Dark web hitman trial: Killer website a 'sham' hears court

A website that a mother-of-five is accused of using to hire a hitman to kill a former colleague who rejected her after a brief fling has been described as an “absolute sham”.

Helen Hewlett, 43, paid more than £20,000 in Bitcoin as a supposed deposit to the dark web site Online Killers Market which promised to only take the cash once the man had been killed.

But the married mother was arrested after police linked Bitcoin payments made to the website to her as she had paid out the cryptocurrency from a regulated account with Coinbase – an exchange site – which had recorded her name and personal details.

King’s Lynn mum-of-five Helen Hewlett denies solicitating murder and stalking (Image: Twitter)

Norwich Crown Court heard how Hewlett gave her account details on the website to police after she was arrested and officers cancelled her hitman order pretending to be her, but never got back any of the Bitcoin she had paid.

Matthew McNiff, defending, described the website as an “absolute sham” and said its claims of being able to provide hitmen willing to kill a target as “palpable nonsense”.

Jurors have heard that Hewlett had become infatuated with colleague Mark Belton, 50, when they were both working at the Linda McCartney vegetarian food factory in Fakenham

The court heard how investigations had revealed that Hewlett had set up a Coinbase account to buy cryptocurrency in January last year.

She transferred £22,601 into it from her current bank accounts in 35 transactions as well as using savings, an overdraft and loans for £7,000 and £5,000.

Prosecutors said she used a ‘Tor’ browser – which allows anonymous browsing – to search the dark web and found the website which purported to provide hitmen.

She transferred Bitcoin worth £20,547 into the website’s account together with Mr Belton’s name, home and work addresses and his picture, and told the would-be hitmen: “It’s vital it looks like an accident.”

Factory staff trainer Paul Belton who Hewlett is said to have become infatuated with after being spurned a brief fling (Image: East Anglia News Service)

Det Sgt Mark Stratford, of Eastern Region Special Operations Unit, told the court that the website claimed it could provide hitmen to shoot people or hit them with cars to make it appear deaths were accidental.

It even provided a price list in US dollars, detailing a sniper shooting as costing between $20,000 and $60,000, an arson attack for up to $20,000 or a simple beating for as little as $2,000.

The website also claimed it could arrange deaths from undetectable poison or even snake bites, saying it had “a 100% job completion rate”, said Mr Stratford

It promised to activate hitmen on payment of fees into a so-called Escrow intermediate website, saying it would not actually take the money until authorised by the client after it had been proved that a hit had been carried out, he added.

Helen Hewlett and Paul Belton met at the Linda McCartney food factory in Fakenham (Image: Newsquest)

Mr Stratford said there was no indication that the account on the website was a genuine Escrow account which would have had a multi-signature wallet to authorise payment when all parties were in agreement.

He added: “We have researched some of the claims and we do not believe them to be genuine.”

Hewlett, of the Hawthorns in King’s Lynn, denies soliciting murder and stalking between January 2021 and August 2022.

The trial continues.