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.