Name: Mariana Van Zeller's Dangerous Interview with an Assassin
Uploaded: 2024-01-25T18:23:32.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Mariana Van Zeller's Dangerous Interview with an Assassin' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-01-25. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Mariana Van Zeller's Dangerous Interview with an Assassin' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-01-25. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan experience.
- But we actually found, all started with an interview
that we did with an assassin in L.A.
- Yeah?
- About 15 minutes from my house in L.A.
And we have a contact in L.A.
that whenever we're looking at the black markets,
we contact him and ask him,
"Hey, do you know anyone who's basically making meth,
"or drugs, or guns, or whatnot?"
And, you know, in the off chance
that he knew an assassin, we contacted him.
And he said he actually did.
He knew a guy.
He didn't think he was gonna talk to us,
but maybe he did because he was close to him.
And eventually, this guy agreed to talk to us.
And we met him in the corner.
And as we're driving there,
so we're driving there with our local contact
that's taking us to meet this guy.
And he told us, "Hey, be very careful."
This guy is like, the way he said it is like,
he's bipolar, kinda.
Like, he acts as if he's bipolar one moment,
he's happy in the next.
He can just freak out and nobody knows why.
He's really hard, difficult to deal with.
And I asked him, "Are you sure he's an assassin?"
Or is it possible that he's just boasting?
That happens sometimes.
And he said, "No, no, no.
I've seen this guy being offered $80,000
to go and kill someone."
And I know this is what he does.
Everybody knows this guy in his community, in his group.
So he operates in America?
He does, yeah.
I asked him where.
He's based in L.A., but he says it's all over the United States mainly.
Wow.
And he, yeah, as soon as I met him, he took out his gun and he said,
"You guys, if this is a fucking setup, you guys are all, it's gonna be really
easy to kill you all right now."
And it was me and three or four other people.
And my fear, we told him, "It's not a setup."
He says, "I just came here because I trust my buddy, but, you know, you don't
fuck me.
If the police shows up, you guys are all dead."
So we're in a corner of L.A., close to downtown.
And I'm constantly looking at the end of the road thinking, "If the police
shows up for any reason, he's gonna think it's us."
Yeah.
And this is not good.
So, yeah, it was a quick interview, but a chilling one.
How many people has this guy whacked?
He said more than 10.
He didn't say exactly how many I asked him.
I also started asking him personal questions about, "Do you have a family?"
Because he was saying he doesn't kill women or children.
I asked him, "But do you have kids?"
And you realize, like, what would it be like for your kids to live without you?
If you're doing the same to other kids, right?
He got really mad at my questions and said,
"Don't fucking ask me emotional questions or something like that, personal
questions."
And this interview is over and left.
What was his background?
He said he came from a really tough family.
And that, yeah, involved in drugs and guns and all of it.
And he, I think, realized early on that he could do this.
And a lot of other people can't.
And he was able to do it and he gets well paid and he does it.
How does one even apply to a job like that?
Yeah.
And you, I mean, that was my fear when we started looking into this story,
because it's a little bit of a Hollywood myth, right?
Yeah.
And frankly, this doesn't really exist.
And all those stories that you can go on the dark web and find an assassin,
most of that is bullshit.
So that was my fear.
But I do trust this contact.
And we actually then ended up going to South Africa that has one of the highest
assassination rates in the world and spent time with a bunch of different
inkabi, which are, as they are called, in South Africa.
And that was fucking crazy as well.
So we spent time with one.
His name is Jojo, young guy.
And his story is insane.
And that, he was a lot nicer, a lot more approachable,
but has killed like over 30 people and gets paid $1,500 per hit.
And, you know, thousands of people have died in just the past few years
at the hands of assassins in South Africa.
Wow.
Mm-hmm.
And a lot of it happens in the taxi industry.
Oh.
So there's like 70%, I think, of commuters in South Africa commute on these taxis.
Basically, it's like these vans.
And they're worth a lot of money.
And it's sort of a cash business.
And the owners of these taxi companies are routinely being killed.
So we spent time with the taxi owner who owns one of these companies.
And he had a bullet for AK-47 on his head that he showed us.
It was a $1 million prize for anyone who killed him.
And this is a crazy guy.
And his rivals were just across the street with all their taxis,
the other company that he says are trying to kill him.
So he's surrounded by bodyguards with AK-47s at all times.
And he was like, "Do you want to go across the street with me
and film me as I get close to the other guys and see what happens?"
I was like, "Sure."
So we start walking towards the rivals.
And immediately, there's a group of heavily armed men walking towards us.
Immediately, within like seconds.
And this happens every day.
Like, people are killed every day.
Jeez.
So yeah, and then back to the assassin.
And they don't have a hard time talking to you about this.
I would think that there's no upside to them discussing this with you.
But potentially, they could get caught.
Yeah.
We go through a lot to make sure that we protect their identities.
But I think JoJo, this assassin, is a good example of why they talk to us.
So we spent an hour and a half, more or less, two hours talking to him.
And he tells us a story of how he became an assassin.
His parents were killed when he was young.
He was about nine years old or something.
He felt like he was left with no protection.
He started carrying a knife.
And his parents were killed by an assassin, by the way, as well.
And then eventually, he got involved in the drug business.
And then eventually, people were paying him to go out,
paying him much more money to go out and kill.
And he says, "Yeah, at the beginning, I had to get drugged and drunk to be able
to do it.
But now I'm used to it.
I'm cold-blooded and I'm used to it."
And we started talking about the cycle of violence, right?
Because he also said he doesn't kill women and children.
And I asked him, "But do you realize that you are traumatized from the
experience that you had,
that your parents were killed?
And now you're doing the same thing to other kids?"
He's like, "I actually never thought of that."
And then he started talking about, "Hey, he really wants to quit."
And he's been thinking, but he doesn't have, he can't get a job and all of that.
Thank you.