Regarding the trial, the defense lawyer should Delay, Deny, Depose.
And our non-hero should have grown a beard/mustache before the operation, then shave. Groucho eyeglasses with the big nose and hairy eyebrows would have been good too.
You’re missing the point that he wouldn’t have had to fly under one of the fake IDs. The police are saying he had his passport on him. No one knew his name until today. He could have flown anywhere Wednesday or Thursday and it may not have been caught until much later, if at all.
The authorities only got his name when they arrested him. If he got to a foreign country there wouldn’t have necessarily been anything to connect him to the shooting so no way to connect him electronically to the crime.
Nobody was looking for “Luigi Mangione” on Wednesday. Who knows how long it would have taken them to find his real name, if ever? He could’ve gotten anywhere in the world by then.
My only WAG as to why he didn’t ditch the gun and stayed so close by is that he had another target he was planning to go after.
Yeah, I bet he had a list of targets. It appears he had some admiration for the Unabomber so not a surprise he would have a list.
Ok. So Luigi, using his real name buys a ticket to e.g. Italy. Chosen because (assume) he speaks the language and likes the food …
He gets there. A few days later enough evidence & sightings of him from before the crime or at the airport leaving have accumulated. Maybe his parents file a missing person report on him, unaware of what he’s done. So now the cops know they’re looking for “Luigi Mangione” with a certain passport and drivers license and all the rest of the ID numbers.
First thing they do is check the airline & TSA records. Yep, fled to Italy. Call the Italian customs & immigration folks. Yep he entered at Rome and said he was staying at [address].
It’s still a manhunt from there. But the Italian police are about as good at is the American ones. And have the advantage of a more top-down system.
I bet that as of today he’d still be at large in Italy. But that doesn’t mean he got away. My take on an old aphorism: A fugitive needs to succeed every day. The cops only need to get lucky once.
Now if he flew to e.g. Ghana that might be more effective.
Agree with LSL. Flying leaves a trail. Greyhound buses don’t.
The best place for an American to hide out is in the US, where he speaks the language, has an American accent, won’t be caught out by foreign ID requirements, won’t have trouble getting a job and earning cash, maybe under the table (all the better). Just be one of the 330+ million Americans.
There has been a fair amount of discussion that no one came forward in the last few days saying they recognized him. NO ONE. No family, friends or colleagues.
I saw mentioned on MSNBC that the usuals online sleuths who have helped ID people in the past were all taking a pass on this one given the hate for the insurance industry.
I don’t remember specifics but there are cases where a person fled overseas after the commission of a crime and the parents played dumb when the police came around.
Plus, you are assuming the authorities would have ever been able to determine his identity with fingerprints or DNA or something like it. There is no guarantee of that happening.
Flying only leaves a trail when there is a name to track. If he had flown the coop right away there is little at this point to indicate the authorities would have ever had a name.
But yes, if he had headed back to the West Coast or Hawaii (both recent addresses) it is unlikely they would have success finding him. An isolated cabin in Montana would also have been a good hideout.
But many countries, particularly the more out-of-the-way ones like Ghana, will generally have visa requirements for US tourists. You’d know much better than I, but I believe airlines are pretty careful about all the paperwork being in order because they otherwise have the liability of having to fly the passenger back when they’re denied entry. In general, boarding an international flight is a Big Deal in terms of scrutiny.
ETA: Not arguing with you, I’m basically agreeing with you.
I have a hard time seeing any scenario where the act of traveling abroad or residing abroad doesn’t narrow things down much more easily than the gunman staying in America.
At risk of hijacking my own thread - there are plenty of European countries that don’t require visas, just a passport valid for at least 6 months after you land.
I recently found out US citizens can stay in Mexico for 6 months without a visa. I was there for a week recently and there were a surprising number of young Americans living in Mexico City. Not sure if they were college students but this guy would have fit in perfectly.
If a worker at McDonalds can ID him from those pictures, what about all the people that knew him personally, from uni, workplaces, schools, or his apartment complex in Hawaii? You don’t think anyone else would have called up the cops and said “you know, that guy looks like…”?
And if he’s in an airport, you don’t think security wouldn’t have had a BOLO alert, with his pics, especially if he was trying to fly out of JFK, the closest, quickest international airport? He would be on security cameras pretty much the entire time.
There is a huge “digital nomad” / WFH contingent of youngish Americans (& Canadians) spread all over Latin America. Enjoying US wages and Latin American cost of living. The exact legality of which is arguable, and certainly differs from country to country.
And yet since last Wednesday not one person in the groups you mention came forward to do that. As mentioned there has been a sense that the normal online sleuths who identify people in these situations have refused to do so because of hatred of the insurance industry.
And again, the pictures weren’t released until he had plenty of time to fly the coop. So no BOLO, no pics or name on a list for TSA at JFK or anywhere else.
Which supports the idea he could have melted into that group with ease. Or were you making a different point?
That we know of. The New York authorities had been saying that they had info as to his name that they were not releasing.
That’s what surprises me the most. That the person to call the cops on this gunman was some total stranger at a restaurant rather than people who have seen and known this gunman for years or decades.
That was just a random factoid unrelated to this case, but in support of your comment about seeing a bunch of Americans there.
The big Q here that we’re all bickering about without access to real facts, is how the investigation would have proceeded if they had not promptly found him in Altoona. Harkening back to the Idaho college stabbings, IIRC there was a period of a week or three while the cops appeared to be making no progress. Various leads were examined then discarded, various people of interest were interviewed then declared non-suspects, etc.
Then they identified and then arrested what’s-his-name. Starts with a K.
I could see a very similar trajectory in this case where a couple weeks hence enough checking back and forth finally ties the mystery suspect to the very real, but now very missing, person Luigi Mangione. Then the manhunt begins in earnest.
You don’t know a lot of Mediterranean people. He looked incredibly ordinary to me. I guessed he was Jewish, Arab, or Italian.
You, too. He looks soooo ordinary to me. He looked like a younger version of my last boss.
According to CNN, he’s currently being held in SCI Huntingdon, Pennsylvania.
“SCI Huntingdon is Pennsylvania’s oldest State Correctional Institution in continuous operation, opening its gates in 1889,” the state’s official website says.
Sounds like a swell place to contemplate the upcoming trial and the upcoming life sentence without parole.
To be clear, I absolutely loathe health insurance companies and believe that they’re engaged in an essentially criminal activity. But Brian Thompson was a family man just doing his job within the established norms of American society. Even if he was running a morally repugnant enterprise and even if he was guilty of insider trading and still under IRS investigation, he didn’t deserve the death penalty inflicted by a random lunatic.