Comment by GCA10 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by GCA10 | Hacker News Reader

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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.

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.

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.

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