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Does this ending make sense, or is my villain too 'stupid'?

For my story, it's about a gang of serial killer types that have been going around committing murders for months and getting away with it, careful not leave any forensic evidence at the crime scenes, and not leaving any scents for the police dogs to pick up on. Only one of them is caught out of probable cause, but he the case cannot make it trial for lack of evidence. But during his time spent behind bars awaiting a probable cause hearing, he got bad publicity from the media, and the public now knows the one member as a suspect. After he is released, he breaks off contact with the other gang members, because he does not want to lead the police to them in case he is being monitored. So the trail goes cold.

The way the police catch them is by making a website of fans devoted to the killers. Their victims were not people who treated others badly, and the fans of the website are dedicated to what he is doing, showing support for his vision. The website is all fake though. All fake members, with fake IDs and profiles. It's created by the police as a means for the killers to find the website through the media talking about it, and he joins it. The "fans" on the site keep saying how they want to help the killers by bringing his vision more public.

Basically the killers were traumatized by bullies while in school growing up, and their targets are those who are bullies to general people in their lives. So the fake fans want to get the killers' message more out there, write books about it, and get his vision for social change going. They post on the website, that they want the killers to post a message back agreeing that they will stop their crimes, as long as the world recognizes what they are trying to accomplish and want people to treat each other better and for the moral decaying in society to stop.

The fans agree to write and make as many public statements supporting the killers' cause as they can, just so long as he will stop once they do, cause the point will be made as far as it can be then. They tell the killers that even though they are admiring them killing bullies to cause social change, they feel that the killers must reach an end goal and stop, once their point is made. They want to help them make it, they say.

The killers message the fans using an email that cannot be traced, since they do not want the fans tracing them of course in case of being possibly caught. So the fans send the killers a message back saying that they are not sure if they are the killers or not, because many people on the site claim to be members of the gang, and they are not sure who is for real, and who is just saying they are.

So they message the gang privately on the site, and tell them that in order to be sure, and come to want to help give the gang what they want, they want to meet the gang in person, in a public place to talk it all out and agree to terms.

They say in order to establish that they are the real gang, they want the gang to send their one member who was caught and released before. That way they will know the gang is for real, if they send their one member who is already known to the world. But they cannot meet the gang's terms, if they do not send that member to meet in person to go through the specifics with.

Since the gang would like to have more satisfactory results, they agree to send that member, but they all go to the public place as well, as back up, outside in other areas, in case something goes wrong.

So they agree to send that one member to meet the fans in a parking structure. The fan goes to meet them and they talk terms. But it's all recorded, cause the fans are cops. The fan figures it out and resists,, causing the cops to take him captive. The other gang members see it happens and rush out of their areas they are hiding in and take on the cops, but fail.

So this is the climax I want, and some plot turns follow after. But I was told by some readers that I showed it to that my ending sucks for two reasons. For one, they say the villains are too dumb to fall for a trick like this, because they have been so smart not to leave any traceable evidence at the crime scenes for all their murders, which is a lot, yet they fall for this trick. I saw it differently because the cops were attacking their weakness, so they were willing to take more of a risk, since wanting social change was their weakness. But they said that they didn't buy the gang falling for that, especially enough to meet in person. I suppose it make sense not to meet in person. I mean the gang could post on the site what they want, or even to the media separately by sending letters or video recordings. But would this be enough for the fake fans to act on, or would could I write it so that they have some reason to meet in person in a public place so the cops can record them and get evidence?

The second reason is why they say it sucks is because using the internet to catch a gang of murderers is boring. They will have to talk to the gang for months, which I will write in a montage, but readers do not want to see a montage of months of computer work to catch the villains, because it lacks suspense.

But in order to have the ending I want, I need two things to happen:

1. The police cannot know who all the other gang members are until the end, in order to have certain twists I would like.

2. I need the cops to catch the entire gang all at once, in the same place, instead of breaking it up to some in some places and different times.

Is it possible to make these two things happen with the premise that I have, or is a website to get them to expose themselves by meeting, just not going to be believable no matter how I write it?

Sorry for the post being long, I just wanted to make sure I explained everything for it to make sense. That you for the advice, I really appreciate it.
 
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