“As painful as possible” – the custody dispute ended with a hitman

The defendant called himself “Jason Dark” on Darknet when he was looking for a hit man for his ex-wife and eventually appointed him. But not much is left of this cinematic, menacing-looking name in the court in Graz. The 33-year-old sits in the dock with his head bowed, his shoulders slumped and tear-stained.

His voice breaks again and again as he continues to say, “I was afraid for my son’s life.” Because the now four-year-old boy was at the center of a “major custody dispute,” the prosecutor said.

The birth of the son brought problems in the marriage
In 2018, the Viennese met the future mother of his child online – she is from Brazil. They quickly married and nine months later their son was born. “The relationship between the parents and the child increasingly deteriorated,” says the public prosecutor. The couple divorced and the 33-year-old moved back to his parents in Styria.

“This custody dispute was the motive for the suspect’s hatred of his ex-wife,” the prosecutor begins her description of the planned contract killing. The man corresponded for days with a so-called ‘hitman’. The chat messages that the FBI sent to the Austrian authorities are frightening: “The victim must be killed as painfully as possible. The head should be cut off within a week. “This must be documented with photographs and submitted as evidence,” the prosecutor summarizes.

“Hitman” turned out to be a scam
The IT technician transferred 6,000 euros in cryptocurrency. As if that wasn’t enough, he also tried to buy a silenced weapon and then offered himself as a hit man. But there was no murder – the offer on Darknet turned out to be a scam.

“It’s true, he did that at one point and wanted that too,” admits defender Manfred Arbacher-Stöger. The Public Prosecution Service left out only one important point: his client immediately whistled back at the ordered murderer the next day: ‘He couldn’t sleep and then withdrew the order.’ Why is this not reflected in the chat messages? The protocols are fragments that even the FBI has confirmed, Arbacher-Stöger explains. The missing parts of the correspondence could no longer be reconstructed.

The 33-year-old himself also remembers with a shaking voice: “The night I agreed, I couldn’t sleep anymore. I kept thinking to myself: this isn’t right, I can’t do this. The next day I immediately wrote that I was withdrawing the order. That this is a mistake. He shouldn’t do that, I just wanted my son to be safe.”

She fled to Paraguay with her son
Because that was exactly where he was concerned about the boy’s mother. “It used to be that I was almost exclusively taking care of my son.” Shortly after the birth, his ex-wife became aggressive and covered the child’s mouth and nose when he cried. “Every time I saw him he would shout ‘Daddy, Daddy’ – he would actually cry. I was just very afraid for his life and that’s why I went with him to Paraguay.” The Viennese lived there with his son for nine months. However, the child abduction proceedings against him were stopped.

The victim’s summons is waived at the hearing. The woman has been living in South America with her son for some time. It cannot be assumed that she will appear in court anyway.

“Was in an exceptional psychological situation”
The judge in Graz asks the concerned father a question that makes him burst into tears: “What do you think about your child growing up knowing that his father wanted to kill his mother?” – “I pity with all my heart. I was in an exceptional psychological situation,” sobs the defendant. But emphasizes again that he would have withdrawn from command.

But the prosecutor sees things differently at the end of the trial: “Did he warn the police? No, he didn’t. Did he warn the victim? No, he didn’t. He did not resign. He did not do everything he could to prevent the murder.”

The jury’s verdict is still pending.