Linda | Criminal Podcast | Forensic Files

they met maybe in the spring of 2016 and it wasn't until the fall of 2016 that Miss Gilman proposed the the idea that
if her ex-husband was no longer alive that she would benefit from a vast amount of money as a beneficiary to a
life insurance policy [Music] Salt Lake City town called Harriman a 69 year old woman
named Linda Gilman hired a man named Christian Olsen to do some repairs on her condo after months of working
together Linda Gilman asked for Christian's help with a different sort of project
help find somebody to do the job she would pay him and sure enough she gave him a five thousand dollar check he kept
he kept stringing her along there's no doubt about that he was a person that was down on his luck needed to make a
quick buck and she was willing to pay and so he would string her along indicating that he had lined somebody up
and there were some fanciful stories that he came up with that she believed and it was in late December of 2016.
that she had told him that enough's enough and that she had found somebody else that would do the job and she no
longer needed him to do it for her this is Mark Mathis a deputy District Attorney at the Salt Lake County DA's
office the first thing the Christian did actually was hop in his truck and drive
over to Linda's ex-husband's house and he had the address because Linda had given it to him
to give to the Hitman to you know to perform the ACT and so he went over to his house here in
Salt Lake knocked on the front door and his new wife answered the door he introduced himself and said
your husband's ex-wife has hired me to find somebody to kill him she invited him in they had a discussion
about it they called Linda's ex-husband had a discussion about it and then called unified police department and
that's when the detective got involved I was initially given this case by my sergeant who asked me and another
detective that was brand new in the unit to call an individual on the phone this is Dwayne Gilman how can I help you
Dwayne this is detective Adamson with the unified Police Department how are you hi hi Dave I'm great so it's Dwayne
Gilman right Dwayne Gilman yes sir g-i-l-l m-a-n yeah I got a uh just hand it to me
um this is Brent Adamson at the time he was a detective with Salt Lake City's unified Police Department he's since
moved to the Harriman City Police Department where he's a detective sergeant I mean is that rare that someone calls
the police department and say I think someone wants to kill me it's very rare and it's even more rare
to have the individual show up at the intended victim's house and say hey surprise uh this is guess what and so it
was even more kind of shocking to get the report that way rather than it to come in some other manner to you know
have the victim call and say hey there's a guy at my house right now that says he's supposed to find someone to kill me
he's been here for four or five hours and uh he came to me and everything grew out of what he had to say
I am not thinking terribly clearly but I've been it's upset me sure what was Dwayne's demeanor when you spoke with
him was he nervous or worried I think he was worried but I think uh that was tempered a little bit by the fact that
this individual had come to his home uh I think I was probably more kind of scratching my head if you will that this
took place and in fact you know the individual first made contact with Dwayne's current wife who invited him
into the house and and made a pot of coffee for him and waited for her husband to come home
I'm not sure that I would have even done that who who is this Christian Olsen uh
Christian is an individual uh that for lack of a better term he's kind of an odd job guy he was uh doing various
different jobs at the time that this case started uh he was just a local person here in
the in the county Mark Mathis he would purchase like items from Like Home Depot hardware
stores things like that that were on clearance fix them up and resell them on a local website and that's how she
actually met him you know he he offered up you know or indicated that he was also a contractor
and I think the ultimate irony here is that the contracting company that he worked for was called Hired Gun
contractors it kind of wrote itself there um and so that was kind of the I think
the first uh toe that was dipped into the pool of curiosity that you know well you work for a place called higher gun
are you a Hitman and they would kind of just laugh it off and you know as months
went on and they developed a more of a relationship that's when the idea of her husband's death started to
be discussed Linda and Christian used a variety of code words a sub was the subcontractor or Hitman the words Home
Depot meant everything was on track but a reference to Lowe's meant there was a problem
Linda's code name for her ex-husband was his majesty have you ever seen a case like this
I have not um I hope to never again Linda Gilman had been divorced from her third husband Dwayne Gilman for years he
was paying alimony and the divorce settlement stipulated that Linda could Remain the beneficiary
of Dwayne's life insurance but she'd also taken out life insurance on Dwayne that he didn't know about
he got older the monthly premiums Linda had to pay increased to just over ten thousand dollars a month
according to court records Linda Gilman stood to gain quite a lot of money if anything happened to her ex-husband I'm
Phoebe judge this is Criminal [Music] thank you hello is this Christian yes it is so give me kind of the Reader's
Digest version of what's going on and then well she approached me a few months ago about she being Linda Linda yeah
about taking out her ex-husband and said that you know she would pay all this money to
to have them taken out what was the agreement what was she offering to she offered the 5 000 up front and then
after he was gone and something you know that it was confirmed and she was going
to give a portion of the um Insurance life insurance policy on it ultimately we determined that there was
at least two different life insurance policies I think her beneficiary portion ended up being somewhere in the
neighborhood of three and a half million dollars did she specify how she wanted you to
kill him or nothing yeah she wanted it done in in a way that it didn't look like he was murdered like it was a
drug overdose or something okay and somebody mentioned that there was something with some syringes or
something what was that yeah she had she had given me some syringes what was the purpose of the syringes for
like a drug overdose okay Linda Gilman had no criminal record she had her hands in a lot of different
small businesses a snow removal business a lawn service fixing up cars by all accounts she was doing quite well
financially after he spoke with Dwayne Gilman and Christian Olsen and understood what
Christian was alleging detective Adamson needed proof he needed to get Linda on tape
so when you get the phone call from Dwayne and you you talk to Christian you find out what Linda is trying to do how
do you I mean how what what's your next step I mean that's just hearsay right what how do you figure out
how do you figure out how you're going to get proof so yeah I talked to Dwayne and then I
talked to Christian and then immediately following that I sit down with Christian
and and conduct a little more formal interview in person uh and basically Christian relates to us
that he's having ongoing conversations with Linda he's basically delayed her and told her that he'll he'll help her
with this problem uh so that she doesn't find someone else uh and so we we set up
a recording device that we send in with Christian he makes arrangements to meet her and then we basically just kind of
stage in the neighborhood and and listen to the conversation as it takes place do you sit in one of those vans that
says like air conditioning on the outside when you we do not no we just used our regular unmarked police cars
and just kind of parked a couple streets away that seems exciting I mean of all of the
work going on a little Stakeout seems like one of the most exciting things unfortunately more often than not it's
probably more boring um this one uh obviously piqued our interests we were very interested and as
it progressed it became more and more interesting your safety I don't want to be mean I don't get the
damn if somebody kills me I don't care I don't want to be maimed however and I'm not going to be blackmailed this is
the recording that Christian made of his conversation with Linda they have to expect this is gonna it could take some
time and you nail them you screw up here there isn't going to be any money you screw up even if you take him out if you
screw up and there's an investigation there's not going to be a payout okay that is the law That's the Law okay
we were having a really difficult time hearing what was taking place there was background noise
I know there's just some high tension transmission electrical lines close by I don't know if that was
causing interference and I also know that based on what we could hear that they'd gone to the basement so that may
have interfered with the cellular signal as well so Midway through this conversation
I Tech I was texting with Christian and basically uh convinced him to go outside
for a cigarette and we placed an additional just a digital recorder on the bumper of his truck and asked him to
get that and take it in with him as kind of an insurance policy to make sure that
we could record the audio of the conversation even if we couldn't hear it in real time that seems kind of like a
little risky trade-off there uh it was and in fact we later found out that even one of the neighbor saw us doing that
and didn't quite know what was going on but fortunately for us it Linda was never aware that it took place and when
that meeting was over Christian had come out of the meeting and Linda had in fact
given him a diamond ring has basically a down payment to give to who she thought
Christian was going to hire to have Dwayne killed detective Adamson sent Christian in to
secretly record Linda a second time on that day Linda introduced the possibility of a home invasion gone bad
and she said that the Hitman might consider killing both Dwayne Gilman and his current wife
she said she'd pay extra another 10 grand remember 10 grand so it's 25 what's the value of the room
25 minus the value of the Ring yeah so what's that come back to [Music] 18. 18 000
cash okay I'm sure he'll like that I I just I don't know how how easy it is to get away with this
kind of stuff I just don't know yeah changes there'd be an investigation okay because we got too hot now we got two
obvious homicides on our hands right so there's going to be an investigation okay
now it comes down to the probability of getting away with it [Music] the recordings that detective Adamson
gathered with Christian were enough to make an arrest on December 27 2016 they went to Linda Gilman's house
are you the one who went in and arrested Linda yes will you tell me that about that
scene so we responded out to Linda's house when we went out there obviously our intent was to take Linda into custody
and we also had a search warrant for her residence so when we arrived we knocked on the
door several times didn't get a response I could see Linda inside the house moving around but she wouldn't come to
the door I tried to call the phone number that we had for Linda continue to pound on the door announced that we were
the police that we had a warrant and after several minutes she finally came to the front door was shaking was
you know clearly upset and demanded to know what was happening she opened the door we had identified
ourselves numerous times and she was taken into custody and we transported her to our office for an interview
and you interviewed her I did I'm willing to talk to you but you're you're asking me questions in the dark
and without telling me I don't even know what's going on yet you've told me this
is conspiracy solicitation I don't know for what I don't know what's up what happened Linda
investigation for what for solicitation for murder For Hire okay who I'm not willing to give you that
information just yet okay well I'm asking you some questions to get some background on you okay okay but we're
investigating a case where you're the suspect who who has instigated a solicitation for someone to kill another
person who will get there who's the well you mean all right tell me what's going on I'm
gonna but I'm getting some background information from you ask asking you some questions okay
I don't think we'll get there have you been engaged in a conversation with anybody about having someone killed no
you haven't no no so when I play recordings of that conversation what are you gonna say you're kidding me no I'm
not kidding you do think I'm wasting your time do you think I'd come to your house and try to kick your door down
with a search warrant because I've made something up I don't know I don't know I
don't know I know I have hours of recordings of you hours of recordings of you made by whom by me
by you yeah because you made a this doesn't even make any sense how would you even make arrangements to
record anything that I said where how and she was played a copy of the recording district attorney Mark Mathis
and we played a segment for her that was clearly her talking about the planning and the amount that she was
willing to pay for her husband's death you know I'm just gonna leave it up to his judgment but
it might make it easier and there there's going to be less of an investigation if she's gone too
really oh don't you think I would imagine yeah no witness nothing do you recognize your voice
could be me but I no I could also not be me and she wouldn't neither say whether
that was or wasn't her in fact during the interview when confronted with uh whether or not that was her voice her
response I believe was it could be me it could also not be me [Music] and couldn't have known was
someone for hoping to hurt someone but not being able to actually do it well I guess the difference between hoping and
doing is taking some significant step towards making that hope a reality and and that's where lend
across the line you could probably find someone every day that wishes that their ex-husband or
wife was dead but they don't do anything they don't take any steps to make that happen so it was intent yeah I mean
clearly she's she's not saying I wish Dwayne was dead or I wish I could collect on this life insurance policy
thing she's saying if you can find someone that will kill Dwayne here's a ring go give it to him as a down payment
let's get it done you've set the wheels in motion for someone to take action on your behalf that most likely will cause
someone's death [Music] foreign was tried in Utah's Third District Court in March of 2018. Mark Mathis was the
prosecutor she pled not guilty all right let's go on the record on the state versus Linda Gilman
171-900-245 appearance is a state of the former Skillman is back with us State your full name again okay
uh Christian Andrew Olson and do you recall sir that you're still under oath yes
Christian did testify that in the beginning it was just like any relationship you know between employer employee
that over time the relationship grew closer they started talking about personal things you know his personal
relationships with his his ex-wife with his new girlfriend his family religious beliefs
things like that just personal things and so they developed more of a friendship over time
hi hey I gotta hurry um how was the party last night she was family you know okay end of story
yep needed alcohol could be there did you get drunk not really yeah a little bit but not too bad than anything
it's not a good boy and then when she retained him to actually remodel her condominium
she gave him the option of living there and he could live in her condominium and while he was working on it she gave
him a Dodge pickup to help with all of the you know Remodeling and things like that so she
had made all of these gestures and offers to Christian to um I think and that's that's when the
relationship really started to get close to his admission he he took advantage of her and he did
so knowingly because that was a great opportunity for him to get money so he is taking advantage of her and she
thinks that she's grooming him correct the secret recordings Christian made were played in court the prosecution
argued that Linda wanted Dwayne dead so she could collect the insurance money the defense argued that Linda's net
worth was 1.5 million and so she didn't need the money the defense attorney told
the jury that Christian Olsen was a quote master manipulator and a Flim Flam artist
the jury deliberated for three and a half hours and Linda Gilman was found guilty of one
count of criminal solicitation to commit murder normally after a conviction we we generally train sentence people
within 45 days you know we are asking um for the sentencing to proceed as soon as possible and I know that the Linda's
ex-husband and his new wife they were very anxious to to get this thing resolved and to to get some
finality she managed to keep getting her sentencing postponed sometimes she'd refuse to come to court
she kept firing her lawyers she'd hire a new one and then argue that the new attorney hadn't had enough time to
become familiar with her case this went on for months after her sentencing was postponed for
the eighth time Third District Judge Paul Parker said we at some point need to drop the hammer on this
on October 29 2018 Linda Gilman was finally sentenced in Utah we have indeterminate sentencing where the judge
when they impose prison that it would be for an indeterminate time and the level of this offense was
three years to life so you don't know in Utah how long you're going for typically
no the Utah has a a system where we have a five-member Board of Pardons and Parole that takes
into account a lot of different considerations that determine how long somebody will spend
in prison I mean there's um like I said there's all sorts of factors that can come into play but the
the sentencing range is three years to life [Music] detective Adamson told us that Linda
Gilman is someone who likes to be in control she tries to manage everything that's
happening around her and so maybe it makes sense that even Behind Bars she was trying to run the
show on the same day she was convicted of trying to have her ex-husband killed she
was charged again with trying to hire another Hitman not to kill her ex-husband but someone else
I understand that she's now going back to court because she's being accused of having trying to have Christian Olsen
killed that's correct when you heard that when you heard that now she was going after Christian what
did you think did that surprise you not at all that's just that's the type of person that Linda Gilman that I know is
that's um she wants it her way and whatever she's gonna do to make things work her way
while she was in jail in Salt Lake City Linda Gilman allegedly approached a fellow inmate about having Christian
Olsen killed according to court documents Linda called herself the bank and said she could quote make everything
happen the inmate went to the police there's more when that first inmate didn't do what
she'd asked Linda hired another inmate this time she figured as long as she was going to try to have Christian killed
she'd go after someone else who was bothering her a lawyer who'd sued her on behalf of an
electric company a Washington Post headline read woman accused of hiring Hitmen to get out of
her hitman-related troubles the first line of the article reads the number of people Linda Gilman allegedly
once killed keeps growing Linda Gilman will be back in court to face these charges very soon
it really is a rabbit hole but when people were approached by Miss Gilman each one of them came to
law enforcement and I and I have to believe that most people are good-natured and they understand that
you know I may not have Clean Hands here but at the end of the day I'm not a killer and I'm not going to allow this
to happen I think Linda Gelman definitely poses a great safety risk if she's free and I
think even in jail she's clearly showing that she's a threat rather resourceful huh you got to give
her an a for effort that's for sure thank you [Music] criminal is created by Lauren Spore and
me Nadia Wilson is our senior producer audiomix by Rob Byers special thanks to Nikki dokus at the unified Police
Department of Greater Salt Lake Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal you can see
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you're a big boy subscribe to Benjamin Walker's Theory of Everything At theory of
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[Music] s [Music]

In a suburb outside of Salt Lake City, a 69-year-old woman named Linda Gillman hired a man named Christian Olsen to do some repairs on her condo. After months of working together, Linda Gillman asked for Christian’s help with a different sort of project.

Music in the episode “Headlights/Mountain Road” by Blue Dot Sessions “Picturebook” by Dave Depper “Mute Steps” by Blue Dot Sessions “Fellowships of Paper - Angelic with Atmo (original music for Criminal)” by Blue Dot Sessions “Lead Shroud” by Blue Dot Sessions “Ritual Two” by Jason Leonard

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Episode 106 originally published 1/18/2019 https://thisiscriminal.com/episode-106-linda-1-18-2019

Brief Summary

Linda Gilman hired a man to find a hitman to kill her ex-husband for insurance money, leading to her arrest and trial.

Key points

The Proposal. Linda Gilman proposes a plan to benefit from her ex-husband's life insurance policy.
The Shocking Visit. Christian Olsen visits Linda's ex-husband's house with alarming intentions.
The Arrest. Linda Gilman is arrested after detectives gather incriminating evidence against her.
Linda Gilman's Alleged Hitman Scheme. Linda Gilman allegedly attempted to hire hitmen while in jail, targeting multiple individuals.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

I hope to never again.

6:06WatchJan 22, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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