NEW YORK—The Silk Road drug-trafficking trial veered toward murder-for-hire allegations today, although the story didn't quite arrive there. As prosecutors near the end of their case, they walked the jury through the personal mailbox of the boss of the drug-dealing website, Dread Pirate Roberts.

The final witness of the day was Brian Shaw, an FBI contractor who sifted through a working copy of the Silk Road he made in July 2013, after law enforcement imaged the Silk Road server, once they found it in Iceland.

The basics of the story were reported more than a year ago, after Ross Ulbricht, whom the government accuses of being DPR, was arrested in San Francisco. But today the jury saw the story develop in the words of DPR and the users with whom he interacted.

“These are not normal ppl”

It began in mid-March of 2013, when a user named FriendlyChemist started frantically trying to get a direct line to the Dread Pirate Roberts. Before long, DPR responded. FriendlyChemist explained that a Silk Road seller he worked with, LucyDrop, had become non-responsive—at a very bad time.

"[I] am lucydrops supplier," FriendlyChemist wrote. "i lent him 900k of product and he paid be [sic] 200k and then he started avoiding me...what is the deal? where is my money? why is lucydrop still selling when i kno [sic] for a fact that he has no product because i supplyed [sic] him."

FriendlyChemist made a threat to the site's anonymity. "[I] also have the identities of 9 top vendors and 15 smaller vendors and 1000s of customers," he told DPR. "i don't want any trouble but i want my money...i'm scared for my family because of the money i owe." He was at the middle of the drug food chain, not the top; and the people he owed money to frightened him. "[T]hese are not normal ppl."

DPR reached out to LucyDrop, telling him about the contact. Turned out LucyDrop had been arrested, and soon DPR was corresponding with a user named RealLucyDrop, who said that he'd been arrested and cheated by his former partner. "FriendlyChemist was our middleman to one of our LSD distributors," said RealLucyDrop. "He is demanding I pay him for some deal he had with my partner when I was in jail."

Dread Pirate Roberts didn't show any interest in giving into that demand. "I need his real world identity, so I can threaten him with violence," DPR told RealLucyDrop.

"I don't know how I feel about that solution," said RealLucyDrop. In a later message, he explained that FriendlyChemist had good reason to be scared. "He is freaking out because he truly believes his life and his family's life is in danger," wrote RealLucyDrop. "The people he borrowed the product from are a big criminal organization in Canada (Hells Angels—not sure if you are familiar with them)."

"There's no way I will be handing over cash to somebody who threatens me and this community," wrote DPR. He wanted RealLucyDrop to hand over FriendlyChemist's identity. "Don't bother messaging me again if the message does not contain his personal info...I won't be blackmailed."

DPR got basic information, although not the exact address. FriendlyChemist was a 34-year-old man who lived near Vancouver with a wife and three kids.

RealLucyDrop added that with FriendlyChemist out of the picture, he'd lose his income—and he wouldn't mind being on Silk Road's payroll as an admin. "I could really use some sort of job as my partner completely fucked me over," he told DPR. "I've always been loyal to you, and loyal to the movement."

New business partner

Later, a user named "redandwhite" got in touch with DPR, explaining that his group was the one owed money. "We hold him [FriendlyChemist] and him only responsible for the missing product/money."

"In my eyes, FriendlyChemist is a liability and I wouldn't mind if he was executed, but then you would be out your $700k."

DPR was solicitous. "FriendlyChemist aside, we should talk about how we can do business," he wrote. "Obviously you have access to illicit substances in quantity, and are having issues with bad distributors."

"That is interesting," responded redandwhite. "We have a majority hold over most of the movement of products in Western Canada (one of the main drug ports to North America)...I've looked around your site and the prices are absolutely absurd."

It's already known, of course, that the story will go further. Prosecutors have said DPR asked for redandwhite to kill FriendlyChemist, and ultimately four other people as well. But that will have to wait for Monday, when the government will likely conclude its case. Testimony for the day ended at 5:00pm sharp.

Since no murders actually are known to have taken place related to Silk Road, it's not clear who DPR is really talking to in the chats. Is "redandwhite" at the heart of a major drug network or a clever scammer? The chats about to be entered into the record may get us closer to an answer.

Following the bitcoins

Four separate witnesses were on the stand today. The day began with defense lawyer Joshua Dratel continuing his cross-examination of Michael Duch, a heroin addict who turned to dealing on Silk Road to support his habit. Dratel, whose cross-examinations of other witnesses have often been stymied by rulings from the judge overseeing the case, was allowed to lay into Duch. He grilled him, suggesting Duch hadn't been honest with the government about when he first started using drugs.

Later in the morning, FBI agent Vincent D'Agostino testified about how he bought and tested hacking tools from Silk Road. Ulbricht is facing a computer hacking conspiracy charge, based on Silk Road sales of such tools.

Also testifying was Ilhwan Yum, a former FBI agent who worked on the Silk Road case and took possession of bitcoins on both Ulbricht's computer and the Silk Road server. After Dratel claimed in his opening statement that Ulbricht made money by trading Bitcoin, prosecutors quickly hired Yum and a partner to do an analysis showing where Ulbricht's bitcoins came from.

Every bitcoin transaction is published in a kind of digital-age public ledger at the blockchain.info website. Once Yum had access to the Bitcoin addresses on Ulbricht's computer and the Silk Road server, he was able to record direct links between the two, he told the jury.

He found more than 4,000 transactions in which bitcoins moved from addresses associated with Silk Road to ones on Ulbricht's laptop. Those transactions represented just over 700,000 bitcoins in all, which he calculated as being worth about $13.36 million. (It's a complicated calculation, since the value of bitcoin varied greatly over time.) Ulbricht's laptop also had 89,854 bitcoins from non-Silk Road sources, he said.

Yum's analysis was similar to one done by independent researcher Nicholas Weaver of UC Berkeley, shortly after opening statements.

Today was the ninth day of the Silk Road trial. For complete trial coverage, see our series page.