objected, with due respect,” Rivera said. “I said I think the legal chain of custody will be broken.” Instead, the van was brought to the NBI for safekeeping.

“Do you want to see it?” he said. I did. We walked out to a parking lot in the interior of the com- plex, hemmed in by buildings on all sides. The van looked to be in good shape. Peering inside, Rivera pointed out that the middle seat had been removed, and on the floor under piles of empty water bottles and fast food wrappers was a large, dark stain. “You can plainly see what appears to be bloodstains,” Rivera said. “But I still don’t know if those are really bloodstains. And if they are bloodstains, are they from animals, or human?”

The U.S. authorities had proposed a series of plans to conduct forensic analysis on the van, including sending an FBI team to Ma- nila, or shipping the entire vehicle to Quantico, Virginia. Rivera said the plans, which required the approval of the Ministry of Jus- tice in the Philippines, “never materialized.” (Later, U.S. authori- ties would say that the NBI simply refused to let them have the van.) Since the Philippine authorities lacked the equipment to test potentially five-year-old stains, they wouldn’t be able to confirm if what I saw was blood from Catherine Lee.

But there was another way prosecutors might at least put Samia and Stillwell at the scene of the crime. When they searched Samia’s house after his arrest, they found what looked to be the key to a Toyota van just like the one now sitting in the NBI parking lot. Rivera told me that DEA agents were returning to Manila with the key to test it out.

A few weeks later, after I was back in the U.S., Rivera sent me a text. The van had started.

The prosecution of Samia, Stillwell, and Hunter for the murder of Catherine Lee would offer the U.S. government another chance to make good on the deal they had cut with Le Roux. The trial was finally set for April 2018 in Manhattan, and the prosecution’s fil-