[SkyNews] The murder of a top healthcare boss has the hallmarks of a "practised, seasoned, trained professional killer", according to a former FBI special agent.
Terry Rankhorn told Kay Burley on Sky News Breakfast the footage of the shooting in New York City, which police are treating as a targeted hit, was "chilling".
UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson, 50, was ambushed at 6.45am local time on Wednesday as he walked to the company's annual investor conference at a Hilton in Midtown.
The attacker fired multiple times at Mr Thompson and continued despite the gun briefly jamming, according to police.
Shell casings, recovered from the scene, had the words "defend", "deny", and "depose" written on them according to Sky News' US partner, NBC News, which spoke to a senior New York City law enforcement official.
"What you can determine from his behaviour is this person is a practised, seasoned, trained professional killer," Mr Rankhorn said.
"He doesn't run up like an inexperienced, emotional but amateur killer... this person calmly walks out," he added.
"He paces his target. He draws his weapon. He takes careful aim and then fires at his target once. And then you can see the weapon malfunction.
"He calmly clears the malfunction, fires again, and advances on his target. This isn't some drug-addled murderer. This is a professional."
Security cameras also captured the gunman's escape on an e-bike into Central Park. Police used drones, helicopters and dogs in an intense search, but he has not been traced.
New York City Police Department (NYPD) commissioner Jessica Tisch said the shooting was no random act of violence, but a "premeditated, pre-planned, targeted attack", although the motive is unclear.
Police released images of the man, who wore a hooded jacket and a mask that concealed most of his face.
Mr Rankhorn shared his thoughts about the man's getaway: "He clearly had a preplanned escape route. This is someone who knows their craft. They're practised at it. And, it was an extremely effective and efficient assassination."
"The e-bike is actually a shockingly effective tool in New York City because of the traffic... they can weave in and out of traffic even if he was being pursued by a police-marked vehicle."
The murdered CEO had been receiving recent threats but hadn't been altering his travel routine, according to his wife Paulette Thompson.
The NYPD is investigating the possible message — which appears to include the words “deny,” “depose” and “defend” — engraved on live rounds and shell casings left behind by the masked assassin after he shot Thompson, 50, several times at about 6:46 a.m. before fleeing, the sources said. The words are possible attacks on the health insurance industry, in which Thompson is one of the most powerful leaders — and strikingly similar to a 2010 book condemning the business.
“Delay, Deny, Defend” — two of the three words seemingly left — is sub-titled: “Why insurance companies don’t pay claims and what you can do about it.”
Police are looking at possible ties to the book, as well as more general references to the health industry, as a potential motive, sources told The Post.
The book’s author, Jay M. Feinman — a distinguished professor emeritus at Rutgers Law School — declined to comment Thursday morning.
The NYPD released a new photo of the hooded suspect standing in front of the counter at the Starbucks at West 56th Street and 6th Avenue, just minutes from the Hilton hotel where he gunned down Thompson, 50.
Thompson was named CEO of UnitedHealth in April 2021. He joined the company in 2004. He was one of several senior executives at the company under investigation by the Department of Justice.
He then ran into an alleyway and hopped on an e-bike, which he rode north along Sixth Avenue into Central Park, where surveillance camera coverage is spotty, police said.
But the suspect may have made some major mistakes that could help investigators identify him.
He bought coffee, a water bottle and two PowerBars at a nearby Starbucks before the killing and tossed his bottle and coffee cup in a trash can — which cops dug out of the garbage and now have as evidence, according to sources.
And investigators also discovered a phone in an alleyway near the Hilton which they believe belongs to the killer, the sources said. Investigators have obtained a search warrant to comb through the contents of the phone.
The suspected killer who gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson came to New York City on an interstate Greyhound bus last month, police sources told The Post.
The suspect arrived at the Port Authority bus terminal in Manhattan back on Nov. 24 after it set off from Atlanta, Georgia, according to the sources. It wasn't immediately clear, though, where the cold-blooded gunman jumped on the bus. After setting foot in the Big Apple, he checked into the HI New York City Hostel on the Upper West Side before going to stake out the Hilton Hotel in Midtown where he ended up killing Thompson early Wednesday.
The gunman's whereabouts in the days leading up to the shooting are slowly being pieced together by cops as the citywide manhunt for the killer continued.
New footage emerged Thursday showing the suspect in the slaying of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson strolling out of a Manhattan subway station just 30 minutes before the fatal shooting. The suspected gunman -- accused of shooting the executive execution-style on a Midtown street -- was seen leaving what appears to be the 57th Street station around 6:15 a.m., in the newly-obtained surveillance video taken from a cigar store on Sixth Avenue.
The suspected gunman who shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson had checked into an Upper West Side hostel using a fake New Jersey ID, law enforcement sources told The Post.
Minnesota police received a bomb threat at the home of slain UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson the same day he was shot and killed in the Big Apple, according to a new report. The Maple Grove City attorney received an email claiming there was a pipe bomb at Thompson’s home around 7 p.m. Wednesday, TMZ reports. Thompson was murdered in midtown Manhattan shortly before 7 a.m.
The gunman's use of a Citibike was a telltale sign to investigators that he was not very sophisticated.
New York Times:
Between the creation of a Citi Bike account, connecting it to a credit card, undocking it, riding it around the city and docking it at a new location, every user creates many “streams of digital breadcrumbs” that can help Lyft, the company that operates Citi Bike, track the user’s location, and possibly their identity, Mr. Shmoys said.
Combined with the user’s phone data and location shared with cell towers, “It is amazing how much information is conveyed,” Mr. Shmoys said.
Thompson was one of several senior executives at United Healthcare whom the Justice Department was investigating for insider trading. Thompson, along with UnitedHealth Group chairman Stephen Helmsley, Chief People Officer Erin McSweeney, and Chief Accounting Officer Tom Roos, sold a combined $101.5 million in shares before the Justice Department investigation became known last February.
#1
Soap Box Alert - this guy is not a practised, seasoned, trained professional killer. He may be well trained (so is Todd Jarrett and Jerry Miculek) but that doesn't make them "professional killers". This EfBeye guy is a clown.
Pros don't;
--Leave a burner behind
--Leave DNA so close to the scene
--Shoot the target in the calf from less than 15 feet
--Use a suppressed weapon that requires you to rack the slide each time (though he did appear to anticipate that)
--Stay in a shared dorm room style place w/2 unknowns the night before the job
Now the shooter did a bunch of things right;
--Taking the bus and using a fake ID to rent a room at a hostel
--Maybe used that ID (or another) to buy the bus ticket (if even asked)
--Likely took a few buses enroute to further mask his travel and possibly transport the weapon w/o scrutiny.
--Fix the target in place and time
--Stage the e-bike for good mobility in NYC traffic
If they catch the shooter (I think they will), I'd bet this will be a personal grievance vs. a contract hit. Outside of the cartels, you could fill 2 school buses with all the legit contract killers in the US and have seats left over. The act is the easy part. Getting away is difficult.
Off Soap Box...
Posted by: Bangkok Billy ||
12/06/2024 4:18 Comments ||
Top||
#9
Going back to previous discussions about the misfires/professional hit.
My experience with suppressors is they cause a lot of blowback, thus fouling the action/misfires. IMO, A professional most likely would have a clean disposable firearm. A pro would most likely not be interested in virtue signalling.
#11
Doesn’t look like a crazy person or someone with a grudge. There were two few mistakes to be an amateur, but enough for it not to be a three letter agency. To me it looks like a Reddit rental level hit.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/06/2024 13:33 Comments ||
Top||
#15
The gun seems to be a low production model. NICS would have the serial numbers to reference buyers (or retail sellers). Shooter probably got the gun second hand but there is always a trail.
#18
Must have used phone to get movement info re the target.. but why drop it?
Maybe an oopsie, maybe he was done with it. Taking the battery out will stop tracking, but as soon as it has power again, the phone will ping the nearest cell tower.
Or maybe he wanted the phone found, what with it being full of "evidence and connections".
#19
If the response to COVID is anything, it shows that your PED/Phone is a tracking device.
So the egress is important for collecting the retirement policy, but you need be updated by a spy somewhere in the plan to track movement.
I'd think, remove the battery ASAP, SIM Card too, then drop the phone someplace it would be destroyed, like in the middle of an intersection. Unless one wants it to be found.
If the etching thing is true, how was it done? Sharpie, physical etching technique, laser etching? That would indicate the want of 'passing a message', no? The difference between some graffiti paint marker vs. some sort of stamp.
*off take, CitiBike tracks you
**on reflection, taking out a leg prevents 'going serpentine'.
[SkyNews] More than £3m of drugs, £2m of cash, 557 weapons and four XL bully dogs were seized in the week-long crackdown in England and Wales.
More than 1,600 people have been arrested in a county lines crackdown.
The policing minister joined an early hours raid in southeast London as forces across England and Wales took part in the "intensification week".
It resulted in 1,660 arrests, with 80-90% expected to be charged, as well as the closure of 261 county lines and the seizure of more than £3m of drugs, 557 weapons and four XL bully dogs.
However, police chiefs were concerned by the number of children involved in what the policing minister branded as "heartless gangs".
There was also an "unwelcome emergence" of synthetic opioids in the UK illegal drug market.
The crackdown lasted from 25 November to 2 December.
According to the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) there are around 5,500 to 6,500 county lines - the term used to describe drug dealing where mobile phones are used to supply drugs, typically from large cities to towns and rural areas, and often using children as runners.
Policing Minister Dame Diana Johnson called county lines "one of the most violent and exploitative models of drug supply".
She added: "We are determined to stop these heartless gangs from luring young people into a life of crime."
The NPCC said it had "safeguarded" 1,434 people over the week, almost half of which were children, by referring them to specialist support and arresting people for modern slavery offences.
Commander Paul Brogden, NPCC lead for county lines, asked parents to be more aware of what their children were doing and to report their worries to the local police if they're concerned.
He also said there had been a "welcome shift" in the ages of children being drawn into county lines, with them "gradually getting higher".
While the appearance of the "synthetic opioids" was "unwelcome", Mr Brogden said it had not yet become "embedded" in the UK illegal drug market.
However, gangs were said to be "adapting to police tactics" with lines becoming "more localised".
More than £3m of class A and B drugs, including 5.2kg of crack cocaine, 6.1kg of heroine, 33.5kg of cocaine and around 19,000 cannabis plants, were seized over the raids.
Police also seized nearly £2m in cash.
One organised crime unit arrested three people at an American sweet and vape shop - seizing a large amount of amphetamine and diazepam.
Most of the weapons found were knives and bladed weapons, but police also recovered 75 firearms and 105 other weapons including nunchucks and hammers.
Police visited over 850 addresses that had been taken over by drug gangs in a process known as cuckooing.
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] The FBI has issued a warning to Americans about sending regular text messages between Androids and iPhones.
The agency revealed that exchanges between the two brands leave messages vulnerable to hackers.
Instead, users are advised to use secure, encrypted messaging and phone calls on apps like WhatsApp to prevent third parties from accessing conversations. "Please use only FBI-approved apps (which we have already back-doored)"
The warning comes as Chinese hackers have reportedly hacked several US networks that are 'ongoing and likely larger in scale than previously understood.'
Dubbed Salt Typhoon, the cyberespionage campaign surfaced this year when hackers attacked networks of several telecommunications companies.
The hackers used their access to target the metadata of a large number of customers, including information on the dates, times and recipients of calls and texts.
They also succeeded in retrieving the actual audio files of calls and content from texts from a much smaller number of victims.
Despite months of investigation, the true scale of China's operation, including the total number of victims or whether the hackers still have some access to information, is currently unknown.
Jeff Greene, CISA's executive assistant director for cybersecurity, issued the stark warning Tuesday, urging Americans to be vigilant amid the hacking campaign.
He told Politico that people should 'use your encrypted communications where you have it,' adding that 'we definitely need to do that, kind of look at what it means long-term, how we secure our networks.'
Encrypted apps protect user's data by transforming their phone calls and text messages into an unreadable format to prevent dangerous parties from gaining unauthorized access.
'Our suggestion, what we have told folks internally, is not new here: encryption is your friend, whether it's on text messaging or if you have the capacity to use encrypted voice communication,' Greene told NBC News.
'Even if the adversary is able to intercept the data, if it is encrypted, it will make it impossible.'
Several recent high-profile hacking incidents have been linked to China and what officials say is Beijing's effort to steal technical and government secrets while also gaining access to critical infrastructure such as the electrical grid.
In September, the FBI announced that it had disrupted a vast Chinese hacking operation that involved the installation of malicious software on more than 200,000 consumer devices, including cameras, video recorders and home and office routers.
The devices were then used to create a massive network of infected computers, or botnet, that could then be used to carry out other cyber crimes.
In October, officials said hackers linked to China targeted the phones of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, along with people associated with Democratic candidate Vice President Kamala Harris.
China has rejected accusations from US officials that it engages in cyberespionage directed against Americans.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for China's embassy in Washington called the U.S. allegations 'disinformation.'
China's government 'firmly opposes and combats all kinds of cyber attacks,' spokesperson Liu Pengyu wrote in a statement emailed to The Associated Press. 'The US needs to stop its own cyberattacks against other countries and refrain from using cyber security to smear and slander China.'
[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] Dated 4 December 2024, so the no confidence vote already happened, and he lost. And it’s already getting ugly over there.
Text taken from the Telegram channel of darkzotovland
Commentary by Russian military journalist Boris Rozhin is in italics..
[ColonelCassad] In the neighboring barracks there is a warehouse of half-rotted shoes of dead prisoners from many countries: fashionable women's shoes, children's boots, patent leather ankle boots of city dandies, winter boots. Visitors freeze in front of them, unable to utter a word, women often have hysterics. Now the exhibition has been reduced - in 2010, one of the barracks burned down for unknown reasons (including suspected arson), and 7,000 pairs of shoes were lost in the fire.
Even I, with my experience, feel uneasy in the barracks, where light bulbs glow, wrapped in balls of barbed wire, and a prayer is heard - people in all the languages of Europe ask for their lives to be spared. I wait for the prayer in Russian, listen to it, and go out - I need to catch my breath. After standing in the fresh air for a while, I continue along the path.
"They will say - this was a resort"
... Everywhere there are endless strings of barbed wire. In two rows, at one time it was electrified, and people threw themselves at the fence, wanting to end their suffering. SS guard towers made of wood blackened by time. And a crematorium, into whose ovens the ashes of the prisoners burned inside were eaten away. There are always fresh flowers at the memorial inside the crematorium, and it is there that mandatory school excursions are taken.
I have seen different reactions in various museums on the site of SS concentration camps - from laughter (yes, there was such a thing) to tears. Here - indifference. Children are not interested in why they were brought here, and what they are trying to show. At the Nuremberg Trials, they named figures - 1.5 million people passed through Majdanek, 360,000 of them died. Since 1991, such documents have been declared "Soviet propaganda", and the number of victims was first reduced to 200,000, then to 100,000.
In 2017, new data was announced - 80,000, and now - 78,000. These, they say, are prisoners whose names are listed in the archives of the Reich. Evidence that many prisoners were brought to Majdanek without passports and killed on the same day is no longer an argument for historians of a Poland free from socialism.
"Every year the number of victims is reduced," journalist Maciej Wisniewski is indignant. "It will come to the point that they will announce that Majdanek was a resort with mineral baths, people were treated here, not killed. It is shameful and monstrous to look at the outright lie, the distortion of history."
…After the liberation of Majdanek, the Red Army found boxes of human ashes in the concentration camp – the SS guards were preparing them for disposal. The ashes were buried in a huge mausoleum built next to the crematorium, where the ashes of thousands of people were placed.
The phrase “Our fate is a reminder to you” is inscribed on the mausoleum. On August 28, 1944, the American Life magazine published a report from Majdanek, where the reporter first told about the crematorium, gas chambers and mass extermination of people. He also noted the merit of the Red Army, whose soldiers sacrificed their lives to stop the crimes of the Nazis.
In 1947, by decision of the Polish government, a museum was officially opened on the territory of the concentration camp and a monument was built. 80 years later, Americans are glorified in this place, afraid to mention the role of Soviet soldiers who stopped the furnaces of Majdanek.
But a third of those killed in Majdanek were Poles. It's getting ridiculous - the persistent hushing up of the topic of Soviet liberators makes tourists conclude that the death camp was liberated by "unknown well-wishers." Such behavior is disgusting, cowardly, and unworthy of adults. But apparently, in modern Poland it has long been considered the norm.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
