For the past week, the brutal murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York City street has been a media spectacle dominating the pages and airwaves of about every legacy outlet out there. The killer had waited for Thompson to appear, used a suppressed pistol, and then during the shooting, when it appeared the weapon misfired, calmly cleared it and resumed firing. It was like something out of a movie. You can understand why the attention, especially when the shooter disappears until he is caught on Monday.
A few observations.
No one disappears without a trace. One of the first rules of investigations is that everyone, everywhere, leaves evidence of their passing in their wake. It is a matter of doing the detective work to dig up the clues. That process is enhanced, as Chinese surveillance networks demonstrate, by the massive amount of digital exhaust everyone in the developed world leaves.
As a kid, one of the first books I read after “The Magic Tree House” was the “The Day of the Jackal.” The author brilliantly leads the reader to expect that through meticulous preparation, the killer would escape detection. Of course he didn’t escape detection, even in pre-digital France. The twist was that he assumed he would not and planned accordingly.
Thompson’s killer worked hard to cover his tracks, digital and otherwise. He used burner phones to defeat geo-fencing, and otherwise took care to minimize his digital exhaust. He deployed a distinctive looking backpack as a “contra-indicator” that would provide a dead-end once abandoned, and he wore a common COVID-19 mask to defeat surveillance cameras and any witnesses. The guy even took the bus to prevent having to use an ID or have his license plate scanned.
However, it appears he was defeated by a very cheap surveillance camera in the youth hostel where he stayed. When he lowered his mask for just a moment, presumably at the flirtatious invitation of the desk clerk, his visage was captured and matched to the masked images from the crime scene. From there the picture was broadcast nationwide until a worker at McDonalds, three hundred miles away in Pennsylvania, matched it to a man eating at a nearby table.
A (now) world-famous assassin arrested at a McDonalds? This was not the end I was I expecting. If this was a novel, it would be Scooby Doo meets Dostoevsky, but instead of the villain blaming those “meddling kids” as he was led away, he was cursing that cute girl at the hostel.
No word if his last meal as a free man was a Happy one.
Second observation.
Something doesn’t quite fit. From all accounts this was a guy who was capable enough to infiltrate New York City, kill a man by shooting him in the back in a heavily surveilled environment, and then leave the city without a trace. He had multiple fake IDs, knew how to procure a ghost gun and calmly work through firearm malfunctions as he shot a man to death. Yet after all that and with his picture broadcast world wide as Public Enemy #1, our modern-day Jackal was just calmly sitting there, probably eating a Grimace-approved Quarter Pounder with cheese, in Altoona waiting for his world to end? With his nearby car still full of incriminating fake IDs, weapons, and (of all cliches) a manifesto?
Seems careless for somebody so careful and after everything he did for the previous two weeks. Almost anti-climatic, like a farce.
Something doesn’t fit. Here’s an idea, he didn’t acquire all that material and capability on his own, but yet he had nowhere to run and hide. It’s almost like somebody wanted him to get caught.
Final observation.
The clearance rate for murders committed in Manhattan for 2023 was 58.5%. Say a prayer for Brian Thompson, say a prayer for his family, but also say a prayer for those 41.5% of the murder victims and their family who will probably never receive justice.
We still don’t know much about why Brian Thompson’s killer did what he did. There are a lot of parts of this which don’t fit and lack of details is explanation is sucking the oxygen out of the room I was listening to Walter Kirnon Matt Taibbi’s show the other night and he painted a picture of a complex government op
There have been plenty of stories over the past week of the Left in a festive mood about Thompson’s death abd think the killer is the bee’s knees. Then there is comment by Elizabeth Warren from MSNBC:
“violence is never the answer, this guy gets a trial, who’s allegedly killed the CEO of UnitedHealth. But you can only push people so far, and then, they start to take matters into their own hands.”
I love the “but”, I was going through a seminar on emotional communication in business about the problems in using that word because it negates everything that comes before it.
Elizabeth Warren is a ghoul. I don’t know if Thompson has been buried yet, but I bet his family is still grieving and here we have a sitting US senator using this tragedy as a symbol, to not only score political points, but to say the victim had it coming in order to use it a predicate for regulating business.
So what you do at this point is refute, ask of they have no shame, and keep receipts because people like Warren or Jimmy Kimmel will be back lecturing the normies from an assumed position of moral supremacy and they need to be taken down a notch or 2.
I hope somebody who applauds Kimmel or Warren get confronted with a political version of Mad Libs and start to understand how despicable their position is when the nouns are changed
I think Luigi is the designated patsy, he gas an accomplice.
Yeah, Luigi had a plan, or someone worked out a plan for him … but he had no alternate identity to vanish into, once the hit was done… and if so, his handlers kind of left him hanging…
sigh … g*d, I hate to sound so paranoid, but the last couple of decades have left me no choice but to look at events and assume that there was mischief afoot.
As far as motive is concerned, I think crazy covers it pretty well. Not gibbering, playing with his excrement crazy but crazy nonetheless. He somehow became fixated on someone that most of us haven’t heard of. Not really obscure but far from a household name. So far, no one close to him that was denied coverage or treatment.
For all his planning and preparation, he keeps the one thing that ties him undeniably to the murder: the gun. A ghost gun, no less, that couldn’t have been connected to him if he dropped it at the scene or anywhere after. And I’m sure that somewhere in the assassin’s handbook there is something about the essence of using false ID is never being caught with more than one. I wouldn’t be surprised that the receptionist at the hostel was trained to get people to remove masks and the camera might have been cheap but it was placed to get a good shot of his face.
At this point it’s moot, but I wonder if he took precautions about DNA and other trace evidence. If he’d left the gun in the backpack, there would have been a fair chance that whoever found it would have either kept it or put it in the nearest trash to keep from getting “involved”.
McKinley’s assassin, Leon Czolgosz was tried and executed in seven weeks, I wonder if Thompson’s trial will even get started before Trump leaves office. Given the DA, there’s a chance he’ll get to plead to littering or jaywalking.
Bringing up “The Day of The Jackal” (I really enjoyed that book as a teenager as well) is interesting because it points in the direction of why Mangione likely thought he was invisible after the hit. As with the Jackal, the idea was that his preparation and obfuscation of his identity before the hit would guarantee his anonymity *in his prior identity* after executing his target. Mangione, as the Jackal is portrayed prior to his assignment, was ‘hiding in plain sight* after the hit. It just took a little longer to find Mangione since there wasn’t such extensive surveillance on threats to Brian Thompson as there was on Charles De Gaulle.
I think at this moment about the whole affair there is so much in the way of pieces that don’t fit together, you have to have multiple theories. I can accept anything, even that he was operating completely alone, but that’s not my leader in the clubhouse. Everything in the prep was designed to get him into the city, do the murder, and then get him out of the city.
However there was little forethought as to what he would do when he got out. He didn’t have a place to hole up? Friends? Accomplices? He seemed lost. I can accept different theories even that he acted alone, but there was such a disjuncture between the way the plot was carried out and his escape that seems strange
I will also note that I heard he entered NYC more than a week before the murder. That’s nearly 2 weeks of alot of tension, maybe his nerves just gave out at the end
As far as “Day of the jackal”, the movie was almost as good as the book in part because the Jackal’s plan was unknown to the reader/viewer until it actually unfolded. He expected the unforseen, he took extreme precautions to protect his anonymity and had no idea he would be betrayed, but he planned for it
I’m wondering if sustained escape was really the goal. Watching the video footage of the murder, the deliberateness of the first shot, the calm with which he cleared the weapon to fire again, the disregard for the witness who flees, and then the lack of panic with which he heads for the curb, it seems like the assassination was the only goal and having achieved his mission, he just implements the next part of his plan, as if he would have been fine with being tackled or apprehended by police.
His destination suggests knowing his inevitable capture as well. Back home, to Pennsylvania. Back where things made sense before the thing that happened to turn him into a murderer. He didn’t resist arrest as far as I’ve heard. It seems like he was hoping for the best, but was prepared for the worst, enjoying what freedom he had remaining to him.
But he did it knowing he’d done the task he set for himself. I think that was the only goal that mattered to him. Not his freedom, not even the continuation of his life.
I’m not praising him, just attempting to understand based solely on his body language in the video.
Now it seems the supposed $60,000 reward is just a sort of rumor:
https://nypost.com/2024/12/11/us-news/who-gets-the-60k-reward-in-search-for-unitedhealthcare-ceos-killer/
A really good way to encourage confidence in the FBI and law enforcement in general.
A number of stories tell about what a large and successful family of which he was a part. He had lost contact for six months or more, and his mother filed a missing persons report in San Francisco, where he had stayed on occasion. He had parents, siblings, scads of cousins.
Yet at his arraignment in Blair County court, he looked around the courtroom like he was looking for someone. His family in Towson was just barely three hours away from Hollidaysburg, but nobody showed up to reunite or show any support or concern. What gives there, anyhow?
Other stories that he had undergone some searching for purpose, including trying hallucinogens, implies that his mental health could be affected, and some doubts about his sexuality may be warranted. Puzzling family dynamics, back pain and fuzzy headed complaints, drift and drug experimentation could mean he was vulnerable to manipulation by others, or that he acted alone based on his own demons.
It does seem odd to take bus to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Altoona in the aftermath of his heinous act.
Assuming the reported text is accurate, one has to wonder why the first thing asserted in the guy’s ‘manifesto’ is along the lines of:
I really, really admire you Feds, and by the way, I acted totally alone, I promise. You can totally trust me, I am a graduate of the Ivy League.
That he acted alone is the most important thing he wanted to say first in what he clearly wanted to be his legacy document? One would have to be a fool to not be suspicious.
so do you know a leftie who needs to find the perfect gift for their Blue Anon family member?
What about some :killer merchandise?
I’m not sure how this bears on all this:
https://nypost.com/2024/12/13/us-news/luigi-mangiones-family-operated-nursing-home-empire-that-was-cited-for-abuse-and-health-violations/
I don’t know whether these supposed violations mean anything or not. It’s probably impossible to run seven nursing homes without some poor hires, some mistakes and some complaints. More will probably be coming out now.
I own shares in several healthcare-oriented companies, including insurers.
I wish they were as rapaciously profitable as these deranged lefties seem to think they are. They’re not.
“….but he had no alternate identity to vanish into, once the hit was done…”
(From Sgt Mom, above).
“Alternate identities,” unless constructed long before the need, and lived in to establish them are tremendously more difficult than is realized. The better way is the reverse – use the alternate identity very briefly, only employing it for the event or deed, then discarding it. That is no less difficult, because success requires error-free perfection which is extremely intense, but maintaining a zero error rate for a few hours, or days, is orders of magnitude easier than doing so over a lifetime.
People – all those self-propelled observation machines with which we are surrounded – will notice a long term change and some will question it, a few will question it severely; swap identities for several hours, or a day, maybe two, and done properly, will go unnoticed. That said, it is not at all a simple task, nor one for the amateur, if complete success is a requirement.
Luigi, whomever – or whatever – he might really be, is almost certainly a prop, from which organization or entity the public will never know for certain.
“Alternate identities,” unless constructed long before the need, and lived in to establish them are tremendously more difficult than is realized. The better way is the reverse – use the alternate identity very briefly, only employing it for the event or deed…
Well said. This guy needed to hide after the murder and the easiest way to do it was as himself and in plain sight; use the fake ID for the hit, color your hair, wear classes, grow a beard, wear something you wouldn’t otherwise wear for the crime anything to dispense chaff and then return to your normal life but with a tripwire and a bolt hole.
By all accounts, this CEO was one of America’s best and brightest. Everything I’ve read about him suggests he was an awesome guy, well-liked by his co-workers, and plainly quite talented and intelligent. He was someone possibly at the level of Henry Ford (who invented the automobile assembly line), Malcom McLean (who revolutionized shipping) or maybe even Elon Musk (who has too many accomplishments to list).
Alas, he did nothing like they did. Instead, he went into the health insurance industry. He put his talents to use figuring out ways to deny valid health insurance claims made by people who had paid for that service- payments his company was legally obligated to provide. His main accomplishment towards this goal appears to have been creating an AI program to deny claims, which reportedly has a 90% error rate.
Presumably his company could get away with this legally by claiming these errors were unintentional. Regardless, this made the company much more profitable and made CEO-guy wealthy. Meanwhile, many customers were sent home to die without treatment or were bankrupted by medical bills they couldn’t pay.
Forgive me if I can’t spare any Fs to give about his deletion. Or not.
” He put his talents to use figuring out ways to deny valid health insurance claims made by people who had paid for that service- payments his company was legally obligated to provide.”
His mission was to enhance and improve the revenue position for the company which hired him to do exactly that. It is not unreasonable to employ the most efficient means of doing so.
One must remember that “insurance” is a business with all the responsibilities of a business; to wit, profit generation, position enhancement and growth, all of which require positively affecting the income vs outflow ratio. In the case of :insurance” the options available for that purpose are constrained, and increasingly so, by government regulation; having being assigned the mission of business profitibility and improvement, the tools one must use to achieve that goal are limited and becoming fewer with each legislative session.
That such produces limited, and societally undesirable, choices should not be surprising. After all, we demanded them each time we submitted a ballot, the only issue being we wanted someone else to face limitations rather than ourselves.
His mission was to enhance and improve the revenue position for the company which hired him to do exactly that.
And the best way to do that is to not provide the service the company is paid to provide. Deny, depose, and defend. Etc.
One must remember that “insurance” is a business with all the responsibilities of a business…
Health insurance resembles a business the way six resembles Sunday. I’m not if sure if the Obamacare provision requiring everyone to give money to health insurance companies whether we want to or not is still the law, has been repealed, or is simply being ignored for the moment but that’s not something normal businesses ever get to do.
…the tools one must use to achieve that goal are limited and becoming fewer with each legislative session.
Those poor, put-upon insurance companies. Woe is them. I’d think they’d deploy some cash to lobby Congress to relieve them of the terrible burden of following the law, except I’ve noticed that they already have and had it written into law that everyone had to buy their product. If they aren’t pleased with the result they should look into the metaphorical mirror.
After all, we demanded them each time we submitted a ballot, the only issue being we wanted someone else to face limitations rather than ourselves.
Hogwash. No one voted for the botched mess we have. We’ve had the regime continually lie to people about what it would do when elected- on just about every issue- with the end result that the guy the regime hates and has attempted to destroy using every method including multiple botched assassination attempts was just re-elected President
That’s how pleased people are with what we have supposedly been voting for. And- as a minor aside- I find I’m not particularly upset that CEO guy was put down, anymore than he was upset to send people home to die in bankrupt agony.
WOW, we did vote for this. Everyone of the politicians who crafted this and voted it into law (without reading it and ignoring the predictable long term distortions it would cause) were elected. Subsequently, the ones who have refused to kill the ACA or even reform the worst aspects were elected. I didn’t elect them, but “we” did.
The CEOs of the health care industry are generally operating consistent with the predictable perverse incentives created by ACA. Rationing is the inevitable consequence of restricted competition and barriers to entry with mandated purchase of any good or service enforced by government power. That should not set the leaders of the service providers up to be murdered.
If they are violating the terms of service in accordance with the ACA, there are legal remedies and class action is possible. A few such cases could serve to restrain such behavior, but it does not change the perverse incentives advanced by the ACA.
It isn’t only Whoopi Goldberg who doesn’t understand how insurance with government barriers to entry and forced consumption produce monopoly/oligoply outcomes. Until “we” stop thinking that the government is the first alternative to any perceived imperfection in our lives, government will grow and the substitute force for choice.
Death6
WOW, we did vote for this.
I love it. I imagine FBI goons rounding up dissidents at gunpoint and tutting-tutting when people object to being sent away to camps. You voted for this, MAGAts.
Are there any actions the government is prohibited from taking once blessed by elections, or no? I ask because it seems to me that buried in the assertion that I have no right to object to anything because elections is that the true answer is no, there is nothing the regime cannot do. It doesn’t matter what the written law says, or whether or not the actions are popular or make sense- it just that elections were held, so it’s all good.
Also buried in your assertion is the assumption that elections are still real. I find that dubious, having watched many elections going back decades. I could write a giant wall of text noting many issues specific and general, but I’ll refrain. I could also write another wall of text about the “we” in your assumption, but no.
I suppose this seems to be off topic rambling but I would argue that it goes right to the heart of why so many people are indifferent or thrilled by the cold blooded murder of CEO guy- the public no longer accepts the legitimacy of the regime, no matter how often it exclaims its rectitude. This CEO guy isn’t someone who worked his way up from obscurity to run a large and successful company, he’s just another minion of the regime that has been screwing the American people into the ground for decades.
If they are violating the terms of service in accordance with the ACA, there are legal remedies and class action is possible.
If only the people who were denied care by United Health knew that they could sue to get medical treatment! How come no one told them? Seriously, is this a joke?
In any case I recall that Obamacare mandates went to the Supreme Court and it was decided that the mandates were just a tax, so it was cool. Supposedly the Chief Justice wrote most of both the pro and anti-Obamacare opinions, which adds an added layer of… legitimacy to the whole show. Plus, CEO guy was best known for an AI program to evaluate claims which produced a very profitable rejection rate- roughly twice that of other companies. It seems likely to me that the entire point of all that was to inject deniability into court proceedings after the inevitable lawsuits claimed TOS violations.
It isn’t only Whoopi Goldberg who doesn’t understand how insurance with government barriers to entry and forced consumption produce monopoly/oligoply outcomes.
I don’t need to be an architect to notice that a building is burning down. And I’m not making excuses for the present mess, either. It seems to me that you are.
Until “we” stop thinking that the government is the first alternative to any perceived imperfection in our lives, government will grow and the substitute force for choice.
First alternative? The health care mess in this country got rolling during WWII when companies began paying for health insurance because the regime forbade them from raising wages. It got worse when Lyndon Johnson got involved. Then came Medicare part D, then Obamacare.
It seems a bit late to be complaining about government involvement now.