Silk Road operators developed a taste for murder

Chat logs and other digital records entered into evidence in a federal court case Monday detailed how the operators of the infamous Silk Road underground online marketplace planned to have individuals murdered for potentially disclosing the identities of those who used the anonymous site.

Over the course of March and April 2013, an individual operating under the Silk Road administrator account Dread Pirate Roberts had paid an individual, or group of individuals, approximately $ 650,000 worth of bitcoins to carry out as many as five murders, digital records indicated.

Whether any of these murders were actually carried out remains a mystery. Police have never been able to find any bodies that matched the details of the supposed murders, nor have they found any records of the supposed real names of the people the contract killers claimed to have killed. The defendant in the case, Ross Ulbricht, does not face murder conspiracy charges in the current case in New York.

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