I'm opening up cross play, I've been playing against Dan, my colleague gets in New York times. Cats played another move. Ugh, she played stoop for 36 points. I've got a Z, which is 10 points.
I'm guessing Tanga is not a word, let's see. Tanga is a word. Oh. Dan played his last turn, let's see who won.
It's so close, but I did win. New York Times game subscribers get full access to cross play, our first two player word game. Subscribe now for a special offer on all of our games. On May 1st, 2023, I went to the Federal Courthouse in downtown San Francisco.
My cousin Alan was in 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 wasn't California. No way was I going to miss this. Nine months had passed since Alan was arrested in my father's backyard.
Now in the courtroom, he looked like he'd aged 20 years in that time. Alan used to be fat and shiny, his bald head shown, as did his gadgets and his cars. He used to wear coyote boots and big leather hats. Now he was dressed in a white shirt and a gray blazer.
Defense attorneys often counseled their clients on what to wear to trial. The plain white shirt could communicate respect for the court. The blazer was non-threatening. It was Alan's physical transformation that struck me.
He was thin, something he'd never been. He was stooped. It let his beard grow long and gray. Well played Alan, I thought.
We both grew up with stories of our very talented, very entrepreneurial, and so much 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 Alan thought it was worth trying in an American court. My family had learned a lot in the months since Alan was arrested.
We already knew about the time he took his son, O, from Russia and moved to the US without telling Priscilla. And the time he took O 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 hard thugs, arrested twice, held for two weeks, all of it she believed orchestrated by Alan. 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 Alan did seem maybe a little less bad. Family and friends, especially those who were talking to my Aunt Diana, Alan's mother, were convinced or hoping to be convinced that Alan had somehow been set up. One of the men in my family told me that he'd heard that the undercover agent called Alan himself and said, are here to 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 you didn't intend to steal it, maybe it wasn't a crime. I knew what he was getting at. He thought Alan had been entrapped.
But entrapped and isn't much of a defence morally speaking. I mean, most people would 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 here, Prada.
Don't make me wait for your write-up. I knew that this was his way of saying, please don't leave something to help me believe that Alan is innocent, or at least not guilty of his help. Even Priscilla, when I spoke to her on the eve of the trial, said that she felt sorry for Alan. The prosecutors had brought her to San Francisco to testify, and yet, I sensed, she still didn't quite believe that Alan was capable of this.
When I say that the mind kept looking for ways to absolve Alan, I do not mean my mind. My mind was a piece. In my mind, I had already tried and convicted Alan. 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 finally set aside their misguided doubts and misplace sympathies. From serial productions and The New York Times, I am Am Gesson, and this is the idiot. Some songs that I've written, I started on the piano that happened with All In One For Christmas is You. If you couldn't tell, that is Mariah Carey.
I'm John Caramanica, one of the critics behind The New York Times' 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters Project. We interviewed some of the songwriters on our list, including Taylor Swift, who hasn't sat for a video like this in a long time. These are not ordinary conversations. You're going to watch these videos and learn about intimate approaches to craft in ways that you rarely have access to.
My mom had got me this notebook, and I was just writing it really small because I didn't want anybody to read what I was writing. OK, Jay-Z's Teenage Notebooks. I need to see those. Watch all the video interviews for free and check out the entire 30 Greatest Living American Songwriters Project at nytimes.com slash 30 Greatest or in the app.
And let us know if you agree with our picks. I bet you won't. A jury trial is a play put on for an audience of one dozen people. In Alan'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 in detail telling the stories of their own divorces and custody battles. The prosecutor, Ilhan Hosaini, seemed angry, but she was personally confronted by the details of the crime.
Her star witness was the undercover FBI agent. The man Alan had hired to get rid of Priscilla. Alan knew him as David. So the discovered 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 a joining 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. Great pants, the edge of a striped teal tie, projected onto a large screen while the prosecution play clips a surveillance audio. David testified that the investigation didn't start with Alan. It started with a different Russian speaker, a man named Adi Ksek.
Kseksek was a sometimes business partner of Alan'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, Kseksek caught the FBI's attention. They suspected he was looking for someone to help wander billions of dollars.
Those billions supposedly belonged to a pro-Russian Ukrainian politician 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 Kseksek was talking to David. Brother, how are you and David? And David was recording their conversations. In February 2022, just a couple of weeks after Alan got out of jail after being arrested for taking Ode to Canada, Russian invaded Ukraine, Kseksek floated a new business idea in his conversations with David.
He wanted to get U.S. government funding to make bulletproof vests for Ukraine. Where are you now? I'm a little bit from the Polish side.
We just crossed here. We're helping with some supplies and taking it over. And now it's a war. Yeah, no.
War bombs, bulletproof vests, money laundering. But also, Kseksek left with the subject of his friend Alan. Our Alan. Alan needs help with something.
We're bugging a little bit about that issue that actually it's a guy who works without helping with moving stuff. He's in the U.S., he's in Boston. And he has his ex pretty much making hell out of his life. And she's from Africa, Kseksek, at least I don't know how to his kids.
And basically, if anybody would look into rail with the reasons for her being in the U.S., there is none. Okay. David means this change of subject gaming. Let me ask you this.
In a perfect world, right? What would be the best case scenario that your friend is looking for? Because we have a range of options. We have a group of people who get revoked and she gets kicked out of the country.
Okay. So I don't know if it's 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 Immigration Customs Enforcement. I know we do have contacts.
We've used these people in the past. David doesn't seem to know the intricacies of the U.S. immigration system. The INS was disbanded more than 20 years ago.
But no matter. He in Kseksek left a quickly hatching a plan. A rival was sent to this person at INS or ICE or whoever who'd arranged for the deportation. The bribe would be $100,000.
David testified that he came up with the price tag on the spot, figuring that's what it would cost for some imaginary, highly placed government official to risk their imaginary job. Okay. Thank you very much. Of course.
Yeah. Okay. Bye bye. 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 Alan.
A couple of months after this conversation, he set up a meeting for David and Alan in Florida. This is UC4735 and today is Thursday, June 2nd, 2022 is approximately 11.55 AM. And this is a recording with Alan Gessen, the meetings taking place at the Boca Raton Resort in Boca Raton, Florida. David has told Alan 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. Alan drives up in a white rental car in I would easily say that the jury was trying to get out of the way. He meets David in the lobby, which is like an Italian castle, Florida version.
David is wearing a wire, which is you're about to hear is not great for field recording. Yeah, Alan. Sorry, Alan. How are you?
I'm doing. If this bump, Alan is wearing what looks like a black cashmere sweater. David is dressed in a black, polished shirt, shiny pointy black shoes. They're not dressed for Florida.
Everyone around them is wearing white colors, but they're dressed to perform their roles. Alan is being international man of history. David is going full in a fioso. They're macho.
They're gangsters. They are the Alan and the Dave at the Boca Raton. Yeah, how are you? Excellent.
Not 100%. Yeah, I really make the truth. They're the longer period it is. I was like, what's going on?
They take a shuttle to one of the Boca Raton's restaurants, the Marisol, where the seating is couches in earth tones and the views beach and bralas as far as the eye can see. On the way Alan summarizes his very impressive career. In 2010, I started a massive diamond mining project in South Africa. He sued to Kong, Angola, maybe as a bit of several millions of dollars, some of his adventures, and a triumph or two later.
Alan gets to the story of his marriage. But I went to Zimbabwe once to explore some opportunities there and met this incredibly beautiful woman, which was the end of me. Mr. Sillat?
Yeah. Listen, I always say it's the pictures that I got you. That sounds like your problem. Yes.
David justified in court that the character he was playing was Kras. He seemed to have that part down. At the restaurant, it's David's turn to talk about how impressive the video he is. So, we have a lot of business in South America.
I'm sure Alex has told you. So, my clients are going to hang in and they're all, I'm going to tell you right now, they're all cartel-level guys are all badass. They're real deal. When I talk, they don't have fucking money.
They have fucking money. They're fucking hundreds of millions of dollars. I don't touch the product side. I don't want to talk to the people with the fucking folk.
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'll want to money. And that's it.
And it's been great. I've been doing it for 15, 20 years. Having established their gangster bonafides, Ellen and their undercover talk business. There are two items on that agenda.
The bulletproof thus factory Ellen wants to build. And for Sillat. 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, in the perfect world, tell me what you want. Tell me what you like. And there's a blank sleeve.
Just tell me what you want. Ellen says he wants to report it. He needs this for peace of mind. And he's going to be here to come and harass.
Okay. He doesn't want her to quote, be able to come and harass us every 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 waiting trial and kidnapping charges. He tells David, let's just say that I'm a little bit pissed off. We should say that I'm a little bit pissed off. I'm telling you, man, like I said, historically over time men have made the worst decisions.
You know, when it comes to women, you know, it's, I don't know what it is that effort is. Yeah, you know, it's that weakness or a killing seal. But, uh, yeah, I understand that. I wish I had known you earlier because, you know, why not shit we could have cleaned up.
You know, there's no doubt about that. Let's just play this way. That would never have happened to my family. Amid all this Broi, Gang Street, Hot Air, the Vegas Outdoors, and the Vegas Outdoors, Amid all this Broi, Gang Street, Hot Air, the Vegas 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.
He said Allen didn't discuss the money with Allen, but he quickly recovers from the sticker shop. A good investment. Allen's done the math. He'd pay more in child support.
I'll pay more in child support. Oh, yeah, you would. Yeah, I can get it. He could have done the math.
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 his 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.
Old 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 less factory scheme. This part of the conversation goes a little less smoothly.
Allen had it all figured out. It get to his 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 and not the factory.
But he isn't able. He tells Allen that he could bring in money from the Columbian drug cartels to invest in the factory. Remember, the FBI has been trying for years to get Keseidov 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. Listen carefully. Yeah. I've been listening to the people waiting to bring in the room.
If there's a cheaper way to get rid of her. I mean, I have family in your area. 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. He's opening for Allen, a door to the underworld. So, I don't know how to say this, but there is a cheaper way and probably a more permanent way to do it. But a more permanent way.
In case Allen didn't understand what David was getting at. Is this? Yeah. I mean, that's up to you.
I don't know if it was a big pursuit. Allen would like to proceed. The time that allows us between the agents 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 the hander stood the agent correctly. He doesn't want to 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.
And then that is run through the Israelis and Eastern Europe and Eastern Europe. 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 Harry Kase before testified in court that it is cheap. He had 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 ask that they can get the job done quickly. Allen likes this. And he clarifies.
More definite. I didn't want any more definite. I didn't want any more definite. I'm not.
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 if the agents testify in court before. Often I've been skeptical. Their interpretations of what people say don't even 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 that had no intention of committing. But this was different. I couldn't imagine any alternative interpretation of the tape I just heard. Allen wanted Priscilla killed.
And he wanted David to know that he wanted Priscilla killed. He said that with a bribery scheme he was worried that Priscilla could fight her deportation in court and maybe even win. Murder is better than Departation that way. 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 and quick and it will be final. But you've got to tell me if I got to the route that you want to. My people concern is, are you feeling comfortable in Priscilla?
This is the only thing that gives Allen pause. It doesn't want the kids to see their mother getting killed. No, no, no, God, please. Yeah, no, no, no.
We're all family men. Like this is a strictly business. Because if the people think that they want to fight with us with us with us with us, we can be sure that we're very ill and mature. No, no, no, no, no, no.
This would be very clean, professional job. Reassured, Allen asks about the cost. I think it's probably half the cost, so he's true. Yeah.
Much easier. Okay. Very happy to proceed with it. What a productive meeting for the undercover agent.
He came for bribery and was leading 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 he really meant it. He wanted Priscilla killed.
But you have to be sure that this was your topic. This is the first time. The agent asks Allen if he's sure, and Allen says, I'm sure, and he adds. I mean, I'm sure.
And this was more like, no, no, no. 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 handle it. But that's got to be comfortable.
Okay, good. All right. Allen says that this is not an emotional decision, not spur of the moment. He's comfortable with it.
Sometimes they take their own fucking crazy. Right. Don't fuck with me. There's a bit more back and forth.
David will need pictures of Priscilla, location, everything for the people who do the job. And then, just like that, Allen is showing David pictures of the kids. What's the name? What's the name?
We need for a little bit more. I mean, my daughter, you're beautiful. Gorgeous. We need to get people to know we finished.
Yeah. Gorgeous. Where's August there? Beautiful kids.
Beautiful koodle. 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.
How do we protect the kids? Like, I guess they're too young too, they're too young too, but how do we protect the kids? Well, David was her mother, right? She's fucking gone.
How do we protect the kids? As long as they're not witness to violence. That's the word he used. Violence.
Violence. No, no, no. They won't be. She'll be taken out about them present.
Then I guess you can explain it. I can explain it. But just know that, you know, like, I, now that I'm saying pictures of that, I just want to make sure that they're okay. I got a heart too.
You know, like, I fucking, 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. I mean, I just want to make sure they're okay. 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 widely 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 plan to catch. The undercover agent has a lot to work with.
This is E4, set 4735, and today is Thursday, June 2nd, 2022. And this is the conclusion of the court conversation with Allen Gessen. 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 court room. But this time, I didn't feel like doing that.
Because I didn't feel like explaining why it'd 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, Nana.
Allen's mother was there dressed as she usually was an elegant and hip or black. I saw Allen's wife warmly at 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 get called for Labor Day weekend and not inviting her.
She accused my father of sighting with the FBI, which she thought had framed Allen. In a huff, she left the family Facebook chat. And a few 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, Nana wrote a long post on Facebook about how Allen had been framed, and even though I, an 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 Casey Love 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 factor. I might have focused on how manipulative the undercover agent had been, how he kept fanning the flames of Allen's theory 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, the 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 up front, half upon completion.
As a show of good faith, Allen gave David a gold coin. He'd been carrying it around in his wallet. I haven't touched the ball in a while. It's good.
It's funny. Yeah, it's heavy. No, but you know what I mean? They googled his 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 that he really wants to go through with having Priscilla killed.
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.
Allen is good with the final solution. We're not beside, but we're good. A few days after this meeting, Allen and Anna brought the children to the fourth birthday party for my brother's gift in Brooklyn. The theme of the party was frozen.
It was the first time I saw Allen after he and Priscilla reached their custody agreement. And the first time I didn't feel at all conflicted about spending time with them. It was all about Boredna. Priscilla was on her way to New York, too, to spend a few days in the city with O&L.
I noticed that Allen and Anna were unusually subdued during the party. The party was at a playground. His ran in sprinklers and then ate frozen cake, and the birthday child changed in and out of frozen dresses. Allen and Anna, 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 in the kidnapping charge, he had to be in his best behavior. He also asked me and my brother Keith, who was also a writer, for advice and 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 states of her boyfriend, Sausen 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 givecob. Then David texted this, one quick question.
If there are any guests present, do you have any problem with showing them the exit? My guy 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 you 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 achieved project objectives. Additional unexpected expenses are part of doing business. This message will be quoted over and over again during the trial, so I am going to repeat it too.
I am absolutely ambivalent to the modalities and circumstances as long as we achieved 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, picking him with him. After he signed off and killing extra people is necessary, Allen texted, one sailing today, always studying 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, and you respond from you to that? I couldn't say anymore, the agent said. I was just stunned.
I wish 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 for explanation or even the slightest bit of understanding for Allen's actions, because how can you understand someone who says our cause is just about killing his children's mother? I mean, what was there to understand?
A few more people took the stand. The police detected 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's not 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 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 defendants 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 Ode Canada in violation of a court order was an all-cous behavior. The guy who had never been in a room he didn't expect to win over. Of course, Allen took a stand and stayed in it for a day and a half. To be sure, this was a very different Allen than I'd seen before.
This was then 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 Harari 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 and incubators to place Japan and W.C. 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 $100,000. 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 it cheaper way to get rid of her. What did he 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 officials 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. Mashed 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 for 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 kind of violence, not the killing kind.
Allen claimed that he didn't write some of the signal messages that have been entered into evidence. But yes, he did write that I am absolutely in Bivolin-1. He explained that the tone of my response is kind of I'm a holiday with kids. 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 the grab Priscilla sister who was also in the U.S. 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. Yolah Hosaini, the prosecutor, is really angry now. Outrage that Allen, a lawyer, would do everything he appeared to have done. Kidnap-oh, kidnap-oh again, and then arranged after Priscilla killed while claiming that he wanted her only well, kidnapped.
I was right there with her. I couldn't believe Allen's husband taking the stand and expecting anyone to take his defense seriously. I mean, I literally couldn't believe most of what he said. Neither could Mrs.
Hosaini. 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 won 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 in Zimbabwe. Definitely in Boston is closer than Boston in Zimbabwe. Nonetheless, your goal was not to separate Priscilla from the children, was it?
When she was done with him, Yolah Hosaini hadn't just destroyed Allen's defense. She had 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 directors 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 QS attorney pound away at a defendant who 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 disposed 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 paused 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 agents for both kids. But even though I have known the FBI to manufacture evidence, I had no patience with 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'm not surprised. None of us had any doubt anymore.
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. 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'd haggled, wanting to get rid of her on the cheap. Her sense of relief now came from having other people see what she'd been through, but also what she hadn't wanted to see, which had tried to push away by yelling 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, and for this trial.
And now finally Allen would be locked away, and Priscilla could start living her life. I think that the one thing that I lost throughout this experience was 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.
This is going to be the first story in my career where the FBI are the good guys. Yeah. What sentence do you want from that? The maximum.
Really, for the maximum. Me too, Priscilla. Me too. The maximum sentence possible was ten years.
And assuming he gets ten years or thereabouts, have you given any thought to what happens when he comes out of prison? I'm hoping they find something else. He should just remain where he is. Priscilla was hoping that Allen would surf 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 reach 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 of costume. But I also knew that he'd been in jail for almost a year, that he'd lost his adored son, and his nifty life full of gadgets and tindermatches, 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. It was a time to admit that I was a hypocrite, who posed carceral justice only when it was about strangers, not when it was about my own family. As a journalist, I tried 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 Owen Elle 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, and guesson, and produced by Daniel Kimet, with Andebei Zenthe, and Yuka Kimet of Liberty, was to do's. Our editor is Julie Snyder, additional editing by Ira Glass and Sarah Kannick.
Research and fact-checking by Ben Feynman and Marisa Robertson-Texter. Original score by Allison Leibnbron, additional music from Dan Powell and Mary Lozano. The show was mixed by Phoebe Wang, with additional mixing by Katherine Anderson, additional production by Fia Bennett. At serial productions, Ande Chubu is our supervising producer, Mac Miller's our associate producer.
Video production by Sean Devaney, Art Direction from Kelly Do. Art by John Kern, credits music by Bob Dylan. At The New York Times, our standards editor is Susan Wesley, legal review by Alameen Sumar, Dana Green, Jackson Bush, and Tintai. Our senior operations manager is Elizabeth Davis-Mour, and Sam Dolnick 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 Newzler at nytimes.com.stereonewsletter. Special thanks to Andrew Sinksing and To The Move. The idiot is a production of serial productions, and The New York Times.