Hacker News Reader

Comment by catalogia | Hacker News Reader

I read a comment on another forum that made a big deal of the briefcase in particular. If they were just memeing/shitposting on the story that's one thing, but a lot of people seemed to sincerely believe that briefcase or suit ownership was actual evidence of being a contract killer.

The professional coordinated murderers of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh were caught on surveillance cameras wearing totally unremarkable clothing. In real life, contract killers don't have uniforms. However I think it's interesting to consider the possibility that the killer in this case was essentially role-playing as a contract killer as portrayed by popular media.

View on HN

This is an underrated comment.

What's intriguing to me is the idea that not only might the killer have been (consciously or unconsciously) role-playing a "professional", but that the police were engaging in the same fantasy.

There were under 200 homicides in NYC in 2020 (to date). Undoubtedly the slimmest minority (if any) were, in the way one imagines, "professional". So it seems safe to assume the homicide detectives might not have significant firsthand experience with which to say, "this seems like a professional job."

I'm reminded a little bit of the Bellagio "Biker Bandit" (https://lasvegassun.com/news/2011/aug/23/bellagio-bandit-get... whole thing seemed super professional (full-face motorcycle helmet, full body-suit, in-and-out in minutes)...but it turned out to be a dude with a gambling problem and an Oxy habit.

Ya, I think if it truly was a professional job, there would be no evidence for these cops to review.

or enough evidence pointing wrong way.

I think so. In the case of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, it was seemingly meant to look like natural causes:

> Initially, Dubai authorities believed al-Mabhouh had died of natural causes.[44] Fawzi Benomran, the Dubai police coroner, said, "It was meant to look like death from natural causes during sleep." It took 10 days for the Dubai police to come to the conclusion that al-Mabhouh was assassinated. Benomran described the determination of the exact cause of death as "one of the most challenging cases" his department faced.[45]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Mahmoud_Al-Ma...

The team that killed him were on camera entering the country and in the hotel. However if they had been successful in convincing local authorities the death was natural, that would have made the (presumably very difficult to avoid) video evidence effectively irrelevant because nobody would have thought to consider it relevant.

To be fair the only reason there was evidence was that they guy had to flee before he was done cleaning up. I don't blame the cops for their initial conclusions the level of premeditation in this murder was much higher than normal.

A pro would get the job done without screaming.

Professionals can be surprisingly sloppy.

I mean these guys are pros, right? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poisoning_of_Sergei_and_Yulia_...

And I always return to this story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lillehammer_affair. If you can't count on the Mossad to have good opsec, who can you count on?

If anything, the impression that professionals do the job spotlessly seems like it goes hand-in-hand with the misattribution of this crime to a "professional."

From what's in the public record, even "professional" hitmen have their moments of conscience, laziness, procedural failures--and, apparently, quite frequently, presumably due to the moral pressure of conducting assassinations.

(Of course it's possible we don't hear about the hitmen who are truly pro-level, but I find that hard to believe.)

I was once told my Dodge was a "drug dealer" car. I laughed, saying any sane drug dealer would choose a boring, nondescript, dime-a-dozen car that did not stand out. My Dodge attracts a lot of attention.

Sounds like there's a difference between drug dealers that do and don't know how to keep under the radar. And the person who said that to you, only knows of the unwise ones? :)

I suspect it is from watching drug dealer depictions on TV.

I find the feedback loop between TV depictions of drug dealers and the behavior of actual drug dealers endlessly fascinating.

Especially true since most drug dealers don't make much money and if they have a car, it's generally a beater that's about to fall apart.

>surveillance cameras wearing totally unremarkable clothing.

In this case, it was a $2.25 million condo. A suit and tie may be unremarkable clothing in that area.

Also, if Fahim was a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy like the numerous pictures of him suggest he may have been, the assistant may have normally been around the building in casual attire normally as well. A suit could have been out of character attire to mask his ID further.

I live nearby, and a black suit and a tie would look pretty out of place that far east in Lower East Side, especially now

I guess the killer didn't watch The Matador then.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com