. Tony Russo has been your best friend since the third grade in Garden City. You were the skinny kid who got shoved into lockers, and Tony was the bigger kid from the trailer park who started shoving back for you. You built a treehouse together out of stolen pallets. You got your first speeding ticket in his mom's Pontiac, and he was the only person who came to your grandpa's funeral just for you. Then at 22, Tony did something stupid. He and two guys robbed a pharmacy in Boise with a BB gun, and he did six years at the Idaho State Correctional Institution south of town. You wrote him a letter every single month, and you put $50 on his books every Christmas. He got out in January, and now he works at a tire shop on Chinden Boulevard, wears an ankle

bracelet for parole, and lives in a camper in his mom's backyard. On a Saturday night in June, you drive over with a 12-pack of Kors and you sit with him on two plastic chairs next to the camper while the sprinklers tick across the lawn. You talk about nothing for an hour. Then you show him a photo on your phone. Kayla's eye purple and swollen from that night in March. Tony stops smiling. You tell him everything. The protection order, the headlights, the 11 calls, the steak knife on the kitchen floor. Then you say the thing you rehearsed 40 times in your car on the way over. I need somebody to make him go away, Tony, permanently. And you're the only person in the world I trust. Tony doesn't say anything for a long time. A dog barks somewhere down the street and a moth keeps bumping into the porch light on the camper. Ry, I robbed a pharmacy with a BB gun. I'm not a

killer. You know that. I've got $10,000. You say it's everything I saved for a house. I'll give you all of it. It's not about the money. He says, "No." He says it three times, louder each time, and he tells you to go home and sleep it off. So, you stand up and you say the sentence that changes his answer. Fine, then I'll find somebody online. There's guys on the internet who will do it for $5,000. Tony looks at you like you just slapped him. He knows you. He knows you're the guy who never even jaywalks. and he knows that if you go looking online, you're going to end up talking to a cop or a scammer, and either way, you're going down. He drinks the rest of his beer in one long pull and crushes the can in his fist. Okay, don't go online.

Don't talk to anybody else. I'll handle it. You hug him in the dark next to the camper and you feel lighter than you felt in 3 months. You think you just saved your sister's life. What you've actually done is pull the one person who always protected you into a fire. Chris left a comment under our video on how drug trafficking destroys your life at every level and it made me smile. I love at 1453 there's dudes running behind you. I've been watching from day one and just keep them coming. Chris, you have a sharp eye and I love that you catch the little things happening in the background. Being here from day one means a lot, and I promise we're not slowing down. If you ever feel like writing something, go ahead and it might get read in a future video, but no pressure at all if you'd rather just watch. Now, let's get back to that gas station counter because your coffee is getting cold. Level three, the photo. On Monday, you go to your bank in Meridian

and take out $10,000 in cash in a white envelope. And the teller asks if you're buying a car, something like that, you say. You give the envelope to Tony in the parking garage of the Boise Town Square Mall inside a foot locker bag, like a scene from a movie you would never watch. He tells you to stop texting him about it, to delete his number from your favorites, and to act completely normal. Before he gets out of your car, he stops with his hand on the door handle and looks at you for a long time. Last chance, Ry. Say the word and I'll hand this bag right back and we'll go get tacos and never talk about tonight again. You think about Kayla on the kitchen floor and the headlights in the bedroom window and the knife in her lap. Do it, you say, and your voice doesn't even shake. Tony nods slowly like a doctor who just heard the answer he was afraid of and he gets out and walks away across the concrete without

looking back. So you try. You go to work. You fix the hospital's printers. You eat lunch at your desk. And you don't taste any of it. Every time your phone buzzes, your heart jumps into your throat. On the ninth day, Thursday, at 11:52 p.m., it buzzes. It's a photo from a number you don't recognize. Derek face down on the wooden floor of what looks like a hunting cabin wearing that same camo jacket. There's dark red all over the floorboards under his head and one of his boots is half off his foot. Under it, three words. It's done. Delete. You sit on the edge of your bed staring at that photo for 20 minutes. You expected to feel relief or happiness or even just quiet. Instead, you run to the bathroom and throw up until there's nothing left.

You don't delete the photo. You can't explain why, but you move it into a hidden folder on your phone, and you look at it at least once a day for the next 4 months. 2 days later, Dererick's mom posts on Facebook. My son Derek has not answered his phone since Wednesday. His truck is gone. If anybody has seen him, please call me. I'm so scared. 240 people share it. Kayla calls you that night. And her voice sounds strange, like she's afraid to be happy. Ry, nobody can find Derek. He's just gone.

He hasn't texted me in 4 days. Maybe he finally moved on, you say. And you hate how easy that comes out of your mouth. Maybe, she says. God, I hope he just moved to Montana or something. That night, for the first time since March, your sister sleeps with her bedroom light off. and you don't sleep at all. Level four, the ghost. Here's the thing nobody tells you about thinking you're a murderer. It doesn't feel like guilt. Not at first.

It feels like being watched all day, every day, from every direction. Every police car on Eagle Road makes your hands go wet on the steering wheel. Every time somebody knocks on your apartment door, even the pizza guy, your whole body goes cold. You start checking the news 30 times a day, searching body found Idaho, hunting cabin, Derek Vance. Nothing ever comes up. Somehow that's worse. In July, a Nampa police detective calls Kayla and asks her to come in and talk about Derek because she's the ex-wife. And the ex-wife is always the first person they talk to. Kayla tells them the truth, that she doesn't know anything, that she was scared of him, and that she's glad he's gone. Glad is not a great word to say to a detective about a missing man, and she knows it the second it leaves her mouth. She calls you crying from the parking lot.

They looked at me like I did something, Ry, like I did something to him. You tell her she has nothing to worry about. You tell her that six times on the phone and every single time it's the biggest lie of your life. You stop going to the gym. You stop answering your friends. You lose 17 lb. And at work, a nurse asks you if you're sick. In August, Lily turns six and Kayla throws a party in her backyard with a bounce house and a cake shaped like a stegosaurus.

For the first time in a year, Kayla is laughing with her whole face, running around with the kids, chasing them with a water hose. Lily runs over to you with frosting all over her chin and hugs your leg. Uncle Ry, mommy doesn't cry in the car anymore. You pick her up and you smile and you tell yourself, "This is why you did it." That night, you sit in your car outside the party for an hour with the engine off. You open the hidden folder. You look at the photo. You tell yourself it was worth it out loud three times like you're trying to convince somebody sitting in the passenger seat in September. You can't take it anymore and you drive to Tony's mom's house on a Sunday afternoon without calling first.

Tony is sitting on the steps of his camper and when he sees your car pull up, he doesn't smile. You sit down next to him and for a while neither of you says anything and the only sound is a lawn mower two houses down. Are you okay? You finally ask him after what you did. Are you sleeping? Tony looks at you for a long second like he's trying to decide something. I sleep fine, Ry. Better than you from the looks of it. You tell him you can't stop seeing the photo. That you see it when you close your eyes. That you hear sirens in your sleep. And Tony does something you don't understand until much later. He puts his hand on the back of your neck, the way he used to when you were kids and you'd lost a fight. And he says, "You're not what you think you are, man. Trust me on that." You think he's just being kind.

You drive home and look at the photo again before bed. Level five, the gas station. And then it's a cold Tuesday morning in October, 6:40 a.m. at the Chevron on Fairview Avenue, and the bell over the door rings. Derek Vance walks in, tan, healthy, and maybe 10 lbs heavier than he was in June. He grabs a monster from the fridge, cracks it open right there in the aisle, and turns around. He looks right at you, and then he smiles, a slow, lazy smile, like a man who knows a secret about you that you don't even know yet. Hey, Ryan, tell your sister I'm back. He drops $3 on the counter and walks out to the lifted Ram truck, idling at pump 4. Your coffee is on the floor. You don't remember dropping it. The cashier is yelling something about a mop and you're already running across the parking lot to your car. You drive straight to the tire shop on Chinden Boulevard and you find Tony

in the back bay under a Subaru with grease up to his elbows. You grab him by the collar of his work shirt and slam him into a rack of tires. I saw him. He's alive. What did you do? Tony doesn't fight back. He just waits for you to let go and then he tells you the truth quietly so his boss can't hear. He never planned to kill anybody. Not for one single second. But he knew if he said no, you'd go find somebody who would or you'd try it yourself and end up dead or in prison. So he drove to Dererick's favorite bar in Caldwell, sat next to him, and told him straight to his face, "Somebody paid good money to have you killed. I'm the guy they paid.

Lucky for you, I'm not a killer. He gave Derrick $4,000 of your money and told him to leave Idaho for four months. No phone, no Facebook, no calls to anybody. Then they drove out to Dererick's uncle's hunting cabin near Idaho City, and Dererick lay down on the floor while Tony poured a whole bottle of ketchup and some red food coloring around his head and took the picture. The rest of the money, $6,000, is sitting in a coffee can under Tony's camper because he never wanted it. I wasn't going to let you turn into a murderer, Ry. I faked it to save you. You stand in the middle of that tire shop and you feel a hundred things at once. Relief, anger, shame, and something very close to love.

For about 10 seconds, you actually think this might be the happy ending. Then Tony says the part that makes your stomach drop. The only problem is Derek knows who hired me. I told him it was you. I had to to make him believe me. If you're still here, you know Derek didn't come back to Boise for the weather. Subscribe to Frank Unseen right now because every week we take one crime and show you every level of what it does to a real person's life. Level six, the turn. Derek doesn't come after you with a rifle. That would have been easier.

instead. 2 days after the gas station, he walks into the Nampa Police Department in a clean button-up shirt with a lawyer and a printed timeline. He tells them that last June, a man he'd never met sat down next to him in a bar in Caldwell and said somebody had paid him to kill Derek. He says he ran for his life, hid in Reno, Nevada for 4 months, and only came back because he missed his daughter. And then he tells them who he thinks paid for it. Not you, Kayla. My ex-wife wanted me dead so she could keep my little girl. Her brother's best friend is a felon. You do the math.

It's a lie, but it's a very smart lie. And it fits everything the detectives already have. They have the ex-wife who said she was glad he was gone. They have the protection order she fought so hard for, and now it looks like a motive. On a Friday afternoon, two Nampa police detectives knock on Kayla's door while Lily is coloring at the kitchen table. They don't arrest her, but they take her phone and they ask her to come down to the station for an interview that lasts 5 hours. That same weekend, Dererick's lawyer files an emergency motion in family court, saying Lily isn't safe with a mother who tried to have her father murdered. A judge grants it in one day. On Monday at 4:30 p.m., a social worker and a deputy come to Kayla's house and Lily goes to live with Dererick's mother while the case is sorted out. Kayla calls you and she isn't crying this time. She's past crying. She just keeps repeating one

sentence over and over in a flat empty voice. They took her, Ry. They took my baby. I didn't do anything and they took her. You tried to take a monster out of your sister's life. Instead, you handed him the perfect weapon, and he's using it to take her daughter. That night, at 11:20 p.m., your phone rings, and it's a number you don't know. You answer, and you hear the low rumble of a diesel engine idling, and then Derek's voice, calm and happy. Evening, Ryan. I'm parked outside your sister's place.

Don't worry, I'm more than 500 ft away. I measured. You ask him what he wants, and he laughs. a short laugh like you just asked a dumb question. I don't want anything. I already got it. Your sister's a suspect. My daughter's at my mama's house and nobody's ever going to believe a word Kayla says about me again. You know it wasn't her, you say. You know it was me. Sure I do, Derek says. But you're the only one who can prove it. And if you do, you go to prison. So go ahead, Ryan. Pick. Then he hangs up and you sit on your kitchen floor in the dark, exactly where Kayla sat with the steak knife 5 months ago.

Now you understand how she felt. And there is exactly one person in the world who can fix this. Level seven, the confession. On Wednesday at 8:05 a.m., you park in front of the Nampa Police Department on 12th Avenue South and sit in your car for 45 minutes. You think about running. You think about Tony and the coffee can under his camper and the parole officer who checks on him every two weeks. You know that if you tell the truth, Tony goes down with you. You call him before you go in and he answers on the first ring like he's been waiting for it. I know why you're calling. Tony says, "Go in there. Tell them everything. Tell them it was me who took the money. Tony, you'll go back for years. Ry, I've done six years for a BB gun. I can do it again for a ketchup bottle. He laughs, but it cracks right in the middle. Go get that little girl back to her mama. At 8:50 a.m., you walk

through the front doors and tell the officer at the desk you need to talk to the detectives on the Derek Vance case. You tell them everything from Kayla's eye in March to the white envelope in the mall parking garage. You show them the photo in your hidden folder. Derek face down in a puddle of ketchup. One of the detectives actually puts his hand over his mouth to keep from laughing and then he stops because nothing about this is funny. In the eyes of the law, it doesn't matter that nobody died. It doesn't matter that the hitman never planned to pull a trigger or that the blood was from a bottle of Hines. The crime isn't the killing. The crime is the deal. The moment you handed over that envelope and said permanently, the crime was already finished. Because Tony drove to Nevada and you used your phones to set it up, the FBI takes the case.

They cuff you in that interview room and they book you for murder for hire under federal law, which carries up to 10 years in prison, even when nobody gets hurt. At 2:15 that afternoon, federal agents walk into the tire shop on Chinden Boulevard. Tony is under a pickup truck when they find him and he slides out on his creeper with his hands already up. They dig up the coffee can from under his camper, $6,000 in a plastic bag, every bill still in the bank wrapper. Tony is booked for murder for hire and violating his parole. And 2 days later, Kayla gets her phone back and the detective tells her she's no longer a suspect. On Friday, Lily comes home. You watch it on a video call from the Ada County Jail on a small screen bolted to a concrete wall. $7 for 20 minutes. Kayla holds the phone up so you can see Lily running through the front door with her backpack and her stuffed Stegosaurus.

Lily doesn't know where Uncle Ry is and Kayla told her he's away for work for a long time. Then Kayla turns the camera back to her own face and for a moment she just looks at you. You're the dumbest person I've ever loved, she says. And she's laughing and crying at the same time. You could have just come and lived with us. You could have just sat on my porch every night. That's all I needed. Ry, you never thought about that. Not once in all those nights did it occur to you that the answer might have been sitting on her porch with a baseball bat and a thermos of coffee.

The screen goes black at exactly 20 minutes in the middle of her goodbye. Level eight, the courtroom. Your trial is in the federal courthouse in downtown Boise on a gray morning in March, almost exactly a year after Kayla showed up at your door with a purple eye. You and Tony sit at the same table in matching orange, and the marshals won't let you talk to each other. Tony catches your eye once and he nods, the same nod he gave you in the third grade before he shoved some kid off of you. The prosecutor puts the photo up on a big screen in front of the jury. Derek face down. the red puddle, the boot half off his foot. This picture is fake, she says. But the man who paid for it didn't know that he believed this was real and he kept it for 4 months. Derek takes the stand in a Navy suit and he's very good at it. He talks about hiding in a motel in Reno, scared for his life, missing his little girl. He wipes his eyes

twice. Nobody in the jury knows about the purple eye or the headlights in Kayla's bedroom window or the steak knife on her kitchen floor because none of that is what this trial is about. In this courtroom, Derek Vance is the victim. Kayla testifies on the third day and she has to sit in that chair and tell 12 strangers that her big brother tried to have a man killed for her. She doesn't look at you once because if she looks at you, she won't be able to keep talking. Guilty. Guilty for Tony, too.

The judge gives you seven years in federal prison. Tony gets six years plus the rest of his old sentence for breaking parole, which puts him behind bars until he's almost 40. After the sentence is read, you look back at the benches and you see Derek in the third row. He's wearing the same camo jacket from the Chevron and next to him there's a new family court lawyer with a thick folder. In a month, he'll ask for joint custody of Lily. And this time he'll be the father who survived a murder plot.

The marshals walk you and Tony out the side door, chained at the waist toward the same white van. For one minute in the hallway, they let you stand next to each other. I'm sorry. You say, "I'm so sorry, man. I dragged you into this." Tony shrugs the way he always does. You'd be in here for life if I didn't fake it. Ry, I'd do it again. I'd do it again tomorrow. They put you in separate cages in the van and it pulls out onto Front Street and the Boise Foothills slide past the little window. You went looking for a killer and you found the one man in Idaho who would never become one. He saved you from becoming a murderer, but he couldn't save you from the moment you asked. That's how hiring your best friend as a hitman destroys your life at every level. Nobody died.

Nobody even got hurt. And still two best friends lost 13 years, a sister lost her peace, and the man you wanted gone walked out of that courtroom with more power over her than he ever had before. So tell me in the comments if your best friend asked you to do what Ryan asked Tony, what would you have done? If this one hit you, hit like and subscribe to Frank Unseen. Every week, one crime, one life, and every level of what it really costs.