In a small Minnesota town, an IT technician found his way to the darkest corner of the web. Then he made a deadly plan.
ON A BRISK day in March 2016, Stephen Allwine walked into a Wendy’s in Minneapolis. The smell of old fryer grease hung in the air as he searched for a man wearing dark jeans and a blue jacket. Allwine, who worked as an IT support technician, was lean and nerdy, with wire-rim glasses. He was carrying $6,000 in cash, money he’d collected by pawning silver bars and coins to avoid suspicious deductions from his bank account. He found the man he was looking for sitting in a booth.