I think one takeaway here is that the surveillance state is pretty easy to beat if you take even the simplest of precautions. By paying in cash, using mass transit, and avoiding situations where his fake ID would come under close scrutiny, he was able to avoid leaving a paper trail or bank records that could be traced, and despite losing his phone at the scene the cops weren’t able to identify him and took three days just to find his backpack. The only reason he got caught is because a McDonald’s employee snitched on him. He didn’t even travel that far - it’s only about a 5-6 hour trip by bus/train from NYC to Altoona.
I don’t think we can draw that conclusion at all. Certainly not just from this particular case and how it unfolded.
I think we can. From what I see, he made two mistakes - he lowered his mask while he was on camera, and he still had the gun and fake ID on him when he was caught. If not for the former the McDonald’s worker wouldn’t have been able to recognize him, if not for the latter the cops would have let him go. It wasn’t paper trails or bank records or the NYPD scuba diving in Central Park or even leaving his phone behind that got him.
Considering the McDonald’s employee id’d him from the surveillance video pics that were posted online, I don’t think it’s fair to say he defeated the surveillance state.
I think you are jumping to wild conclusions based on very little evidence. You have no idea what other things could have been his downfall because he was apprehended so quickly.
Yeah it was a big mistake for a guy with that distinctive a nose and face jaw to lower his mask. He could have wore sunglasses too to help things out.
I’m talking about data surveillance, mostly. How many criminals get caught because their cell phone data shows they were at the scene of the crime, or because they used their debit card to buy bleach and plastic bags right after the presumed time of death, or they try to board a plane with a fake ID and TSA catches it? With a little forethought this guy was able to completely avoid that dragnet. The next guy to try something like this will be able to learn from what he did right and wrong.
And even that could not have happened if he hadn’t been stupid enough to pull down his mask. I’m pretty sure he would have been caught anyway, but it probably would have taken a lot longer. As I said earlier, I don’t think this guy was very bright. Not to mention that intelligent people usually have a pretty firm grasp on reality – not always, but the feeble-minded are more easily beguiled by delusions.
I really doubt that the cops would have just let someone go who so strongly resembled the perp without a thorough investigation. The fact that he had enough evidence on him to practically constitute a confession just made their job that much easier.
It Feels So Good to know he’s off the streets.
So is the McDonald’s “snitch” still in danger of also being murdered now that we know this was an unstable individual?
I absolutely hate “snitches get stitches” and I think it is an absurd expression that does not survive for a moment in the real world. Picture this being your workplace. A murderer who is probably armed is sitting there having lunch. Do you go over to him and tell him that he’s your hero and you hope he never gets caught? Or do you call the cops?
I don’t blame the McDonald’s employee for a second. Think of all those people who worship Michael Douglas’ character in Falling Down for pulling out a gun and threatening to use it on a fast food employee because he was too late for breakfast. If Luigi’s next victim had been the person working the counter at McDonald’s because they forgot that he said “no onions” would anyone be cheering him on still?
I think this mostly is relevant in Prison situations. Snitch in jail, you get cut. Turn over a perp outside, you good.
Please explain why you have quoted me and how anything I said has any connection to anything you said in apparent response.
I’m not annoyed (yet); merely utterly baffled.
Me too sez the other guy quoted
People are saying he was taking psychadelics, and they can have unpredictable effects.
He had a masters degree. Anyone can develop schizophrenia, especially if experimenting with mind altering drugs. Also I think this is just generally false: intelligent people are better at rationalising away evidence that contradicts their beliefs, so it’s probably a wash.
Would have been a bit conspicuous in December?
“Folk Hero”?
He shot an unarmed man in the back.
Some “hero”.
I saw in an article last night that he had been spotted in Texas, which obviously was incorrect. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say he’s not the first white male age 20-30 with dark hair who’s been reported to cops in the last week for looking like the guy in the photos. If he hadn’t had the evidence on him, I don’t see how they would’ve had probable cause to hold him.
I’m not a health insurance CEO, so I doubt I’d be in much danger from him. I keep on working the drive-thru and pay him as much mind as I do the rest of my customers, which is to say as little as possible.
And Jesse James was a Confederate guerilla who turned to banditry because the war was over and he wanted to keep robbing people but no longer had a legal excuse to do so. Didn’t stop him from getting mythologized into a 19th century Robin Hood.
His nose and jaw remind me of Joe DiMaggio.
With all respect to the many intelligent people who have masters degrees, in a previous job I used to mentor students working on masters projects in computer science – the exact degree this guy had – and a few were complete morons. I think this guy can be fairly judged as not very bright by the nature of the very basic mistakes he made.
Sometimes that depends on how skillful the interrogators are. The really good ones can be amazing. But in this case, it probably wouldn’t have even required particularly good ones. From CNN:
According to Altoona Deputy Chief of Police Derek Swope, they asked Mangione whether he had been to New York recently.
“And that really invoked a physical reaction from the suspect. He became visibly nervous, kind of shaking at that question. And he didn’t really answer it directly,” Swope said during a news conference.
Depends on whether it was a sunny day. Cold is not the same as cloudy.