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Comment by jeffbee | Hacker News Reader

The focus on the cost of the victim’s dwelling is so weird. I hope when they find my body they don’t waste half the article projecting local housing policy onto me, as if it were my fault.

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Poor people get murdered all the time, a rich person getting murdered is newsworthy.

While true, I think the horrific nature of the murder is also what makes this newsworthy

If a poor person were murdered like this, it would be newsworthy.

The fact that this may be a politically charged murder makes it even more newsworthy.

I guess that depends if you meant murdered inside a $2.4 million dollar condo or in a sewer. The latter happens all the time and is ignored.

But a poor person being murdered inside a $2.4 million dollar condo in the same fashion is certainly newsworthy.

Who is getting cut up into a million pieces and dumped into the sewers? How common is such an occurrence?

No idea, but I can't sit here and pretend that every drug abusing/poor person/different race/what ever gets reported on. And that every single gruesome murder gets reported on.

Cause there is fair too much evidence both historically and current to say that is not the case.

Well, this incident did go viral the other month.

https://heavy.com/news/2020/06/watch-tiktok-video-seattle-de...

This is a quite hard question to answer, as if it's done correctly no-one will know and the person will simply vanish.

And there is of course countless reasons why someone vanishes, but then again, there is a lot of missing people: https://www.statista.com/statistics/240387/number-of-missing...

Those numbers are astounding.

Slightly south of half a million kids/teens go missing every year? And 150,000 adults?

How many of these cases are never closed?

> The vast majority of child abduction cases in the United States are parental kidnapping, where one parent hides, takes, or holds a child without the knowledge or consent of another parent or guardian.[3] Depending on the state and the legal status of the family members, this might not be a criminal offense. In 1976, parental kidnappings in the United States stood at 60,000.[clarification needed] By 1984, it was between 459,000 and 751,000.[citation needed] In 2010, the US Department of Justice reported 200,000 cases of parental kidnapping; these comprised both domestic and international abductions.[4]

> Fewer than 350 people under the age of 21 have been abducted by strangers in the United States per year between 2010–2017.[5]

> The federal government estimated about 50,000 people reported missing in 2001 who were younger than 18. Only about 100 cases per year can be classified as abductions by strangers.[2]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kidnapping_in_the_United_State...

There's a pretty good fiction book series called The Naturalist that uses these statistics as part of its discussion about serial killers.

There was (is?) a serial killer in LA killing homeless people with a bat in 2018/19 that got barely any news coverage.

Isn't a common practice for serial killer coverage to be limited? I thought this was intentional to not influence copy-cats and other mis/dis-information which muddy the investigation.

While withholding some details happens in murder cases, this is the first I've heard of there being voluntary editorial standards that restrict information about the murders of serial killers. In fact, you'd generally think there'd be a voluntary policy to do the opposite given their prevalence in modern media.

My understanding is that it's more of the cops withholding information than it is the media exercising restraint.

Happened atleast once in San Francisco - https://mashable.com/2015/01/29/body-parts-twitter-headquart...

> If a poor person were murdered like this, it would be newsworthy.

> The fact that this may be a politically charged murder makes it even more newsworthy.

No, it wouldn't be. And I can tell you why.

A suitcase stuffed with parts from two (recently) dismembered bodies was found on a Seattle beach two or three weeks ago. [1]

Neither of the deceased were tech entrepreneurs, and, unsurprisingly, this did not make Hacker News, nor more than a whisper on the national media circus. I presume you haven't heard about it, either.

Now, tell me, was that also a politically charged murder? [2] What makes you immediately ascribe the politically charged label to the tech entrepreneur case?

[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=akai+beach+suitcase&oq=alki+...

[2] Hell, Seattle stopped talking about it after a few days.

I largely agree with the gist of your comment, but you may be overgeneralizing a little. Depending on, not sure how the describe it, gruesomeness of the kill, it may make national news. If the poor person is a woman, it is a little more likely. If it is a pregnant woman, it is a little more likely. If there was a rape, incest, or some weird sexual story attached to it, media might pick it up. If it was a child, it is a lot more likely. If it was displayed in some public fashion, it may be hard not to cover it.

Short answer is it depends. Not that long ago, white guy got killed by a hispanic guy in what police determined to be a hate crime( https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/wisconsi... ). There was no uproar on CNN. Oddly, I did not see stuff on Fox News either. For whatever reason, it simply did not feel the narrative.

I agree with your example that it is not a given that the killing was political in nature ( as in, we simply don't have enough information to know ). But today, non-white person dying draws a lot more scrutiny. Now serial killers will only be left with the homeless..

> Neither of the deceased were tech entrepreneurs, and, unsurprisingly, this did not make Hacker News,

Why did you expect? This is a community of programmers and tech entrepreneurs. We get articles all the time on the front page about deceased programmers, computer scientists, and tech entrepreneurs. This poor guy was a tech entrepreneur.

You removed from the OP quote:

> nor more than a whisper on the national media circus. I presume you haven't heard about it, either.

I was addressing his specific insinuation about HN. If this was just about national media, why even mention HN otherwise in that comment?

No, the clear implication was that there was some kind of double standard in HN here.

I'm not addressing the rest of his comment, which may or may not be true. But the first part is clearly misleading, or at best uncharitable.

Finally, the full comment is available for all to see by looking up exactly a quarter screen. I didn't "remove" anything-I pulled the quote pertaining to the issue that concerned me.

>If a poor person were murdered like this, it would be newsworthy.

This is wrong, unless you insinuate "if poor people were wealthy and powerful as well" when you say "murdered like this".

It seems like make believe to think we value all life regardless of their economic worth in the news headlines that we click on. In my community alone, mundane and powerless children and adults get shot, executed, dismembered semi-regularly and yet it's more of a statistic than something interesting for most folks, citations below.

I'm not saying that wealth and power are the only thing that makes a headline clickable, but jeez can it make it seem relevant to people in a world where poor people are disproportionately exposed to violence.

https://news.sky.com/story/william-algar-man-charged-with-mu...

https://www.fox19.com/2020/07/07/coroner-identifies-woman-fo...

https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia-transgender-woman...

This is NYC. A $2M condo is not that special.

Not even in a “where do you find them that cheap” way?

Ha. $2M is definitely well above the median. Most homes are under a $1M still. Bloomberg has these interesting charts comparing the citywide median, to Astoria and Tribeca.

https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/property-prices/nyc/

And yet this is the most debated thread of this post. Very telling. The news folks are sending the messages the HN crowd falls for (just like the rest).

News is not news. It is entertainment. Pick your flavor and let them tell you how to feel.

Housing is the #1 most contentious topic on HN. It almost always gets out of control.

I don't see anything at all about housing policy in the article.

EDIT: It appears the link has been changed from (IIRC) a Chicago Tribune article to a New York Times article. My comment is about the original article.

"Luxury Condo" is right there in the headline.

No value judgment is offered about whether a luxury condo is a good, bad, or neutral thing.

Come on.

The fact that it's there to begin with implies it was noteworthy enough to include it, and the choice of including something versus not including is a value judgement. If instead the title read, "New York tech entrepreneur found decapitated wearing expensive suit", it would be more likely to strike people as odd, but isn't it essentially the same thing?

These people are professional writers. Including details that let readers form a mental picture is practically unconscious behavior. Of course they're gonna say "$2.5mil full floor luxury condo" instead of just "condo".

It's part of telling the story. You have to picture this is a very fancy condo, and that it had keyed elevator access directly into his apartment. This implies he likely knew and let the killer into his place. It's part of the visualization.

Why does evidence so far infer this? Potentially, he thought the killer was going to a condo unit on a different floor.

Media guy here. Lots of NYC readers/viewers either live in luxury condos or have a point of view about people who do. For people who do live in such places, the $$$ that they've paid to be there is meant to create a safe and elegant island from all the clatter and chaos of NYC street life.

Murders in such settings instantly trip the "fear alert." Now all of our LC residents need to know how the deed was done and if there's anything about their safe-island assumptions that must be revisited or repaired.

The result: a story that people can't stop talking about. It's fashionable to decry business pressures that force journalists to do this, but the truth is sheer desire for recognition is a sufficient driver, no matter what the business model.

The only security tip you can glean from these events is you shouldn't ride up to your own apartment with your own killer. Reports in actual newspapers, rather than local TV stations from far-away cities reprinting wire stories, mention these salient facts.

They may well have not rode up with the killer. Get a set of fire keys and you can force an elevator to go to any floor, regardless of what fancy keys or tokens the elevator uses to restrict access. And since the elevator opens directly into the apartment, you don't even have to get the victim to unlock their door.

Edit: I can buy the FDNY fire key on Amazon. Anyone could have pulled this off.

Edit 2: The NYT article (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/nyregion/dismembered-body...) does say he was in the elevator with his killer. It seems the ABC7 article is lacking a lot of information.

Non-doorman apartment buildings seem to have a glaring vulnerability: social pressure. Because > 99.9% of the people trying to go in behind you are your neighbors or people visiting your neighbors, not criminals, it's difficult to tell people no.

I bet it's possible to get into almost any building in a US city just by wearing a suit and telling people you forgot your keys. Eventually someone will let you in.

It may have not been clear, but I meant "value judgment" specifically in the moral framework sense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_judgment

Whether a piece of information is relevant/interesting/newsworthy/etc. is a judgment too, but not the kind I was referring to.

I understood those parts of the article as answering the question “how hard would it have been to get into the building?”

So, the answer to the 4th 'W' - where.

And 'where' matters, given this: The condos in the building are full-floor and the keyed elevator opens right into the apartment.

Well it’s often thought that if you buy expensive real estate that you will be safe in it — low crime areas, good security, etc. that’s why it’s news.

It's because building like that in New York have doormen, security cameras, etc.

The location is not a easy crime area, which makes this killing so bold. It looks like a hit, either government or organized crime, and if it's not and just the work of a serial killer....

Definitely weird, but it’s a local news site and New Yorkers eat up housing market gossip.

It's of note because it's uncommon.

A 2.4m condo in Manhattan is hardly uncommon.

A person being found chopped up in such a condo is, however.

According to whom? In this neighborhood in the last year 9 properties sold for over $2.5m and 8 sold for under, meaning $2.4m is below the median value of the area. Why didn't they just say "Dismembered man found in Greenwich Village apartment"?

Edit: The article keeps changing, it originally said 200 W Houston, now it says both 200 East Houston and 365 E. Houston.

Edit #2: In a standing proof that local journalism isn't worth the cost of the paper it would take to print it out and wipe your ass with it, the actual location, judging from the video that accompanies the article is 265 E. Houston.

The juxtaposition is what's noteworthy, not that the neighborhood is expensive.

Gruesome murders are salacious enough; it happening to a wealthy entrepreneur inside his expensive Manhattan home is especially rare.

For many reasons, people seem to be interested when tragedy strikes the rich or glamorous.

i live on the block, it's the building on the corner of suffolk st and east houston, left hand side facing north.

Yes, I think the article has the wrong address. That building is 265 not 365 (which I don't think exists?) I am also in the neighborhood (hi neighbor!) and saw police activity there this morning.

This article is re-reported – and badly written:

“His limbs and head were stuffed in bags in the living room.

“…

“It remains unclear how the victim died.”

Here’s a more informative, earlier article: https://www.pulse.ng/news/ceo-of-gokada-fahim-saleh-found-de...

Well, usually people are killed then dismembered.

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