On the night of August 24th, 2007, a 31-year-old office worker left her job in Aichi Prefecture, Japan… and never made it home.

Her name was Rie Isogai.

She had no enemies. No dangerous lifestyle. No warning.

But somewhere else in the city, three men were refreshing a message board, an underground corner of the internet known in Japan as a “dark site.”

They weren’t friends.
They had never met in person.
But that night, they agreed on one thing:

They wanted money.
And they were willing to kill for it.

This case would shake Japan, not only because of its brutality, but because it forced the country to confront something new.

Strangers meeting online.
An anonymous digital world.
And a murder born from a website.

It would become known as the Dark Site Murder.

And in a country where the death penalty is rarely applied to a single killing… this case would test the limits of justice.

In Part 2, the case moves from investigation to trial.
This episode walks through the courtroom proceedings, key witnesses, and the emotional impact statements that brought the case to its breaking point. As the judge delivers the verdict, the question remains: was this a tragic accident, or something far more deliberate?

For our Season 9 finale, we step outside of Asia and head to the United States.

In the summer of 2022, a devastating car crash in Ohio claimed the lives of two young men: Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan. What first appeared to be a tragic accident would later be re-examined, investigated, and ultimately prosecuted as intentional and as murder.

This episode marks the beginning of a two-part deep dive into the McKenzie Shirilla case, a story that gripped me from the moment I encountered it. Teen car crashes, sadly, are not uncommon, but something about this case feels different. The evidence, the behaviour, the courtroom strategy, and the unanswered questions all demand careful examination.