NY - UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Midtown. #4

[JJTaylor]

Respectfully snipped for focus...

This is Occam's Razor theory, and I keep coming back to it, but the intense level of planning and preparation exceeds what we normally see with emotional revenge killings.

How does the average guy find out a certain CEO will be attending a certain conference at a certain time in a certain city?

And, if it was an emotional revenge killing, why not confront the CEO and say, "This is for my mother who died because you wouldn't cover her treatment." The killer went to all that trouble but didn't set it up to where the victim knew why he was dying.

That's what tips it toward an assassination in my mind. The thing with the e-bike seems to suggest that someone else might have been involved.

I dunno. It sure is odd.

I.would think it.would be fairly easy to find out where BT would be .. and when he.was speaking and then get a reasonable idea when he'd be leaving the hotel.

This guy planned his moves meticulously.. this would be easy...

Leaning towards the theory of a.former policy holder who lost a close loved one.. brother, wife, child because of denials....simply from inscriptions on live rounds and shell casings and especially the word "depose". thinking the context would be "deposition" and not meanng to depose the leader of a corporation.

It's quite possible that he bought suit to UHC and lost so he took matters into his own hands.

As.to why this guy's name is still not known....after all that's been in print and television... someone definitely knows who he is. Whether they come forward..who knows... just keep running up the reward $ and someone will , guaranteed.

I suspect In the next day or two we'll all know..

 

[gitana1]

Someone probably said this but the whole country has been looking for the style of that backpack, and the cops did a search and found nothing and they go back two days later and there it is? Hmm

It happens not infrequently. Usually with bodies.

 

[Jamara3]

The bullet casings send a message of revenge against the insurance industry for not paying medical claims, but what if that's a distraction?

BT (and other execs) were facing a lawsuit for insider trading. What if BT was going to spill the beans? That would paint a big red X on his forehead.




All JMOO...

Totally with you on this. BT was actually not the big fat cat in this scenario as CEO…he’s kind of just the face of this big machine with the actual big money guys doing their bidding behind the scenes. I think BT was being leveraged to rat out some people.

The stock sales, the ransomware attacks, the public announcement of a DoJ antitrust probe relevant to the product that suffered the attacks, all occurred within 2 weeks of each other. I don’t think there’s anything accidental about it.

This happened on the day of the investors conference. All of the above is relevant to investors and trading. Could be a foreign assassin—all of this could very well include foreign investors, look at the story of Duetsche Bank. There’s much, we the general public, don’t know. One last thing on my mind, incoming new administration has major implications for the healthcare industry.

 

[MelmothTheLost]

Hard left but dripped out (as in wearing really expensive clothing)? I doubt it!
Couldn’t be less anti-capitalist, IMO!

<modsnip - generalizations>

Also, I am not familiar with the brands of the jacket or backpack but if they are recognisable or desirable it's possible that they are fakes anyway.

I'm not claiming that my hypothesis is correct, simply floating an alternative explanation as was requested earlier.

 

[technicallymissing]

Eh, this kind of super casual but insanely pricey straight-from-REI clothing (from the backpack to the $$$$$ jacket / hoodie) is basically the uniform of every twentysomething tech worker in the Bay Area. Definitely doesn’t strike me as foreign at all.

I didn't want to sound like a California-brained snob but I could not agree with you more. I lived in the Bay for 6 years up until early this year and to certain demographics those clothes + that backpack would not only be considered not outrageous price-wise but also pretty unremarkable in every other way too. I don't think the clothes or backpack are going to prove significant and I also don't think they preclude him from holding hard-left/anticapitalist views, as some have speculated here.

 

[girlhasnoname]

I like that, EXCEPT, he had two weeks plus of prep in NYC, and he seems to have advance-positioned the e-bike. Let’s put our hypothetical bad guy hats on for a minute. If you had the foresight to stash the e-bike, would you have the Jason Bourne-type foresight to drop, oh, 10, or 20, or 50 identical backpacks in wooded areas around the CP carousel, filling them with all kinds of random crap that would give profilers fits? This leads me to the hypothesis that this shooter had training but not a lot of cash. The hostel thing - this was an assassin on a budget. My $0.02.

Interesting, I see the hostel situation as trying to be as low key as possible before the murders. Pays in cash, uses a fake ID, less questions asked. A lot less invasive than booking a hotel closer to the shooting.

JMO

 

[Jamara3]

I didn't want to sound like a California-brained snob lol but I could not agree with you more. I lived in the Bay for 6 years up until early this year and to certain demographics those clothes + that backpack would not only be considered not outrageous price-wise but also pretty unremarkable in every other way too. I don't think the clothes or backpack are going to prove significant and I also don't think they preclude him from holding hard-left/anticapitalist views, as some have speculated here.

Totally agree, I think it’s been a little overblown. The backpack isn’t really unique necessarily just very easily recognizable. Iconic is the word? No other bags look like it so it was easy to ID, but it’s not rare. He had the standard uniform of any tech bro, YouTuber, etc. It’s a top bag on such lists for men. Expensive, yes. But it’s still hard to make that meaningful, we have no idea if he or someone else supplies these things, etc.

Sure, in the future if a suspect is found to have once bought a similar bag on Amazon or something, it’s meaningful for the trial.

 

[Rush4087]

Killing of insurance CEO reveals simmering anger at US health system​

The "brazen and targeted" killing of health insurance executive Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, outside a New York hotel this week shocked America. The reaction to the crime also exposed a simmering rage against a trillion-dollar industry.

CEO Brian Thompson's killing exposes simmering anger at US health system

Long-standing frustrations were revealed online after a health insurance executive was shot and killed in New York City.

www.bbc.co.uk

It may have nothing to do with this crime, - but then again it might speak to motive. It seems that insurance companies have had less incentive to be competitive to potential customers and within the industry since 2010.

In markets / states where many insurers have bailed, it’s not like you can just go find a better insurance company. Costs have certainly skyrocketed. I think we all knew that was coming. There was going to be bad with the good.

I wonder what the denial rate was for UHC back in the late 90’s compared to the numbers we’ve read in these threads today? Maybe things haven’t changed that much, idk

Jmo

 

[girlhasnoname]

Absolutely agree that he didn’t. My perspective is that I’m surprised that he didn’t. A man with this much prep, weeks - arrived in NYC before Thanksgiving - I’m surprised we’re not seeing major decoy theatric. What LE is finding seems … impulsive? (Bag dropped near the carousel, water bottle in trash …) - I don’t believe this man is impulsive. So I wonder what’s really going on.

I agree this was anything but impulsive.

 

[Zinn]

Respectfully snipped for focus...

This is Occam's Razor theory, and I keep coming back to it, but the intense level of planning and preparation exceeds what we normally see with emotional revenge killings.

How does the average guy find out a certain CEO will be attending a certain conference at a certain time in a certain city?

And, if it was an emotional revenge killing, why not confront the CEO and say, "This is for my mother who died because you wouldn't cover her treatment." The killer went to all that trouble but didn't set it up to where the victim knew why he was dying.

That's what tips it toward an assassination in my mind. The thing with the e-bike seems to suggest that someone else might have been involved.

I dunno. It sure is odd.

We don’t know that he didn’t vent to his victim. Video shows the shooter walked right up to his fallen victim before exiting the scene but audio was either unavailable or kept private.

 

[JennieM]

It may have nothing to do with this crime, - but then again it might speak to motive. It seems that insurance companies have had less incentive to be competitive to potential customers and within the industry since 2010.

In markets / states where many insurers have bailed, it’s not like you can just go find a better insurance company. Costs have certainly skyrocketed. I think we all knew that was coming. There was going to be bad with the good.

I wonder what the denial rate was for UHC back late 90’s compared to the numbers we’ve read in these threads today? Maybe things haven’t changed that much, idk

Jmo

The ‘Chilling’ Fatal Shooting of a C.E.O. Has Business Leaders on Edge​

A Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company raised its drug prices, and then board members and executives received phone calls threatening violence. A health care company’s board meeting was disrupted after board members were targeted in “swatting” attacks that wrongly sent law enforcement officers to their homes.

These incidents happened before the fatal shooting of Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive, in Midtown Manhattan on Wednesday. The police had not offered a motive for the shooting as of Friday afternoon, or said it was related to Mr. Thompson’s work in the insurance industry.

The killing, however, stunned business leaders, some of whom were already concerned about safety. Over the last five years, there has been a sharp rise in targeted attacks, digital and offline, of executives and their families, said Chris Pierson, the chief executive of BlackCloak, a digital executive protection firm. Health care, biomedical and pharmaceutical leaders tend to be targeted more often than executives in other industries, according to the firm’s data.

The ‘Chilling’ Fatal Shooting of a C.E.O. Has Business Leaders on Edge

After Brian Thompson of UnitedHealthcare was killed in Manhattan, the phones at corporate security firms were “ringing off the hook.”

www.nytimes.com

 

[johnnyhands]

Is anyone else thinking of Eric Rudolph, who was the Atlanta Olympic Park bomber, and also blew up an abortion clinic and then hid out in a forest for FIVE YEARS? However, authorities knew almost from the beginning that he was the culprit. This reminds me of that.

"However, authorities knew almost from the beginning that he was the culprit."

Did you forget about innocent security guard (and as it turns out, hero) Richard Jewell? It took three months to clear him (July 1996 to October 1996.) And according to wikipedia, "Following three more bombings in 1997 and 1998, Rudolph was identified by the FBI as the suspect.” That seems a little longer than “almost from the beginning."

 

[girlhasnoname]

It sounds far fetched, but I believe there was more than 1 person involved in pulling this off. The one and only full face unmasked photo was at the hostel upon checkin was not by accident IMO. All the rest of the sightings of the 'shooter' were masked, dressed in the same particular jacket with the same style of backpack. With a hood up, mask, similar build and clothing it could be anybody. The pic from the Starbucks and the hostel checkin look completely different to me btw.

What if it was a team who pulled this off? The accomplice(s) could have tipped the real shooter that BT was on his way out of the hotel. The shooter supposedly gets away to the electric bike, but what if it was someone else dressed identically who then rode the bike through Central Park out of CCTV range, leaving a backpack while the real 'shooter' changes from items he had in his own backpack and calmly heads in an entirely opposite direction and out of the city?

Could be disgruntled insurance related issue, could be the pending investigations of BT, but someone made sure BT was shot and killed that day with a lot of planning. Why?

Yes, I know this sounds like a bad movie script. LOL

JMO

 

[SleuthJan]

It’s looking more and more like he had a flight ticket out of EWR and is out of the country. There has been no name or IDing of the gunman, and we are on the 4th day.

 

[BrianJohnson]

double post, browser froze….

 

[BrianJohnson]

I still think it was a professional hit, with a lot of planning involved, and more than 1 involved.

If it was a lone person who had lost a relative, partner, child because the company turned down the healthcare claim would he go through so much trouble? an angry person would just turn up at his doorstep and shoot him as he is getting into his car to drive to work, or shoot him outside his office as he was leaving work at head office, doesn’t add up to me, far easier, quicker, cheaper ways of killing him if the killer is just angry with him.

 

[BrianJohnson]

Another reason I think the assassin is foreign is the UK papers reported that police were convinced he had police or military training, if he is an American people in his former regiment or his police squad would recognise him straight away as they served with him, if he has a police or military training it was certainly not in America

That is another reason why I think there is a Russian element to this, he will have done his 2 years national service and would be skilled at firing a gun

 

[Friday Fan]

I think that makes the anti-capitalism angle far less likely. I kind of liked that one before we got more information (it was broad), but I think it's all come into a bit more focus. I think it's also more specific than some hatred for the health insurance industry a whole, and more focused on this particular company.

I don't think it goes as far as a specific hatred of this guy though. Likely more symbolic in my mind.

There are plenty of wealthy anti-capitalists out there! You would be surprised!

 

[annpats]

I am behind the bus escape theory.
My question is where he might be now, still on a bus?. He is tired, hungry, thirsty and needs shelter from the weather. All this and might know there is a photo of him circulating. Where can he safely go or hide?

JMO

With blonde dyed hair and/or a fake beard, and yet another fake ID, he could probably go to a motel in any city.

 

[TheUnderlyingCause]

Had an amazing debate about this tonight on a trading floor not far away, a few blocks. Envision a group of incisive people all sitting together unafraid to posit complex theories. Paring them down by belief system:

There is what I call the JFK group. This is the major league conspiracy theorists (“the CIA did it!”) - the ones who think this is political machination. Not my tribe.

There is the Jason Bourne group. They think this is all conspiracy, shooter was swapping out the Starbucks-purchased water for an identical bottle in his backpack that had the DNA of a dying patient on the mouth. The ones who believe events to date reveal significant training in evasion. Again, not my tribe, but I get how they got there.

There is the impassioned free-radical group. They theorize this is the kid or boyfriend of someone who died of a terrible disease surrounded by coverage denials, and they are avenging the pain, Joan of Arc style. That’s actually the theory I go with.

There’s also the disillusioned fired employee theory. I think we’d know the name by now if it were that. Discounting it for now.

Very open to hearing and learning from other theories!

Sounds like a fun group. Any of them into insider trading?