EPILOGUE 367

Adam Samia was the only defendant to take the stand. When his attorney kicked off his testimony by asking Samia if he had killed Catherine Lee, he leaned into the microphone and said loudly, “Absolutely not.” He then spun an implausible story: Rather than surveilling and killing Lee, as the photos on his and Stillwell’s phone and laptop seemed to indicate, he had spent the early months of 2012 in the Philippines driving Le Roux’s employees back and forth to the airport. The money he’d wired back from the Philip- pines wasn’t payment for the murder but winnings from a mixed martial arts fight.

Ultimately the jury wasn’t swayed. After only a few hours of deliberation, they returned with guilty verdicts for all three defen- dants. The mandatory sentence for their charges is life without pa- role. Barring a successful appeal, Hunter, Samia, and Stillwell will almost certainly spend their remaining lives in federal prison.

The end of the trial in April 2018 paved the way for Le Roux to be sentenced, although no one seemed to know when that would happen. Buried in the hours of testimony in the Lee murder trial, there was one clue to Le Roux’s plans if and when he was released. Le Roux admitted that while in custody in the summer of 2016, he’d broken the jail’s rules and contacted an inmate named Mir Islam at another facility in the United States. Le Roux had met Islam in custody the year prior, when they were housed together, and before he’d been transferred to another prison, Islam had told Le Roux he was soon to be released. Le Roux coaxed a paralegal into setting up a series of calls with Islam.

“During these three-way calls, did you make any plans with Mir Islam?” the prosecutor asked Le Roux.

“I discussed opening a call center business,” Le Roux said. “I was going to fund it.”

The other defendants prosecuted in the Southern District for the drug and murder stings were assigned to federal prisons around the country. Tim Vamvakias and Dennis Gögel, having pleaded