Bob Ennis (5:49)

My name is Bob Ennis and I live in Northern California.

Carl Miller (5:55)

The journey to rent a hitman.com becoming this sort of sticky fly tape for potential killers started years ago. Bob's dream had been to become a police detective, but that didn't pan out. So instead, in the early 2000s, he enrolled in an IT security college course. At some point, he and some of his classmates started thinking about setting up an IT business. Their first step, coming up with a name for the company and its website.

Bob Ennis (6:27)

Occasionally we would go and play paintball on the weekends up in Calistoga. And one particular Saturday we started flipping around names for domains as balls of.

Caroline Thornham (6:38)

Paint flew and splattered all around them. Bob got his million dollar idea. They'd call the company Rent a Hitman.

Bob Ennis (6:49)

I thought, man, this is a cool play on words. Rent as in hire us, Hit as in web hit and men. Well, there were four of us, so I registered it that day.

Caroline Thornham (7:02)

He paid less than $10 for the site, but despite the snappy branding, the company never got going and Bob was left with the domain. He let it lie for a while, but when he checked back on the site's email inbox after a few years, he was in for a shock.

Bob Ennis (7:21)

There was about 250 to 300 emails from people around the world saying how much for asset extraction? What countries do you serve? How Much for this, how much for that?

Caroline Thornham (7:33)

These people thought Rent a Hitman was a portal to a world of actual hitmen, abductors, mobsters. Bob didn't take the emails too seriously, though. They unsettled him, sure, but he also had no idea what to do about them.

Bob Ennis (7:49)

I wasn't ready for it, wasn't prepared to deal with it. This was not what I had in mind.

Caroline Thornham (7:56)

So he let the inbox be for another few years and didn't pay much mind to the strange messages he was receiving.

Carl Miller (8:03)

But then in 2010, he got an email that he couldn't ignore, an email that changed the course of his life.

Bob Ennis (8:14)

I was down in LA at the time, helping my brother pack a U Haul van to bring back up to Northern California, and I get an email. She told me she was from the uk, stranded in Canada, lost her passport, had no money, and she wanted three of her family members murdered because they had stolen her inheritance. She had nowhere to go, no other options.

Caroline Thornham (8:37)

Bob doesn't reply at first. Only later that day, the woman emails.

Bob Ennis (8:43)

Again with urgent in the subject line and more detail and names and addresses, just very identifiable information.

Caroline Thornham (8:52)

It seems like the woman was stepping harder on the gas pedal. Bob wants to check, is she actually for real?

Bob Ennis (8:59)

I sent her a message asking her, do you still require our services and would you like me to put you in contact with the field operative?

Caroline Thornham (9:07)

She gets back to him saying, yes, yes, I do. The woman specifically asks Bob about the cost of having three people killed. She names them all and gives Bob their locations. She is determined this time. Bob can't just let it go. His conscience won't let him.

Bob Ennis (9:28)

I knew I absolutely had to act. If I didn't get that email, somebody else would have. And results could have been a lot different. I left la at about 6 o'clock that night, driving this U haul 400 miles up. I5 get home, kiss my wife and immediately get on the computer, which she wasn't happy about. I printed out about 20 pages of documents.

Caroline Thornham (9:53)

Bob is convinced lives are in danger.

Carl Miller (10:00)

In what seems like a pivotal stroke of luck, Bob has a friend who's a local police sergeant. Dave. Bob gives him the messages and in huge contrast to our own early cases, Dave, and therefore the police take the case seriously straight away. They make contact with police in Canada who realize the woman actually already has a warrant out for her arrest in the uk. She gets extradited there and goes straight to prison. This success changed everything for Bob.

Bob Ennis (10:31)

This $9.20 website had just saved the lives of three individuals that's when I came to the realization that this website could be used for positive change. I just knew I had to do something.

Caroline Thornham (10:48)

Bob essentially decides to run a sort of well intentioned fraud. He sits down at his computer and redesigns the website to basically what it looks like today.

Carl Miller (11:00)

Although the site is a spoof, Bob never says so explicitly. Instead, he sprinkles jokes all over the site that scream at you that surely none of this can be real.

Caroline Thornham (11:11)

For example, there's a list of awards rentahitman.com has supposedly won. One of them is the WTF man award. When people see the level of creativity and audacity we bring to our hits, they can't help but exclaim WTF man?

Carl Miller (11:29)

But in spite of the ridiculous branding and the stupid jokes, Bob's unexpected side hustle starts thriving.

Bob Ennis (11:38)

Business was literally booming. People were sending in a lot of emails.

Carl Miller (11:43)

Bob comes up with a whole process for dealing with the genuine inquiries. He emails with the perpetrators back and forth, making them believe he can connect them to a hitman anywhere in the world.

Bob Ennis (11:56)

I'll be their matchmaker. I'll help him out.

Carl Miller (11:58)

Well, he passes them off to the police, who then often start their own investigations into Bob's cases, many of them leading to arrests and convictions. And just to be clear, Bob doesn't make any money off of the kill orders. People don't pay him for the hits. He says that's evidence the police need to get. Over the years, Bob's kept a record of all of the emails that have come in. For example, just between January and August.

Bob Ennis (12:30)

Of 2023, there were over 1,700 service requests, submissions received.

Carl Miller (12:36)

That's more than 200 coming in every month. Of course, not all these people believe the site is real, but still a scary amount of the messages seem serious. Bob says he reports about 5 to 8% of them to the police. That's more than 1,000 since the inception of rentahitman.com exactly like the sites we monitored, Bob's site has tapped into this scary, surprisingly widespread, if subterranean demand for murder.

Bob Ennis (13:09)

It blows my mind, honestly, Carl. People, I think are just at their wit's end trying to solve a problem and are taken to the Internet to try and get that solution. And they see the website and feel compelled. How do I say this? More educated folks would obviously see this. This isn't real.

Caroline Thornham (13:30)

As Bob himself admits, he attracts people.

Carl Miller (13:33)

Who are easily fooled.

Bob Ennis (13:35)

It's the low hanging fruit. It's a nice house, but nobody's home.

Carl Miller (13:39)

I want to understand what makes someone Gullible enough to fall for Bob's ruse. Who are these would be killers he catches?

Caroline Thornham (13:50)

One thing I've learnt, dealing with hundreds of our own cases, is that there isn't one neat answer to that question. What drives people is always complex and very individual. But there is one case of Bob's that I think might provide at least some of the answers.

Carl Miller (14:08)

It's a story that unfolded in Rockwood, Michigan, a case in which, at first glance, it wasn't just a perpetrator who seemed dangerous, but the victim too. Bob is sitting at a pool, catching some sun, surrounded by his family, when a notification pops up on his phone. He glances at it and sees that it's another email into the rentahitman.com inbox from someone called George Harris.

Bob Ennis (15:00)

So George Harris wrote, hi, I have an issue I've needed resolved for a year now and it's cost me being ripped off for 20,000. There's a person who is taking advantage of special needs children. I wondered if you could help with this issue cost. I'm not a rich person. I prefer not going to jail.

Carl Miller (15:28)

The email immediately stands out to Bob. George is claiming that his target is a child abuser. And while Bob has no way of knowing whether there's any truth to that, it obviously still worries him.

Bob Ennis (15:41)

My first thought was how to keep any other children from falling victim to this guy.

Carl Miller (15:47)

Bob needs to find out more. He asks George to fill out a standardized form on the website, what he.

Caroline Thornham (15:53)

Calls a service request form.

Carl Miller (15:56)

Two days later, the form comes through, but not in George Harris's name.

Bob Ennis (16:03)

The service request form asked for her name. She wrote, Ms. Georgina Harris.

Carl Miller (16:09)

The person now going by Georgina gives Bob more to work with. She sends him the name of her target, his email address, as well as.

Bob Ennis (16:19)

A verified physical address where he lives. When asked what the reason for contacting the website was, she wrote, I have a problem. He preys on special needs kids who cannot speak.

Carl Miller (16:35)

We're not going to name Georgina's target for several reasons, the most important being that he denies his allegations outright. He says they were investigated and found to be entirely unsubstantiated. And we'll get into this in more detail later on. But there are also some serious reasons to question Georgina's motivations for making these claims in the first place. All that to say that from now on, we'll call her target by a pseudonym, Frank. Bob gets pretty spooked by Georgina's messages. She has provided Frank's address, attached several photos of him. She's also given Bob his phone numbers. She claims she's already spent $20,000 trying to resolve her quote unquote problem. And as far as Bob can tell, she has what seems like a powerful motive to kill.

Bob Ennis (17:28)

She struck me as somebody that was desperate for a solution.

Carl Miller (17:33)

Georgina wants Frank dead, so Bob does what he's done hundreds of times before.

Bob Ennis (17:39)

I just made a call and spoke with the Michigan State Police.

Caroline Thornham (17:44)

At that point, Bob hands over the phone number Georgina has submitted and all of the information he's pulled together over.

Carl Miller (17:51)

The last few days.

Caroline Thornham (17:53)

Based on his work, Michigan State Police decide to launch an undercover investigation into Georgina Harris.

Carl Miller (18:00)

As Georgina sits In her gray SUV in the parking lot of a local 7 11, a police officer pretending to be Guido's associate rides in on a Harley Davidson to meet with her. He looks menacing, like the member of a violent biker gang. He gets into Georgina's car and sits next to her, and they start hashing out the details of the proposed hit on Frank. I knew it was going to come to this, georgina tells the officer quietly. Later on, she hands him $200 in cash as a deposit for the murder. The cop takes the money and both of them drive off. That's when, as she's driving, Georgina is pulled over by Michigan State Police and taken into custody. A few hours later, Georgina sits in the corner of a drab, cramped police interview room. The tips of her hair are a faded dye ginger, the roots her natural gray. She's slumped in her chair, looking down in her lap where her hands fiddle with the straps of a face mask. A detective strides into the room.

Detective Peterson (19:14)

How will you.

Carl Miller (19:17)

By now the police have found out that the woman's name isn't actually Georgina. It's Wendy. The detective sits down and leans over to Wendy in the same kind of way that a teacher might when they want to get through to a kid who's been acting out. He introduces himself.

Detective Peterson (19:35)

I'm Detective Peterson.

Carl Miller (19:37)

Wendy looks up at Detective Peterson. Her face sags with resignation.

Detective Peterson (19:43)

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can you will be used against your court of law.

Carl Miller (19:49)

Wendy is 52 years old. She lives in South Rockwood, Michigan, just outside of Detroit. It's a classic American suburb, wide roads lined with lawns and pickup trucks. Wendy lives in one of these houses with her mother and her adopted son. They seem to be the center of her universe, thanks to Bob Innes, AKA Guido Fenelli. Detective Peterson knows what Wendy's been up to online, but by the end of this interrogation, he wants to understand why. And to get to that answer he begins with a kind of left field question.

Detective Peterson (20:28)

Who do you least admire in life?

Carl Miller (20:30)

Who does Wendy least admire in life?

Detective Peterson (20:34)

At one time he used to be the nicest person I ever. Now he's a liar.

Carl Miller (20:43)

At one time he used to be the nicest person I ever met, Wendy says. And now he's just a liar. She's talking about the man she wanted dead. Frank.

Detective Peterson (20:55)

How do you know him? I used to be married to him.

Carl Miller (20:58)

I used to be married to him, Wendy says. Then Detective Peterson guides the interview towards his crucial question.

Detective Peterson (21:08)

Your motivation is what?

Carl Miller (21:10)

Wendy replies, saying that she did what she did because, quote, her and her children were molested.

Caroline Thornham (21:21)

Here is where the interview gives us a peek into what may have made Wendy so susceptible to Bob's website. She keeps insisting child abuse is the reason for wanting Frank dead. But when Detective Peterson actually spoke to Wendy's ex husband on the phone, Frank told him that the allegations were false, that they'd been investigated by the state Bureau of investigations and that he was cleared.

Carl Miller (21:46)

And then he painted a very different picture of why Wendy hated him.

Caroline Thornham (21:51)

Wendy and Frank had been married for about 11 years, but things didn't work out between them. Frank says that they'd both had affairs. On top of that, after they separated, Frank moved away from Michigan to another state where he'd recently got engaged to be married again. That seems to have upset Wendy.

Carl Miller (22:11)

Frank said that Wendy had threatened to kill him several times since they'd separated. Detective Peterson also spoke to Wendy's mum about Wendy's allegations against Frank. Despite the two seemingly having a very close relationship, Wendy's mom was very clear with the detective. She told him Wendy hates her ex husband and that Wendy, quote, did dirty shit to Frank a while ago. That once she rang his job and told them he molested someone to try and get him fired. Wendy's mum says she doesn't believe Frank has ever molested anyone. She backed up his claim that the reason for Wendy's vengeful hatred is that Frank cheated on her. We can't see inside Wendy's head, but watching her interrogation, seeing her folded into herself as she talks to Detective Peterson. It looks like the allegations against Frank aren't just a ploy for the police. That the deception may begin somewhere deep within Wendy herself.

Detective Peterson (23:20)

When I was a kid I was molested and I ran away from home. I spend a lot of time being angry, self destructive, trying to kill myself, drinking too much, working in a timeless fire.

Carl Miller (23:37)

Wendy says that when she was a kid, her dad abused her and her mum. That for years it made her angry and self destructive, suicidal. And that for a long time she resented her mum for not acknowledging what, what she had gone through. When I hear this, I can't help but wonder whether the abuse Wendy said she experienced played a role in the allegations that she then made against her ex, Frank.

Caroline Thornham (24:09)

After Wendy gave the undercover cop the $200 deposit outside that 7 11, she thought she still owed him $4,800 for the murder.

Detective Peterson (24:19)

And you were under the impression that you'd be killed if you didn't pay that money in a few weeks, but you just also said that you didn't think you could come up with the money. So what did you think was gonna happen?

Carl Miller (24:34)

Probably end up dead. Wendy says.

Detective Peterson (24:37)

Did you care?

Carl Miller (24:39)

Wendy replies, when you have the mental diseases I have, sometimes you care and sometimes you, you don't. She tells the detective that she suffers from bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety and ptsd.

Caroline Thornham (24:58)

The main reason I wanted to look into Wendy's story was to understand what kind of person Bob is catching through his website. How can someone be gullible enough to be led towards murder by the site's paper thin illusion?

Carl Miller (25:14)

With Wendy, the motivation seems to be rooted in pain and desperation. More than anything else, it drove Wendy to wanting to have Frank killed so badly that she was willing to believe in Bob's obviously fake hitman website. But it turns out that desire wasn't just a blip. Wendy had done even more to make the murder happen than than Bob realized at the time. Because before she ever turned to Bob, Wendy went onto the dark web too. Onto one of Yura's sites. Her username there, Dark Princess.

Wendy (25:52)

Before I place an order, I want to know if you can legitimately help me. I've been ripped off two times in the amount of $15,000. My budget is $4,000 because I've been taken for so much money.

Carl Miller (26:04)

On 11 July 2020, just four days before she ultimately went to rentahitman.com Wendy spelled out to Jura what she wanted done to Frank with a viciousness that wasn't there in her messages to Bob.

Wendy (26:19)

Kidnapped, Drop in a warehouse, locked in or beating me on fixing, beating him like the animal he is. That's my plan. Tire irons come in handy.

Carl Miller (26:28)

So what we realize is that there was Bob sitting at his computer in California, emailing with Wendy. And essentially at almost the same time, here we were in London, unknowingly working on the same case, but using wildly different approaches, we just observed Wendy's messages and passed them on to the Metropolitan Police here in London. But we have no idea what, if anything, was done with our evidence. In the end, while Bob took a much more proactive route, actually making Wendy believe he was a hitman, ultimately getting her arrested. When I piece together everything we know about Wendy, it seems clear that she was a serious threat. Naive and gullible, sure, but desperate. And I think it's that desperation that makes her so dangerous. I mean, she told the detective she was willing to die herself if it meant having Frank killed. In the end, the case against Wendy was very strong. So rather than be tried in front of a jury, Wendy agreed to a no contest plea bargain and was sentenced to at least nine years in prison for solicitation of murder. Wendy is an example of how Bob and rentahitman.com despite everything, are capable of stopping serious violence which might otherwise have slipped through the cracks. Exactly the kind of violence we have been trying to prevent as well. In this case, literally the same violence. But we can't get away from the fact that Bob was willing to cross lines we never were. And his methods have made me and my team reflect on something really fundamental to the kill list and our entire investigation. How far can you ethically go to stop people from being murdered?

Unnamed Producer (28:40)

The thing that's so interesting about rentahitman.com and what Bob is doing is that for the first time, we're running into someone else who has been trying to do something that is very similar to what we've been trying to do for the last few years.

Carl Miller (28:55)

This is my producer, Caroline, by the way.

Unnamed Producer (28:57)

And looking at Bob's work and thinking about Wendy's case, all of this gives us quite a fascinating opportunity to compare our methods and to think about is there even a right way to do this? For me at least, thinking about Bob's work, it definitely helps to show just how ethically complex this whole kind of thing is.

Caroline Thornham (29:18)

Indeed, ethically complex.

Carl Miller (29:19)

But I think it's important to say right at the very beginning that Bob does catch people who are very dangerous. On rentahitman.com people just like Wendy. And I think that Bob, very similar to us, found himself in a position which was really, really difficult, maybe even impossible, one where he felt compelled to act like he needed to help these people. He needed to catch the people that were using his sight. But just like us, felt so ignorant, had to act so urgently, Kind of felt like he was trapped in that position where, I mean, he needed to do something, but it wasn't always clear what.

Unnamed Producer (29:53)

There's definitely a Lot of parallels between what Bob is doing and what we have been doing for the last few years. And I don't doubt that he has genuinely help to catch people who are genuinely dangerous. But I also think that there is a difference between what we've been doing and what he's been doing that we didn't create the website that we've been investigating. He's not just observing and reporting what he sees. He also steps in messages with the users and he's even designed the whole thing now, now that he knows that this is how people are using the site, I don't know. It's not a role I would want to take on myself.

Caroline Thornham (30:29)

Tell me a bit about that. Because it's kind of difficult, I think, for me to understand being uncomfortable, but also recognizing that he's saving lives.

Unnamed Producer (30:37)

I think there's a number of things. So one of them is the fact that he is operating this site himself. And I know that the boundaries of what a traditional journalist would do have been blurred in our own investigation.

Caroline Thornham (30:57)

I mean, profoundly blurred.

Unnamed Producer (30:58)

Profoundly blurred. Right. But that's not been easy.

Caroline Thornham (31:01)

I mean, to be honest with you.

Carl Miller (31:02)

That sense of the blurring of boundaries was actually one of my strongest and first memories of this whole investigation.

Unnamed Producer (31:09)

Yeah, you think you're reporting on something from the outside. And then we found ourselves having to make decisions that put us in the story and in the events in a way that in most journalistic activities you just wouldn't normally do.

Carl Miller (31:27)

I think the boundaries began to blur for me when we reasoned that simply going through the police wasn't going to work. I felt like it was actually ethically incumbent upon us to step out of the ethical frameworks of being a journalist.

Unnamed Producer (31:40)

Probably one of the biggest steps we took was when we decided to contact the victims. And in that moment when we're trying to decide whether it's the right thing to do, to knock on the door, that was scary.

Carl Miller (31:53)

And everything that we did with the police, pressuring them and trying to protect the targets that we came to increasingly know and care about, I don't think that's something that we could ever call classical journalism. That is a blurred boundary.

Unnamed Producer (32:09)

And this, for me, I think, is part of the reason why Bob's site is interesting. Because it makes me ask questions of ourselves and what we did and looking at what he did too. Because I still feel that I probably would not feel comfortable operating a site like Bob's. And even if I did it accidentally, I wouldn't feel comfortable running it. Because to me, you are creating the thing that people are coming to, right. The experience of having these cases come in totally independent of us has been incredibly challenging. And I cannot even fathom the idea of like generating that in some way myself.

Caroline Thornham (32:54)

I don't think Bob is generating this. I think he feels the emails coming into his inbox.

Unnamed Producer (33:00)

But how is he not generating this? Like, I'm not saying that he's implanting the desire to place these orders in these people, but they're not sending these messages on this site unless the site exists and he's running it and he's replying to them. So. So I think that's the step that's different. I'm not saying he's making these people want to kill people, because that's out there already. And I hold my hands up and say he's definitely doing good. So I don't think it's black and white, but the question is, would I feel uncomfortable doing that myself? And the answer is yes.

Caroline Thornham (33:27)

But we could have stopped at any point. So I think Bob's decision to continue to respond to the messages and to run the site the way he's done is in many ways analogous to us deciding to continue to remain in the site secretly and continue to deal with each case's that came in. We've decided to do that because we know that it saves lives and we know it catches very dangerous people.

Unnamed Producer (33:50)

But we haven't messaged the perfect racers, Karl. And I think that's a line that I would not cross. And I think anyone will have their own lines that they draw about how they handle this. But Bob is also like a private citizen. And to me what this tells us is maybe about the gaps that there are in our policing system's ability to develop their own systems to catch them, you know, because why is Bob, who is not qualified at all to be doing this, the person who is having to think about how he messages people.

Caroline Thornham (34:19)

But I mean, we weren't qualified either to investigate any of this. And I think that just is such a strong parallel with us and Bob, you know, both us and him kind of found ourselves in this impossible situation where we feel compelled to step in, like morally. We had to. There was no way that we could ignore it.

Unnamed Producer (34:39)

I see that and I think that's a fair comparison. You know, us, Bob, we're all part of this spectrum of different people who are stepping in in different ways to intervene in what they see as gaps in the police's ability to deal with crime that is happening in digital spaces. I can only hope there's just less need for people like Bob and people like us in the future.

Caroline Thornham (35:09)

What I find really scary is that Bob has received thousands of cases and there are thousands of people on the kill list as well. I think one of the thorniest questions to do with these sites is whether they are simply a window into murderous desires or whether they somehow create murderous desires. But I don't think that's what Bob does. I think that's what Bob argues as well, that nothing that he or his website is doing is actually encouraging people to explore murder if they hadn't already gotten there on their own.

Bob Ennis (35:48)

They're going to the Internet anyway. They're looking for a hitman or somebody else to take care of, and they just find the page. So I don't think the website creates violence. I think it prevents violence because these people are already out there trying to figure out a way to have somebody hurt.

Caroline Thornham (36:09)

Anyone who wants to can visit rentahitman.com it's still up there on the web, but Bob has decided recently to take down the service request form. It has, he says, started to overtake too much of his life.

Bob Ennis (36:26)

It's like a water faucet. I can turn it on or off. If I turned on a service request form today, I would have new leads in the inbox by the end of the afternoon. I mean, it's ridiculous.

Carl Miller (36:42)

Bob's website has been exposed as an obvious con many, many times over. Now he's been written about by a whole host of mainstream news organizations. It's no secret that rentahitman.com is fake. Similarly, Euro sites, the ones we've been monitoring, have long been identified as a scam, and yet people still keep flocking to them. The desire for murder and the belief that it could only be a click away is a fantasy that seemingly impossible to destroy. If you like Kill Lists, you can binge all episodes ad free right now by joining Wondry plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey@wondry.com survey from Wondery and Novel. This is Kill List. Kill List is hosted by me Carmilla. This episode is produced and written by Jake Ortajevic with additional production by Megan Oyinka. Our series producer is Tom Wright. Kill List is also produced by Caroline Thornham with additional production by Anna Sinfield. Our assistant producer is Amalia Saltland and our researchers are Megan Oyinka and Lena Chang.

Caroline Thornham (38:29)

Additional research from Chris Monteiro for Wondery.

Carl Miller (38:32)

Our senior producer is Mandy Gorenstein, who fact checking by Fendor Fulton.

Caroline Thornham (38:38)

Our managing producers are Cherie Houston, Sarah Tobin and Charlotte Wolf for novel.

Carl Miller (38:44)

Sarah Mathurs is our managing producer and Callum Plews is our senior managing producer for Wondery. Original music by Skylar Gerdman and Martin Linibel Music supervision by Nicholas Alexander, Max O'Brien and Caroline Thornham Sound design and mixing by Daniel Kempson for novel. Willard Foxton is creative director of development. Our executive producers are Sean Glynn, Max O'Brien and Craig Strachan for novel. Executive producers for Wandery are Marshall Louie and Erin O'Flaherty.