ings indicated that unlike in the Minnesota cases, their star witness would be Paul Le Roux himself.

The trial took place inside the white-columned edifice flanking Manhattan’s Foley Square, in a courtroom with vaulted ceilings and seating for more than a hundred spectators. The first morning of jury selection, I sat in the gallery a few rows behind the prosecu- tors’ table, where three assistant U.S. attorneys from the Southern District office waited alongside Eric Stouch, from the DEA’s 960 group. The three defendants entered under escort by federal mar- shals: Adam Samia, with his slicked-back hair and self-assured smirk, seemed at times to be almost mocking the proceedings. David Stillwell, who had already confessed to being present at the murder—as the driver—looked shell-shocked. Stillwell’s attorney had already signaled in pretrial filings that his defense consisted almost entirely of a procedural question over whether he’d known the job included murder before departing for the Philippines. (The federal murder-conspiracy statute under which the three men were prosecuted required that they knowingly entered into the conspir- acy while inside the United States. Simply murdering someone overseas is not, as it happens, illegal in the States.) Joseph Hunter was the most inscrutable of the three. Still an intimidating barrel of a man, he now walked with a cane, and his affect was one of morose resignation. The only question in this trial for him was whether his twenty years in prison would be extended to life.

As U.S. District Judge Ronnie Abrams walked potential jurors through a series of questions to ferret out their biases, the court- room echoed with the names and places that had once filled the Post-its stuck to my apartment wall. Jury candidates were asked if they were familiar with a cast of characters that spanned the breadth of Le Roux’s operation: Tim Vamvakias, Nestor Del Ro- sario, Shai Reuven, Lachlan McConnell, Mathew Smith, Moran Oz, Bruce Jones, John Nash, and others. They were asked if they were familiar with locations from North Korea to Zambia, Papua New Guinea to the Seychelles, Roxboro, North Carolina, to Tay- tay, in the Philippines. Catherine Lee’s death would be the fulcrum