Police arrest suspect in murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO, with grainy pics the only tech involved Police in Pennsylvania have arrested a man suspected of shooting dead the CEO of insurer UnitedHealthcare in New York City, thanks to a McDonald's employee who recognized the suspect in a burger joint – and largely without help from technology. UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was shot and killed last Wednesday as he walked …
If he'd disposed of the incriminating evidence, if they would've had enough to hold / prosecute him?
Hey, you sorta look like this grainy video pic wouldn't have gotten far with the type of lawyer one would expect a guy of his background to be able to afford.
Seems like a bit of a dumbass thing to do (especially if the 'ghost gun' is homemade and therefore replaceable) - to have gone to some good lengths in the plotting to commit, but not what to do to stay out after the fact?
He's only an amateur. A smart amateur, but still amateur. A pro would have ditched the gun with never a backward glance, but then they would have been using quite a different type of gun to begin with.
It doesn't come naturally to most of us to get rid of a tool that's cost us time, care and money to create. Presumably he thought he'd covered his tracks well enough.
It's the multi-page 'motive' document that gets me. Why do these nut-jobs with otherwise difficult to understand motives always gift manifestos to the cops?
Gun, clothing, fake-ids, all that should have gone in the Hudson or somewhere better, earlier. He's young so he may not have a good sense of how law enforcement, the public, and the legal system would react, but I don't think it takes a genius to understand you don't want souvenirs from a murder scene.
It's the one's that get hungry on the job that get caught the quickest...leaving teeth marks and partially finished meals at the crime scene.
Also, on a slight tangent...why is that investigators that discover that precise knife skills that were used in a crime always default to "must be a surgeon or something"...not once have I heard anyone say "you know what, Jack the Ripper operated around Spitalfields near the famous fish market (he operated 10 years after Spitalfields was founded), maybe he was a fishmonger"...those guys are precise with knives.
Seems a bit sus, like fishmongers, chefs and butchers have been in cahoots with cops for over a century.
Look at a Ripper map, and look for Spitalfields market. :O
Ballistics doesn't work as well as it used to. The basic theory is that cut rifling leaves a unique set of tool marks in the gun barrel which in turn transfer to the bullet. This falls apart with modern industrial production with cold hammer forged barrels and polygonal rifling. At that point the best you could say is the bullet came from a Glock, and matches 5000 barrels forged on a specific mandrel. The police would be happy to charge based on that but the defense could tear it apart. Even with older rifling methods ballistic doesn't work as well as it does on TV. The State of Maryland used to require a fired bullet and case from every pistol registered to allow matching ballistics, but quit doing when they realized they had never actually used this warehouse full of evidence in a prosecution.
If he'd disposed of the incriminating evidence, if they would've had enough to hold / prosecute him?
By incriminating evidence, do you mean the gun, the cash (including foreign currency) or the 3-page handwritten manifesto?
Not that I want to suggest this is a fit-up, because that would be conspiracy theorising. But this is remarkably convenient for Police given the apparent careful planning, evasion of NYC surveillance and general dearth of other evidence they were developing (beyond a couple of grainy cctv images).
I half expected them to present a signed confession before hurriedly tucking it away "wait no, we haven't questioned him yet."
Not dumping the weapon is a rookie error, but then he's an amateur. Carrying the manifesto? I suppose he maybe thought if he got shot by Police then he wanted his reasoning to be known?
To have a suspect turning up with a murder weapon, cash and documentation on their person a week after the shooting... luckiest of lucky breaks for Police. And yes, quite a few cases have been broken by lucky breaks. But this takes the biscuit.
"quite a few cases have been broken by lucky breaks. But this takes the biscuit."
I can think of quite a few:
The getaway car that left one of the gang behind. For good measure their safe house was just round the corner and a witness pointed it out to the police.
The culprit who threw away his cap as he ran away. He'd written his name inside.
The culprit who threw away his jacket as he ran away. His library card with his name and address were in the pocket.
They're not all criminal masterminds.
My father was the Head of a secondary school. One winter there was a break in, and the police did exactly what you recounted - followed the track of footprints in the fresh snow to the miscreant pupil's house.
This is, of course a complete failure on two counts of the UK Schools system:
1 The pupil had bot been instilled with any respect for the school
2. The pupil had not even been educated sufficiently to avoid being caught by something that is shown in many cartoons (Tom and Jerry for example).
I'm not sure whether the pupil should have apologised to my father or my father to the pupil.
D'Oh icon indeed
How did he know the kid didn't walk to the house of another kid who was located along a street that was plowed? Walk across a plowed street up to the door of said house, then carefully backtrack in your same shoeprints to the street, then follow the street as far as you can get towards your own house.
I would visit the house of a kid who is a known troublemaker so the people investigating would not look too closely at the evidence for signs of backtracking, or slight tracks that were visible on the plowed street. They'd find the "obvious" candidate and no matter how much he or his parents protested his innocence, the authorities would "know" they caught the right one.
That's how cops work, they will stop looking when they've found the obvious candidate but do a lot more double checking if the clues pointed to someone who doesn't fit what they see as the profile.
They're not all criminal masterminds.
Oh no. Quite. But as I say, this is right up there with the very best examples of "they did what now?" that you've cited. I'm not suggesting that it's a fit-up, but you can see why people might be sceptical - especially after the apparently thorough planning of the shooting itself, the efficient getaway and apparently leaving very little in the way of evidence at the scene.
To then be (allegedly, he's not convicted yet) caught with all the evidence on his person a week later is quite mad.
While I agree completely on that, it’s also true that cops wholesale fabricate stories in order to get around pesky things like the rules they are constitutionally required to follow during investigations. Testilying is a real thing and just dismissing skepticism of police narratives with “criminals are stoopid!” just makes it all the easier for police when they get “creative.”
That said, this dude here displayed his weak opsec in other ways too, like pulling his mask down to flirt, etc.
Anyway, like I said at the start, you’re also right. There really are criminally stupid criminals.
My favourite is when my brother's wallet was nicked -
The hapless crim only went and ordered stuff from Littlewoods using bro's credit card,
for *delivery*to*crim's*home*address* ... which when the Plods knocked on crim's door
they found not only bro's wallet, but loads of other stolen stuff in his flat ...
Makes you wonder about some people
The CNN Live Update (linked under "reportedly") has lots of info ... for example, the suspect here wasn't some poor sob forced to eat discounted Happy Meals at Micky Ds, his family owns MD's Lorien Health Systems nursing homes.
And with a MS and BS in computer science, plus a minor in math, "Mark Rosario" (aka Luigi Mangione) could surely have found a less fatal way to make his point (whichever that may be), like youthfully cyber-robin-hooding that UnitedHealthcare outfit, or just plain getting into politics to change related laws, IMHO. He was high school valedictorian FFS!
Maybe he was inspired by Trump's brazen small testicle insecurity boast: "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" and tested it out near Sixth Avenue instead -- who knows? Bottom line is there are better ways to get your opinion across when you're not completely nuts!
Tangentially, I'll add that the photos (linked under "released photos") are not really that grainy imho (whomever's face is quite visible there, except eyebrows), but he was probably snitched on by a Penn State Altoona buddy anyways, rather than a random customer (eg. for having 3-D printed a plastic gun), and my resulting investigative query at this juncture is then: can such devices really fire "several rounds" in sequence these days (though this one "appeared to malfunction before the assailant fired again")? Anyways, what a grim waste of human potential, talent and tech!
Not that I would ever encoruage or condone violence. But it is a remarkable observation that in a country with regular acts of violence and relatively trivial access to firearms, this sort of thing doesn't happen more often. It's amazing that of all the (non-trivial number of) formerly-middle-class-who-sold-their-house-to-pay-their-hospital-bill people, none of them have taken... "direct action" towards the CEOs of hospital chains or insurers.
I suppose that's one reason noone in power argues about the Veterans Health Administration. Make sure the people with actual military training are looked after!
But then this is a country which is fundamentally broken, where insurers won't pay valid claims (and who's going to make them?) whilst hospitals code level 1 visits as level 5 and levy bills of $11k instead of $500 - they call it an administrative error, but "admin errors" this widespread and regular basically amount to systemic insurance fraud. This is to say nothing of the armies of lawyers employed by both sides to argue the toss - leaving sick people in no man's land. Burn it all to the ground.
It's a "service economy" they say. Tiny medical service, huge bill. Lawyers buying a new yacht. Tips substituting salaries for the ones actually creating value. Apple and Nike overcharging for Asian-made goods. Astronomic capitalization. Hovering best tech talent from productive industries. Large GDP. Is there economy, actually?
Roaring Twenties were roaring, because there was no income tax for working class adding value. Whole cities were built from zero.
> It's amazing that of all the (non-trivial number of) formerly-middle-class-who-sold-their-house-to-pay-their-hospital-bill people, none of them have taken... "direct action" towards the CEOs of hospital chains or insurers.
This corresponds to how far over the line you can push people before their grumbling turns into revolution and murder. "I got kids to feed, Jack."
And like now, when the public do start to fight back despite the personal cost, you know you're *far* over that line already.
"Being a total areshole that ruins thousands of peoples lives with your corporate greed, is eventually piss one too many people off... who have lost too much and snap.
Its karma."
If his family really own multiple nursing homes, he may well end up far below the health "insurance" executives in public opinion, and karma.
I don't know what it's like in GB, but in the US, nursing homes are all too often hellholes designed and managed solely to abuse the elderly while draining their finances as quickly as possible. For-profit chains of nursing homes even more so.
I have a friend in a US care home (Her wheelchair retaining belt wasn't secured as it wasn't repaired by her husband) & at a "brake check" incident she was hurled forward, completely destroying both ankles, she's had them rebuilt (Obamacare I think covered her).
She's been between hospital & two different care facilities for the last 3 years where at one she was so neglected she was at the point of death in a coma & the nurses were negligent & tried to alter the medical records to CHA.
She can leave any time she likes, but can only walk a few steps & would need home assistance in specially adapted apartment.
Okay but UnitedHealthcare and its late CEO aren't really the problem here; they're just another, currently very public, symptom of a totally broken system.
I am so glad I live in a country that actually looks after its citizens (and permanent residents). And, also, enforces minimum standards on health insurance.
Sure, but it's just the system working as it's been designed to. Even if it's not strictly by design, it has been allowed to continue operating this way.
You could probably reasonably make the argument that the government that sets the system's rules is captive to the system's interests, but ultimately the Americans keep voting for the people who made the system what it is, and only recently voted for someone who will almost certainly make it even worse...
It's possible, but unlikely. The core is that he (allegedly) crossed state lines and committed premeditated murder with an illegal firearm and granting him any kind of leniency on the basis that the victim wasn't a nice person opens the floodgates for people to claim justifiable murder. Whose opinions do we follow when deciding if someone deserves to be gunned down in the street?
Barring something extraordinary, he'll be found guilty in court or he'll make some kind of plea bargain.
>>WHy does it matter if it was an illegal firearm
Becasue that he is (currently) held under suspicion of being in possesion of an illegal firearm not suspicion of murder (yet - AFAIK)
>>Typical american lawyer crap.
Nope - just being accurate.
Is he guilty of posession of an illegal firearm? probably. Needs proof but that shouldn't be too hard.
Is he guilty of murder? well that is up to the police/DA to prove; it could be argued that A.N.Other gave him a bundle of stuff to hold on to for 30 mins and went and told the McDonalds' employee "See thay guy over there? doesn't he look like the guy on the TV?". Pretty good cover if you ask me - a bit like SWATting but more personal!
"t's possible, but unlikely. The core is that he (allegedly) crossed state lines and committed premeditated murder with an illegal firearm and granting him any kind of leniency on the basis that the victim wasn't a nice person opens the floodgates for people to claim justifiable murder. Whose opinions do we follow when deciding if someone deserves to be gunned down in the street?"
So, Kyle Rittenhouse, but this guy did it to an important person.
It doesn't need to affect the court of public opinion. CEOs are on the hook now and they know it, and that's what matters. Witness Elon and his cute little human shield.
No matter what happens to this idiot or chump, depending on how desperate the police are for a win, a worthless scumbag has been removed from the streets of New York. Locking up another one won't change that.
Have to wonder if United Health will deny the deceased's family's funeral benefit claim.
Grim but at the rate Americans shoot (and indiscriminately kill) each other mostly without head lines who really going to be too concerned in the land of the free.
For some reason I was under the impression "silencers" were in fact flash suppressors. For silence a Burley and Stronginthearm crossbow would be favoured (the point with a poisoned or exploding "point" for a reliable outcome.)
It's a wonder that the Ankh-Morpork Assassins Guild hasn't set up a branch office in the USofA offering designer inhumations to the great and good (or should that be for?)
For some reason I was under the impression "silencers" were in fact flash suppressors.
The silencers portrayed by Hollywood are quite far removed from how they work in reality. As well as suppressing flash, they do offer *some* noise reduction but nothing like what the movies would have you believe...it's more a case of going from "F*** me! That was f***ing loud!!" to a slightly less strong expletive
Yes, unless you're doing something that is built from the ground-up to be suppressed (like the Welrod or de Lisle carbine of SOE/OSS fame), all it's really doing is muffling the crack and suppressing the flash. Just screwing a suppressor on a conventional pistol makes it sound different rather than necessarily quiter - it could be more easily mistaken (from a distance) for a car backfiring or some other noise.
In this case it's been suggested that subsonic ammunition was used, and a suppressor can do quite a lot with subsonic ammo (but this could have just been dodgy witness reports that the shot was muffled, which obviously it would have been).
Supposedly the CEO would be on his own company's healthcare plan. So if you wanted to get even, a better approach surely would have been to seriously injure the CEO guy so that he gets carried off to the hospital and has to get approval for surgeries, hospital treatment, recovery, etc., etc. "Sorry boss, computer says no".
That is right up there with doctors asking if there are any firearms in the home under the pretense that their presence denotes a medical issue. The doc makes a note in their database....which is conveniently shared with the insurance provider....and increased insurance rates magically result.
Yeah, that is another 'no' answer to people who have no business knowing.
Of the dozen homes in my neighborhood, I can confirm that nine have firearms. Two are a strong 'maybe'. And one is a 'probably not'. Yes, this is a small sample, and it is rural America. But it does support the point that most people will not answer truthfully when asked by someone who doesn't need to know.
Please stop continuing the bullshit tht Americans need guns to defend themselvs.
We all know when there is a nutter in the area, Americans all run and hide like girls and let the real heroes th epolice take care of things.
99% of all school massacres are never interrupted by a gun owning hero from the neighbour hood stepping up. Replace schools with any other public place.
Yeh because one armed bystander saving 1 day against 99 bad days where the same armed bystanders do nothing guns kill thousands is such a good balance.
One has to wonder with so many american heroes why there are so many massacres in the first place and yet basiclaly every other western country where citizens with no guns has basically no masscares.
Confusion.
The people of UKRAINE are also asking the same question.
What the fuck are you talking about? Is that sarcasm?
"Police officials who responded to the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas 'demonstrated no urgency' in setting up a command post and failed to treat the killings as an active shooter situation, according to a Justice Department report released Thursday that identifies 'cascading failures' in law enforcement’s handling of one of the deadliest massacres at a school in American history."
Because he was rich and powerful. Obviously.
Not much different than "missing white girl" syndrome. If you're young, pretty, female and white, police will turn out by the battalion looking for you.
If you're male, older than 25, or not white, then "the body will turn up some time"
Both can be true at the same time. You can still get ill with a computer science degree.
As far as I can tell, the main goal of any insurance is to get money for nothing. They'll absolutely hound you if you're late paying, but the number of insurances that are as efficient in paying out seems very small and some of the excuses are, well, regulation worthy.
But it does not justify murder.
I fundamentally disagree; some people really do deserve to get killed. Case in point: the scum who was convicted this week of torturing his own 10 year old daughter to death.
Removing him from this Earthly plain would be nothing other than a net benefit for society,
I think the point El Reg is trying to make is that in the world of GPS bikes, AI, spy satellites, government monitoring and mass surveillance, the method of capture is very low tech - spotted in a fast food joint...
Although, the only reason he did get captured is because of pervasive CCTV. There were multiple pictures of him and if they didn't exist, all the eye-witness reports would be "someone in a hoodie with a backpack"
I can see how that could drive someone to do this.
It is by no means a justification, but if I see how someone in the US can get above eyeball level in debt for the resulting bills for as little as a broken finger and the subsequent breakdown of self control.
Add to that the ubiquitous, near uncontrolled availability of firearms and you have a recipe for major problems.
According to UnitedhHealthcare they have around 26.6m policyholders in the US. That gives 26,599,999 other suspects whose alibis should be checked.
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