Episode notes
M. attends Allen’s trial in San Francisco. The FBI’s star witness, an agent who went by “David," plays his undercover recordings of Allen. They reveal how Allen’s scheme to deport Priscilla turned into a murder-for-hire plot. Allen is his own star witness, but his attempts to defend himself fall flat in court. M. begins to wonder why they loved seeing Allen humiliated on the stand.
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S17 · 16 Jun 2026 · 2 min
The Last 12 Weeks - Trailer
In 1992, David Wood was convicted of murdering young women and girls and burying them in the desert outside El Paso. He has been on death row ever since. “The Last 12 Weeks” takes you behind the scenes as a capital defense team races against the clock to stop an execution 30 years in the making.
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S16 · E5 · 26 Mar 2026 · 29 min
The Idiot - Chapter 5
Allen will almost certainly be released in a few years. What should M.’s family do with a guy who refuses to own up to his own crime? Can he be re-integrated into the family? Should he be? While M. has grown increasingly compassionate toward Allen, they learn their family has been moving in the opposite direction. Meanwhile, Priscilla has been trying to make a life without Allen. But Allen’s mom has other plans.
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S16 · E4 · 26 Mar 2026 · 1 hr 3 min
The Idiot - Chapter 4
Allen finally agrees to talk … and talk and talk, for 35 hours of interviews. M. wants to understand Allen on his own terms, to try and figure out how this scion of bohemian intellectuals ended up hiring someone to kill his ex. It’s hard for M. to believe everything Allen says, but over the course of their conversations, M. comes to feel for their cousin. And they think they understand what drove him to go so far.
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S16 · E2 · 26 Mar 2026 · 50 min
The Idiot - Chapter 2
M. seeks out Allen’s ex-wife, Priscilla, who tells her side of the story. It begins with a whirlwind romance but quickly turns to chart Allen’s betrayal: taking her son from Russia and stranding Priscilla and her daughter in Moscow. What follows is Priscilla’s two-year odyssey, a journey that includes surviving a brutal attack and shocking arrests in Zimbabwe, only to reach the U.S. and have Allen take the boy again.
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S16 · E1 · 26 Mar 2026 · 22 min
The Idiot - Chapter 1
For decades, M. simply disliked Allen. They saw him as a fool, a pompous “international businessman” who bragged about shady deals and drove fancy cars while living in Eastern Europe and Africa. But one day Allen suddenly shows up at their father’s home in Cape Cod with his mother and 5-year-old son. He says he has separated from his wife, whom he has left behind in Moscow. M. suspects this could be a kidnapping, but their family seems to disagree. But finally Allen does something so bad, even M.’s family can’t ignore it.
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S16 · 19 Mar 2026 · 2 min
The Idiot - Trailer
The New York Times writer M. Gessen is widely known for their award-winning writing about totalitarianism, terrorism and the erosion of human rights. Now, M. is examining a more personal target: their least favorite cousin, Allen. For decades, they saw Allen as a fool, a pompous ‘international businessman’ who bragged about shady deals. But then Allen is arrested for trying to put a hit out on his ex-wife, and M. cannot wrap their head around the news. He’s just an idiot, right? Not a would-be murderer?
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S17 · E5 · 18 Jun 2026 · 39 min
The Last 12 Weeks - Ep. 5
Days before the execution, the defense team scrambles to respond to an unexpected ruling, while the lead lawyer makes what may be his final visit to David Wood on death row. Everyone waits to find out Wood’s fate.
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S17 · E4 · 18 Jun 2026 · 31 min
The Last 12 Weeks - Ep. 4
To justify sentencing David Wood to death, prosecutors argued that he was a convicted rapist turned serial killer. And yet, Wood has insisted all along that isn’t true. We head to death row to hear him tell us why. But not before a victim of his earlier crimes has her say about the kind of person she believes he is.
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S17 · E3 · 18 Jun 2026 · 44 min
The Last 12 Weeks - Ep. 3
In the final weeks before the execution date, the defense team has to decide just how far it’s willing to push people to save David Wood’s life. The team’s deliberations lead to a key witness on his deathbed … and the mother of one of the Desert Killer’s victims.
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S17 · E2 · 18 Jun 2026 · 46 min
The Last 12 Weeks - Ep. 2
The way the state constructed the case, there’s no one big shiny piece of evidence for the defense to knock down. Instead, there are a million little threads to pull at. With less than two months until the execution, the lawyers comb through the evidence one last time, and a new witness offers unexpected revelations.
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