The Mystery Of The Disappearing Silk Road Murder Charges

By Patrick Howell O'Neill
Daily Dot
Oct. 23, 2014

Drugs, hacking, money laundering, and above all else, murder.

The bust of the Silk Road was headline news around the world instantly thanks to these salacious details. But the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) claims that alleged Silk Road kingpin Ross Ulbricht carried out six shocking murder-for-hire plots against staff, vendors, and innocent bystanders—not to mention a brutal torture allegation—seemed to seal his fate in the eyes of the public. When most of the world first met Ross Ulbricht, the word murder was printed in big black letters right next to his face.

Ulbricht's alleged murder plots transformed Silk Road from a politically conscious, pro-drug online market to a dangerous and militant drug cartel.

So, where are those murder charges now?

To date, there have been precisely zero murder charges filed. Instead, the indictment has been changed without explanation, the formal charges omitted, and the broader accusations buried within a lesser drug trafficking charge.

Of the six murder indictments trumpeted by the U.S. government in the days following Ulbricht’s Oct. 2013 arrest, five have fallen off the table and the sixth sits untouched in a separate indictment (legalese for an unproven allegation) that was purposefully left out of the upcoming trial.

Prosecutor Serrin Turner used the murder-for-hire allegations to get the judge to deny bail. Now, Turner isn’t even going to charge Ulbricht with the murders.

Why have six of the most important accusations been left as yet uncharged?

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