Doctor arrested for trying to hire a hitman to kidnap and inject ex-wife with heroin in bizarre bid to win her back
Nothing says "let's try again" like hiring an assassin to drug your ex until they agree to rekindle the relationship.
That is apparently what one neonatal doctor in Spokane, Washington thought, as he allegedly did just that.
Ronald Ilg, 55, was arrested in April and is being charged in federal court for hiring a hitman over the internet to abduct his wife and imprison her in a "secure location" for a week, all the while dosing her with heroin.
"The target destroyed two families and walked away as if she did nothing," the doctor allegedly wrote in his abductor job synopsis. "I want the target kidnapped for 7 days. While being held, she will be given injections of heroin at least two times per day."
The Daily Beast reported that Dr Ilg's plan was allegedly to get her hooked on heroin and - while she was abducted - to litter her house with drug-injection paraphernalia.
The needles were meant to essentially serve as blackmail material the doctor could allegedly use to force his ex to restart their relationship. If she did not agree to restart the relationship, Dr Ilg's alleged plan was to turn her over to the police, who would have found heroin in her system and hypodermic needles throughout her house and presumably taken her children away from her.
Dr Ilg apparently agreed to pay the would-be kidnapper in Bitcoin. The FBI traced the Bitcoin transaction, which led them to Dr Ilg's Coinbase account.
Should Dr Ilg be convicted, he will face up to 20 years in prison.
Dr Ilg's wife shares one son with the man and is 15 years younger than him. She has not been named, but told investigators that her husband had taken aggressive steps to control her in the past, including placing tracking devices on her car and cellphone, and threatening to take away her belongings if she did not give in to his sexual demands.
Court documents suggest the doctor later became involved with another woman with whom he engaged in sado-masochistic play. The doctor took to the fetish too far, however, as woman involved in the affair claims Dr Ilg trapped her in an underground bunker and forced her to sign a sex slave contract in blood.
His second wife filed for divorce in June 2020, and five months later Dr Ilg was fired from his job for bringing a weapon to work.
During this period, Dr Ilg allegedly sent his wife hundreds of text messages asking her to take him back and offering to pay her money to drop the divorce proceedings.
In the call the doctor allegedly put out for abductors, the kidnappers' first goal should be to get the wife to "cancel all court proceedings immediately."
When the estranged wife would not halt the divorce proceedings, her lawyer sent Dr Ilg a letter asking him to refrain from talking to her unless it was about their son. Dr Ilg allegedly refused, prompting her to file for a restraining order.
At first it seemed that things had sorted themselves out; following the restraining order Dr Ilg admitted that he had been in a "raw emotional state," and said that he would stop trying to contact his wife.
Unfortunately for her, the doctor's sudden clarity was short-lived. As detailed in court documents, shortly after the restraining order was issued the wife began seeing Dr Ilg parking outside her work, and he again began sending her dozens of text messages. At one point he pretended to drop a type-written letter in front of her in hopes she might pick it up, read it, and forgive him.
That letter read, in party "I do love you, more than words can describe, more than actions can show. Every fiber of my body, every ounce of my life energy calls out for you."
Around the same time he was romantically dropping letters in front of his estranged wife, Dr Ilg was allegedly cruising the web looking for goons to dish out beatings on those he believed had wronged him.
In one instance a user named Scar215 attempted to hire muscle for use against a coworker he believed had been spreading rumours about how he was fired. He told his hired help to "injure both hands significantly or break the hands" of the woman he was targeting.
Dr Ilg was allegedly ready to pay $2,000 in Bitcoin to whoever took on the job, but the request was never fulfilled.
A month later, the same user posted another assignment on the dark web rent-a-killer site, this time asking for someone to kidnap, drug, and blackmail his estranged wife.
There are numerous "dark web" sites that purport to be assassin-for-hire services, but most are illegitimate and at least one - the obviously fake "rentahitman.com" - is essentially a honeypot intended to capture would-be killers by collecting assassination requests and turning them over to law enforcement.
Under Dr Ilg's alleged plan, the wife would be instructed never to speak of her kidnapping and was to be told that "her families' health, including her father and her kids, depend on her completing these rules."
"It would be unfortunate if her older boy became addicted to heroin," the post on the assassin rental site read. "Or her dad be severely beaten, or her dog be slaughtered."
According to a post on the site, the doctor had put $5,000 in escrow, and would deliver another $10,000 the following day. The doctor said that upon completion he would pay whoever took the job an additional $40,000.
Eventually Dr Ilg's new girlfriend became aware of her boyfriend's alleged proclivity for hiring dark-web toughs to get his way. While she was talking with Dr Ilg's estranged wife, the girlfriend learned about the ongoing battle between the two and confronted the doctor. She told him she was scared of him and mentioned the dark web killers.
Dr Ilg, in text messages obtained by the US Attorney's Office, brushed off the concerns, saying all the hype surrounding dark web assassins was false, denying he had any involvement in any plot to kill anyone.
"You hired someone from the dark web to hurt [the estranged wife]," the girlfriend texted. "Leave me alone forever. I'm scared of you."
The girlfriend revealed to investigators that Dr Ilg allegedly made her call him "sir" and would leave her locked for hours in an underground bunker outside his home. She was the woman who was forced to sign a sex slave contract in blood.
BBC journalists, who had been chasing the story, confronted Dr Ilg about his alleged calls for an assassin, and eventually turned their evidence over to the FBI.
Investigators raided Dr Ilg's home, finding his concrete bunkers and a reference to his online handle "Scar215" on a sticky-note in his house.
According to broadcaster KHQ, Dr Ilg reportedly confessed that he tried to hire someone on the dark web but claimed he was actually trying to hire someone to kill him to ensure that his girlfriend got all of his belongings rather than his estranged wife.
Prosecutors could not corroborate that claim, however, as Dr Ilg had never updated his will to include his new girlfriend as a beneficiary of any kind.
In April Dr Ilg tried to kill himself by overdosing on pills, but was found by authorities and later was arrested.
He faces attempted kidnapping charges, to which he has pleaded not guilty.
Dr Ilg's trial is slated for October, according to the Spokesman-Review.
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