The most lurid detail in the trial of alleged Silk Road boss Ross Ulbricht was discussed in court yesterday, when an attorney read from emails that prosecutors claim show Ulbricht ordering hits on five people from a member of the Hell's Angels. Wired published a transcript of those emails in full—and the exchange sounds like a deep-web update on Léon: The Professional or Kill Bill.

Ulbricht faces charges related to running the Silk Road, the infamous online market for drugs and other illegal goods, but not with any of the alleged murders—though he is charged with hiring a contract killer in a separate case. In fact, as Wired's Andy Greenberg points out, prosecutors haven't been able to find the five apparent victims or even match their names with public records. Ulbricht has maintained his innocence on all charges throughout, and claims that failed Bitcoin bigwig Mark Karpeles is the real Dread Pirate Roberts—the pseudonym the Silk Road boss used in online chats.

The alleged murder plot concerns a Silk Road user named FriendlyChemist who attempted to blackmail Dread Pirate Roberts, threatening to publicize a cache of personal information on "thousands" of Silk Road clients. When a Hell's Angels member using the name Redandwhite contacts Roberts because FriendlyChemist owed the Angels money, DPR frankly asks him to murder the blackmailer.

"This kind of behavior is unforgivable to me," DPR writes at one point. "Especially here on Silk Road, anonymity is sacrosanct."

I hate to come to you with a problem when we are just starting to get to know one another, but Blake (FriendlyChemist) is causing me problems. Are you still looking for him or now that you've found Xin have you given up? I would like to put a bounty on his head if it's not too much trouble for you. What would be an adequate amount to motivate you to find him?

Necessities like this do happen from time to time for a person in my position. I have others I can turn to, but it is always good to have options and you are close to the case right now. Hopefully this is something you are open to and can be another aspect of our business relationship.

Redandwhite agrees to the deed, and eventually reports back to DPR that it is done. Among the affects found on FriendlyChemist was a USB with a file conveniently named "blackmail.txt." Might that be what FriendlyChemist was planning to use against DPR? (Previously, Redandwhite revealed that the famously rough-and-tumble Hell's Angels are more familiar with the arcana of cryptography and the deep web than you'd think: they've been using PGP "for years" to ensure that their communications are secure, he says.)

When Redandwhite mentions that FriendlyChemist also happened to spill the beans on a group of four Silk Road scammers before he was killed, DPR figures: hell, let's just kill those guys, too.

Redandwhite replies:

As for getting all 4, it would be possible but they would have to get them all at once so that one does not get away. I would send 4 hitters instead of 2 to make sure there was no fuck ups. I'm not sure when they are planning on leaving the province though. The guy that has been feeding me information on him says the guy is a degenerate gambler so I don't know how much funds he will have on hand. He says he owes a ton of people money too. My guess is that he is pulling these scams to fuel his gambling problem like a degenerate. It would make sense why he is also teaching other people how to scam as well when it has been so profitable for him to keep to himself.. probably because he owes them money and offers to show them how to do it, as a way of paying them back.

I will have them take whatever they have on hand, but I don't want my hitters to be hanging around with them for too long since they are doing 4 people.

And after the "degenerate gambler" and his cronies are killed:

That problem was dealt with. I'll try to catch you online to give you details. Just wanted to let you know right away so you have one less thing to worry about

If the emails are to believed, Ulbricht—or whomever is behind the Dread Pirate Roberts handle—has racked up five bodies and $650,000 in bitcoin payments to the Hell's Angels.

But according to reporter Fran Berkman, it's possible that Redandwhite was simply scamming DPR, too. Police haven't found any bodies, remember, and logs from Ulbricht's computer show that Redandwhite disappeared shortly after taking a $500,000 loan from DPR, despite expressing enthusiasm about the prospect of the Hell's Angels selling drugs on the Silk Road.

Read the full transcript of the emails here.

Update: Even the prosecution believes that the emails were part of a scam, and that no one was actually killed.

[Image via AP]