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

[acehard]

A hotel is much stricter at check-in. The guest needs a valid credit card with his name on it. It can't be one of those generic credit cards purchased from Walmart, for instance. That, along with more people and cameras would also be a disadvantage to this guy.

JMO.

It really depends. Since covid a lot of them allow self-check in and some text you the room key code on the day of arrival. You don't even need to go to the front desk.

 

[VAres67]

They seem to know that water bottle and phone was his; I don't think it's a guess. No matter what he did, his room at the hostel would be covered in his DNA. There was reporting yesterday that some of the recovered rounds had DNA on them as well. That backpack is likely to also be a goldmine in that regard.

This guy isn't some master criminal, and things seem to have gone wrong after the fact. There's this tendency to build these guys' actions up into something almost mythical. Once we find out who he is, we'll see that he's nothing special.

Definitely - it will be interesting to learn what was planned and what wasn’t. To my untrained eye, it seems like he put a lot of effort in.

 

[thefragile7393]

I am not contending that the CEO wasn't targeted and that the gunman isn't in hiding. I am disputing the idea that if LE knew his name they wouldn't release it. Of course they would! Because while it is speculative to conclude that he won't (or wouldn't) kill anyone else, it isn't speculative to conclude that he is most certainly capable of it.

JMO.

Once agian, IMO, if they felt he was a danger to the public at large, the name would be released.

 

[Stargazer90]

the anger usually comes from the insurance company denying things that the contract says they should cover.

Do you have any examples? The coverage is spelled out in detail what is and is not covered. Insurance companies process and pay claims as outlined in the policy. If there is a mistake, a claim can be appealed.

 

[krikken]

If he were truly meticulous, he would have had two of everything. A second, "sterile" backpack and second jacket to drop, for sure. (Both the dirty and clean one acquired separately for cash months before, of course.) Someone else's discarded water bottle picked from a trash can, identical to the one he bought.

That's really the big question for me now. How many layers of safety factor did he build into this? If he didn't, seems like a big ask that they wouldn't recover some hair or dandruff from at least some of these items.

And it would be interesting to know what the true state of art of AI is. Gait analysis - this is already a usable biometric, I understand? I'm assuming that the government has systems that are a year or two ahead of anything in civil commerce, and they don't let on. Even if the brute-force camera footage collection can't keep up for now, I suppose they could also save the contents of every last camera in the region on a giant drive and wait until AI was advanced enough to analyse every shot, run process of elimination, cross-reference to times and schedules - doing this in reasonable, "polynomial time", so to speak.

He'd better hope that enough of those security cameras at key points along his escape path are/were inoperational or garbage...

 

[thefragile7393]

yeah I don't see why they would withhold the name either. the whole purpose of getting the name is to blast it everywhere, making his capture guaranteed unless he is prepared to live in the forest for the rest of his life

They have their reasons. Unless it comes out to be a whole botched affair, which is absolutely possible.

 

[Inthedetails]

I am not contending that the CEO wasn't targeted and that the gunman isn't in hiding. I am disputing the idea that if LE knew his name they wouldn't release it. Of course they would! Because while it is speculative to conclude that he won't (or wouldn't) kill anyone else, it isn't speculative to conclude that he is most certainly capable of it.

JMO.

Perhaps they are not releasing his name (if they really do know it) because they don't want someone in the public to try to apprehend a dangerous killer or the don't want someone to offer him help in absconding.

jmopinion

 

[Stargazer90]

They have no clue about the guy, JMO

I think they do, and if not, they will. Someone knows who he is and will want the money.

 

[CrimeDawg123]

I'm willing to bet they've known his name for the last day or so. We won't know it until they catch him or they need the public's help catching him. That we've not heard anything probably means they are pretty close.

 

[armchairagatha]

Just for clarity… so many conflicting reports.

Have they recovered the exact e bike he used?

Originally it was said he was on a city e bike then his own personal e bike he must have got himself.

I only ask because for me the big question isn’t so much how he got back to a bus station to get out of town after…

But where he stopped to leave(ditch) the bike and catch a cab (reported today) to the bus station. Where it’s reported he caught the same bus line back to Atlanta.

Moo.. I’d assume the point at which he leaves the e bike behind before catching the cab…. Is the only time he actually stops and it’s not for long. So this is also when / where I assume he changed clothes and got rid of the weapon and picked up his items, clothes he’d been traveling with to leave. Again moo.. I’d guess this is when he changes his outfit / appearance enough to not be so obviously the man in all the surveillance photos. To make the last part of his getaway without being recognized. I mean he got a cab next.

Again MOO. This stop must have been well concealed and locker of some type. Or even storage closet to pick up what he needed and leave the bike behind concealed.

just trying to add up the facts to make more sense of it all.

Hard to believe he’d go to so much effort concealing identity and commit such a crime with an attempt to get away… and get on the same bus he came in on. Essentially locking himself into the bus for however long to the next stop.

Just seems very risky and not in line with his need to remain in control of his getaway if cops closed in on him and the bus sooner… which was possible… given all the mistakes he made… that would be a hard situation to escape.

Just curious if anyone else knows more or if they have reported anymore on this.

He couldn’t hang around in NYC. That was too risky. I believe he headed back by bus to where he came from and took a flight from there where he originally came from. He figured he had enough of a head start before the police were on his track. JMO

 

[getthefax]

As postulated upthread, he could have chosen a hostel for three reasons:

1. It was cheaper than a hotel room for his stay of 10 nights.

2. The rooms house several people at a time so there would be a mix of DNA that would make identifying him, in particular, more difficult.

3. A hotel would have more people around to see him, and more CCTV cameras for images to document his comings and goings.

Also, able to pay cash and get away with a barely scrutinized ID card.

 

[Synergizer Bunny]

It really depends. Since covid a lot of them allow self-check in and some text you the room key code on the day of arrival. You don't even need to go to the front desk.

We have also checked in this way; however, IIRC, you still need a valid credit card to reserve the room and also to be used as incidentals. I think that you have to also provide your "security" code when doing this, too.

JMO.

 

[eddie_van]

Do you have any examples? The coverage is spelled out in detail what is and is not covered. Insurance companies process and pay claims as outlined in the policy. If there is a mistake, a claim can be appealed.

It would be a massive derail to get into this here. You can google around for some horror stories if you are interested. Suffice it to say, anger at US health insurance companies is very real, and there's no reason to doubt that it could be (and almost certainly is) the motive in this case.

 

[wibbleflea]

Hard to believe he’d go to so much effort concealing identity and commit such a crime with an attempt to get away… and get on the same bus he came in on. Essentially locking himself into the bus for however long to the next stop.

Feels to me like he knew how roughly long it would take to track him down and link him to the shooting (days) and knew he had enough time to get away. Yes, there was an unmasked photo from the hostel and eventually, they found he'd come in on a Greyhound but it took days for that to emerge and presumably hundreds of hours of video footage to trawl through. He arrived in NYC 10 days before he left. He knew how long that would take to work out. Long gone by then. More will come out (it already is) but he appears not to have made an effort relating to anything revealed after he made his exit from NYC. I think that's significant. He was only concerned with getting out of NYC without getting identified or caught and went to a lot of trouble to make that happen.

 

[99cats]

Perhaps they are not releasing his name (if they really do know it) because they don't want someone in the public to try to apprehend a dangerous killer or the don't want someone to offer him help in absconding.

jmopinion

Yeah, there's a lot of commenters online who are claiming that they'd help him escape.

 

[BrianJohnson]

I originally thought there was a good chance that the guy was still in the USA. But given how well planned and methodical this whole operation has been, I now think that he had the full escape plan chalked out in detail as well. It would have required perfect timing but I wouldn’t be surprised if he boarded the flight that was supposed to take him to safety by Wednesday evening itself and is now safely in some foreign country that won’t extradite him. JMO. I don’t think this guy is a US citizen.

Agree, a flight to say Mexico City or Bogota and an onward flight to Moscow, this hit was planned to the very finest detail

While it is difficult to admire someone who deprived children of a father no matter what the ethics of his targets business life the assassin is incredibly smart, calculating, detail orientated

Really is something out of a Hollywood blockbuster

 

[MelmothTheLost]

the anger usually comes from the insurance company denying things that the contract says they should cover.

Or from the insurance company denying things which are outside the scope of the policy or because full disclosure was not made by the customer during the application process. Just because the customer thinks they have been poorly treated does not necessarily make it so.

 

[eddie_van]

Yeah, there's a lot of commenters online who are claiming that they'd help him escape.

yes, that is a possible reason to withhold the name, true. I guess we'll see, if they truly have the name then he should be getting captured within the next few days.

 

[Columbo Was The Best]

Why an e-bike and not just a normal bike?

In case he got injured during a shooting and also for speed reasons (the ability to change speed if faced with a potential chase from authorities, and also to be taken on a highway)? a normal bike would be more difficult to maneuver with a bloody hand/broken shoulder, for instance, than an e-bike. Don't know what e-bike he used but these days some can go incredibly fast.

 

[MassGuy]

Definitely - it will be interesting to learn what was planned and what wasn’t. To my untrained eye, it seems like he put a lot of effort in.

Oh he absolutely did put a lot of effort into it, which is why this whole thing is so remarkable.

We just don’t see this level of commitment and planning, like ever. He seemingly thought of everything, and knew exactly what he was doing.

Had he done this like 30 years ago, he probably gets away with it.