Strange conjecture: Brian Thompson's murder may have been a contract killing

[jmowreader]

The New York City Police Department, after careful analysis of the surveillance footage, believes the assassin used a B&T Station Six pistol to kill Brian Thompson.

https://www.capitolarmory.com/bt-station-six-9mm-suppressed-pistol-bt410111.html

https://abcnews.go.com/US/police-piece-unitedhealthcare-ceo-shooting-suspects-escape-route/story?id=116475329

What to know about this gun: It is modeled after the "Welrod" pistol issued to British secret agents in World War II. It is magazine fed but you have to cycle the action by hand after every shot. If you buy one, which you probably aren't planning on because they're over $2000 apiece, you have to undergo a federal investigation which takes up to two months due to the silencer it comes with.

So...who would buy such a thing? People with a very serious love of the history of covert operations, people who love unusual firearms...and people who murder people for hire. I can go to Cabela's any day of the week and walk out the door in less than an hour with an automatic pistol from any of the famous brands to include the notoriously-overpriced Heckler & Koch for a third of what the B&T Station Six costs, and have a better pistol for anything except whacking people in the middle of Manhattan.

ABC is reporting that the killer stayed in the HI New York City hostel. They have surveillance footage of him checking in. It's on the corner of 104th St. and Amsterdam Avenue.

So, let's follow this guy's footsteps for a bit. He would have left the hostel and walked over to Central Park West, where he would have boarded either the B or D train. He rode to the 7th Avenue station, which is on 53d Street. One block up and one block east is where he killed Thompson. Go back to the station - remember, the pictures they have shown of him make it clear he's just an ordinary-looking guy and in New York people walk around at all hours - then he jumped back on the B train, rode to the 86th Street Station, jumped over the Central Park perimeter wall, grabbed the bike he had cached in there and was seen riding it near 84th Street just before 7 am.

Even if they find this guy - and he's definitely an out-of-towner; HI New York requires an out-of-NYC ID to check in - it's going to be hell solving this because they also have to find whoever hired him.

[choie]

1. Why is that considered

a strange conjecture?

[Skittles]

2. because some are acting like he is a folk hero

being paid to do it doesn't really fit that fuzzy version of revenge

[choie]

11. Ah.

[intheflow]

22. So the guy who paid him is the folk hero?

What about that guy's revenge motivation?

I don't really think of either of them as heroes in any sense, but I'd be lying if I said I haven't been expecting something like this to happen for some time now.

[Happy Hoosier]

23. I don't think of the shooter as a hero.... BUT....

the victim was definitely a villian.

At best, I finder the shooter's actions understandable (acknowledging that I am making assumptions about motive here).

But the victim was a willing participant in the process of extracting wealth from suffering people and enriching himself to the tune of 8 figures a year.

[Meowmee]

3. I doubt he was a professional assassin

Because he failed the first time or there was some malfunction with the shooting. And he unmasked himself… imo a pro would never do that. Also, I don’t think they usually write things on bullets. I don’t know. Maybe I’m not in the loop with all of this stuff.

[Happy Hoosier]

24. Definitely NOT a pro.

For one thing, he's a KID. I'm thinking a parent or other loved one denied care. But we'll see.

[yardwork]

4. This has been one of my theories.

I've wondered from the beginning if he was a hired assassin.

I don't know anything about guns, so that's interesting.

To me, the motive is not necessarily clear. It could be retaliation for health insurance denials, or it could be made to look that way.

[Sanity Claws]

5. I doubt he would use his own ID to check in to the hostel

Unless he is a dumbass.

[Oneironaut]

7. Apparently he used a fake New Jersey ID, from what I read.

[Solly Mack]

6. Not strange. No one knows the actual reason. Only conjecture and speculation.

[RockRaven]

8. Cui bono?

[Prairie Gates]

9. He had the bike at the killing scene...he rode away on it

Up through so-called 6 1/2 Avenue and into Central Park. He is then seen on camera coming out of Central Park between 70th and 80th on the bike and then again on 85th street. When he leaves Central Park, the backpack is gone. Police are still searching the park for the backpack.

One other thing to note: between the hostel he stayed in and the B D train station at 103rd street are the (at one time notorious) Frederick Douglass houses, a sprawling housing project that he would have pretty much had to walk through either on 104th street or 103rd street to get to the subway. It used to be quite an interesting walk at 5am to be trapsing through the FDH on 103rd street, which pretty much bisects the grounds. Not sure if it's the same these days, but I'd certainly feel better about making that walk armed!

[LisaL]

10. He doesn't appear to be well off.

Apparently he came by bus and stayed in hostel sharing room with other people. I don't think it's a contract killing, or he doesn't get a lot of contracts.

[FreeState]

19. His backpack is not cheap

It’s the 2019 version of this:

https://www.peakdesign.com/products/everyday-backpack?Size=20L&Color=Ash

Sure it could be a gift, second hand or stollen but it wasn’t cheap new and very identifiable.

[obamanut2012]

26. There is zero proof he isn't well off

[NickB79]

12. Suppressors take as little as a week to obtain these days

Source: I was just pricing one for a .22 rifle two weeks ago. The ATF has recently upgraded their review process and months long waits have largely gone away.

[Straw Man]

18. Maybe so ...

Suppressors take as little as a week to obtain these days

... but there is the thorny issue of the background check and sign-off by the ranking law enforcement officer -- county sheriff or city chief of police -- in your home location. If he had a clean record, that would be possible, but the paper trail would certainly lead law enforcement to him eventually. How many people do you think buy those pistols?

The speculation about the $2000 WWII replica pistol is just that: speculation. What you saw on those videos was him clearing jams, not racking the manual action of an archaic firearm. The evidence is the complete cartridges found on the ground. That's what happens when you clear a jam: a live cartridge almost invariably gets ejected, whether it was the initial cause of the jam or just collateral ejecta from clearing the jam of a spent casing. The bottom line is that you don't eject live cartridges when you cycle a manual action.

What you saw was a garden variety semi-auto pistol with a silencer that was either homemade or sourced on the black market. The jams were probably caused by the silencer, which causes back-pressure that can affect the often-finicky functioning of a semi-auto pistol. The pistol can be tuned to compensate for that, but his clearly wasn't. Pro? No.

[NutmegYankee]

13. It wasn't a Station Six 9 pistol.

It was a glock or similar with floating barrel attached to a threaded on silencer. The frequent jams are common in that configuration unless the main recoil spring is replaced with a much harder spring.

A professional wouldn't have had that many jams - he would've tested and refined the weapon.

[WarGamer]

14. were they jams? Or was he cycling the bolt action pistol above? Look again.

[NutmegYankee]

15. See picture:

https://apnews.com/article/unitedhealthcare-ceo-manhattan-shooting-death-7f6581ba6b0b520938d82c361e77a83c?utm_source=copy&utm_medium=share

The gunman left unfired bullets on the ground. That's a jam from a semi-auto. A welrod type gun is bolt action, so only a spent casing would be ejected.

[ecstatic]

17. a random youtuber said he was racking the gun each time, unnecessarily. nt

[NutmegYankee]

20. If a stock pistol is used, the silencer can cause the slide to not properly close.

He may have had to pull the slide back to reset for the next shot, ejecting an unfired cartridge each time.

[Elmotime]

25. Subsonic Rounds?

If you are trying to minimize noise, subsonic rounds lack the crack of most ammunition. A suppressor + lower powered subsonic ammo often lack the power to properly cycle the gun causing the need to manually rack the slide between shots.

[Straw Man]

30. Possibly.

A suppressor + lower powered subsonic ammo often lack the power to properly cycle the gun causing the need to manually rack the slide between shots.

That power deficiency can be overcome by using a weaker recoil spring. Proper functioning of a semi-auto pistol is dependent on a balance between the power of the cartridge and the strength of the spring. Springs can be changed easily. The fact that he didn't tune his pistol to his silencer suggests that he wasn't a pro at all.

[ecstatic]

16. I think y'all are all overthinking it. The only thing unique about that attack was that the killer limited

the carnage to the person he was targeting (unlike other terrorists who kill everyone in the vicinity).

I don't think he personally knows anyone killed by UHC. He's just a homegrown domestic terrorist / serial killer, for lack of a better word, and his target appears to be heartless CEOs. He probably did not expect to still be alive right now, but now that he's escaped, he might move on to the next person on his list.

There are a lot of other wild theories I can think of, but I think the simplest explanation is usually the right one.

[allegorical oracle]

21. His estranged wife had really nice things to say about him. They lived in the same city

but in different homes.

[Omnipresent]

27. Cigna did it!

[Aviation Pro]

28. Except the station he exited was an F train local, the sole line that uses that one

It's part of the tranche of photos.

[snowybirdie]

29. I read today

He and his wife are separated and living apart. Another avenue to pursue.

[Dulcinea]

31. I'm not an expert...

...but maybe the shooter is ex-military, maybe Special Forces? Someone with knowledge of guerrilla warfare?