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Comment by bbqfog | Hacker News Reader

Maybe he saw how the world basically thought he was an amazing hero and he wanted to let people know who he really is.

I think this might actually be it - he may have been motivated in some part by fame (but planned to be anonymous and get away with it) and after the hugely positive online response decided to purposely get caught.

Trial for this could be hugely publicized

I'm real interested in how a trial goes. Can you even find enough people in America who haven't been bent over by insurance to form an unbiased jury? I find it hard to imagine any jury would convict him.

I keep seeing this take, and it seems pretty bizarre to me. Most Americans rate their health insurance as excellent or good [1], and even of the ones that don't, most probably don't support murdering health insurance executives on the street.

They won't have trouble seating a jury, and he'll be convicted of 1st degree homicide and spend the rest of his adult life in prison.

1. https://www.kff.org/private-insurance/poll-finding/kff-surve...

I think the problem is with outliers. Most people don’t have problems with thier health insurance because they don’t interact with it much or just have routine care.

But if you’re unlucky, it can ruin your life or the life of a loved one. It’s not hard to find horror stories - some recent viral ones came from LinkedIn comments to the CEO (written before his murder)

This is wildly unrealistic.

Many people have not been bent over by insurance, but that's the less confusing part of this post.

Almost everyone who has been bent over by insurance will still find someone who assassinated another dude guilty.

I generally agree but think it’ll depend on how sympathetic his case is and what defense he tries. I believe New York juries have to reach a unanimous decision and if he had one of those insurance horror stories it wouldn’t be unheard of for at least one juror to feel sympathetic to, say, a provocation defense and only find him guilty of lesser charges.

Not guilty must also be unanimous. If the jurors can’t agree it’ll be retried. Usually lone holdouts capitulate.

Yes, as I said the mostly likely outcome is guilty but it wouldn’t shock me if, say, he wasn’t convicted on every charge. Juries introduce a human element and the response to this murder illustrates how many people really hate insurance companies. Something over 10% of Americans say they know someone who died due to denied care, which is a big enough number that I wouldn’t rule anything out.

There are other stats in play, too. For example, 30% of Americans know a murder victim. 50% have dealt with gun violence. The jury system narrows down to people who can focus on the law and follow the judge’s instructions. The pool of potential jurors is huge. It’s been rare that a trial has changed counties in any state because too many people in a county have strong feelings about the victim or perpetrator. I could see lesser murder charged being brought to keep motivation out of the trial, though. And yes, rule nothing out (in any trial.)

Anyone who has been bent over by insurance will not be selected for the jury.

I'm not sure that is even necessary. I know enough people impacted by such things I'm not sure I wouldn't nullify even though I haven't been impacted myself. I don't think they can find 12 people who don't know someone with a bad story.

Isn't that a reverse conflict of interest? That way you are deliberately selecting people that are more/less sympathetic than a baseline of the US population.

It's not as if "he was mistreated by an insurer" is a defence, is it? That should be entirely irrelevant to the jury's finding, although sentencing might take it into account. The jury just needs to decide if he did it, so not having been mistreated by an insurer shouldn't preclude someone from making that decision.

'Shouldn't' is true. But the prosecution does not need to explain why they reject a potential juror by 'preemptive challenge'. Why would they take the chance?

Similarly, a defendant's race is not relevant to their guilt, but you're not going to pick a self-declared racist if you don't have to.

Agreed yet he'll serve some time like Gypsy Rose. A seemingly good hearted victimized murderer who story seems to work out well for her in the end in. She orchestrated killing her mom vs. just running away. If she's smart enough to get her mom killed indirectly using a lonely dude she's smart enough to run away. Murderer who is free with fame. Luigi is now the same yet is this murderer more liked then Gypsy Rose?

If you wanted to get the message out, you could go to a media org for interview and then call police in.

I wonder if cops were monitoring major news offices because of this.

Indeed, when the alternative was to be a nobody, on the lam, for the rest of his life.

How so? All he had to do was continue to fly under the radar for a few more weeks until everyone forgot about it. Being on the lam implies they knew his identity; they did not.

Murder is hard on your soul. He wouldn't be able to go back to life as usual.

If I nonjudgmentally assumed you speak from personal experience, doesn't it also depend on the person, their sensitivity, vulnerabilities etc.?

I have a 3.5 year old toddler and it sure feels hard on my soul right now (he just behaved the worst he's ever behaved in daycare today, to the point that they had to isolate him... and this is me dealing with it after only 3 hours of sleep, since he also keeps waking up every night ever since he turned 3... "sleep regression" should be called "slow parricide via toddler non-sleep")

It gets better.

It may take until their adult brain forms around the age of 23, though.

Wow! … it took me another decade after that!

> he just behaved the worst he's ever behaved in daycare today

I'm sorry, maybe it's not my place, but... Please listen to him. Children are not stupid, they just lack experience. If he behaves some way then there is a reason for it. The usual suspect is lack of attention (which is very important for a child), since they get more of it (even if in form of punishment) for behaving "badly"... The outcome is predictable.

I found that treating them as adults when it comes to respecting their wishes goes a long way towards raising a good person.

Again, sorry for an unsolicited advice from a random person on the internet. Especially as it sounds like life is very stressful for you right now. Fingers crossed everything gets better soon.

This. I recall both my mother, my wife and my daughter telling me they would get in trouble when they were younger because they wanted attention.

We already do that, but maybe even more is necessary. The problem is that I'm 52 and already had sleep apnea/CPAP, she is 49, and my son is 3. Every day is an exhausting marathon.

I understand, and I know that for each person the circumstances are different. I hope you are both able to find the strength to just - be with him. I wish you all the best!

Please consider reading this book. It changed my life:

    Wahlgren, Anna (2009). A Good Night's Sleep - This is how you can truly help your baby to sleep through the night. Anna Wahlgren AB. ISBN 9789197773614

I'm saying this as a father who was going through the worst time of my life as my baby daughter's top 3 records for "most sleep in one night" was 5 hours (which only happened that one time), 3 hours (which only happened that one other time), and then never ever more than 2 sleep cycles of 45 minutes on any day/night.

Sleep deprivation makes your life so miserable. And it does so for the toddler as well. My daughter couldn't learn to walk and kept falling over because, well, she was just too exhausted.

It seems the book isn't as well known in the US (where I'm assuming you are) as it is in Europe, and maybe there are equivalent approaches from American authors as well. But this is the one that solved the problem and taught her to sleep in 4 - four - nights.

My wife and I applied the stuff from the book from Dec.1st to Dec.4th of 2018. My daughter has not had trouble sleeping her 11+ hours straight a single night since then (that was 6 years ago) except a couple of times when she was teething.

I was recently asked on a (business) podcast what was the top book that changed my life and that was it. To think you could struggle for such a long time, and suddenly find out you could change that in 4 days... I have tears in my eyes whenever I talk about it.

Anyway. Long message to wish you well, internet stranger. It will get better.

Well don’t leave us hanging, what was the stuff that worked for you?

I've found that trying to describe the strategies in a few words usually gets the other person to think "oh, it can't be that simple" and then not actually try it.

Just like, trying to describe the lifestyle changes that got you in shape (which are always going to be the same 4-5 basic things), is less helpful than telling someone "go to the same coach/book I went to, and give it a try".

But in a nutshell, the book teaches a few simple principles of why kids wake up/cry and how what we (as parents) typically do to console the child actually sends the message that "sleeping in this bed is not safe".

Once you get that, it gives you a 4-day (and 4-nights) routine to follow to get the baby/toddler/infant/child to re-learn that this is a safe place, your parents are around, you can go back to sleep. Doing the full 4 days is a two-person job (my wife and I rented a room at the hotel next door and took turns with one of us sleeping there while the other was with our daughter at home).

We followed everything to the letter ; the first couple of days is timed very precisely and you take notes in a journal as you go, which is how I can tell you that we were already tearing up when our daughter slept in 3-hour chunks the 2nd night, did an almost 8-hour streak on night 3 and pulled a full 11-hour night on night 4.

I'll tell you, the least important part of the whole thing is a short lullaby we came up with as we were going to the 4 days, and I still sing that to my daughter 6 years later as I leave her for the night, as this has become a bit of a talisman for me :-) Definitely not needed anymore but I'll probably sing her this song until she leaves for college or tells me to shut up!

This is adorable.

If only I knew what steps to follow on those 4 precious nights...

I looked up this book on Amazon.

"Paperback: From $473"

Yikes. :/

Can't find an ebook of it either...

Willing to sell it or pass it along? (Best Christmas ever? lol)

Thank you for the kind thoughts regardless. It really is a struggle, to say the least.

Oh wow, the English edition must have gone out of print.

I'm going to have a look at whether there's a more popular author with a similar philosophy.

I'd still be interested in that!

I bet he saw it as just cause.

The stuff found on him is irrelevant, they'd pin him down with dna and whatever other evidence.

That CEO didn't seem to have any qualms about killing people

They're not going to hire for a healthcare CEO with high empathy. I mean, think of the shareholders!

It's like profit is at odds with taking care of the patients. Who would have thought.

I feel like a lot of doctors and nurses wouldn’t be doctors or nurses without the decent profit they earn.

I certainly wouldn’t work evenings, nights, weekends, and holidays, not to mention sacrifice my life during my 20s. And be around gross stuff and sad people.

And especially not when you can earn a comparable profit working behind keyboard.

That's... not what I meant. It is one thing to earn (very) good wages and entirely another thing to optimise the whole healthcare for profit. Healthcare is, by definition, a cost center. If you wanted to align incentives (a bit better) you would be paying for it only when you are not ill, not when you are. A decent compromise is what most countries do, which is that citizens pay a fixed sum for health insurance which covers most of the basic expenses. However the incentives are never completely aligned - someone profits from people being ill.

> optimise the whole healthcare for profit.

I don’t understand what this means. A group of doctors get together and open a business offering their services, and they distribute profits into their bank accounts. Or a dentist, or an optometrist, or a podiatrist.

Why would 99% of people do this work if they cannot profit?

> A decent compromise is what most countries do, which is that citizens pay a fixed sum for health insurance which covers most of the basic expenses.

That is just health insurance with $0 deductible/copays. Some US employers do offer this, and some even pay 100% of the premiums.

But these plans don’t sell well to the broader public, because most people would prefer (or can only afford) a lower premium and accept the volatility of having to spend a few hundred or a few thousand before insurance kicks in.

> I don’t understand what this means.

In some (many?) countries the options for private healthcare are limited (by design) and public healthcare takes care of people. Not in USA though. :) It has its pros and cons, but to be honest, neither system works very well. I would pick a public one anytime, but maybe it's just because I know it.

> Why would 99% of people do this work if they cannot profit?

They do profit, and should - they get a paycheck for their work.

It was indirect, and people always see themselves as the good guy. It's easy to justify in your mind. "I'm saving shareholders money." "Most doctors over service patients, so they are the bad guys." "They would have died anyway," etc.

I would bet a lot of the healthcare CEO's are totally surprised that anyone would want to harm them.

The rich don’t just let go of murder investigations.

Another way to think of it would be, how much would it cost for a very rich family or person to hire few people to hunt you for the following 10 years.

So far the record indicates he was better at hunting them than they him.

Is there a word for these types of snarky quips that trigger off a single word but fail to address the point?

I feel like I'm seeing them more and more.

The killer didn't do any hunting. They did shooting and running.

He stalked his prey and killed it. That's hunting. Then law enforcement tracked him and trapped him. Also hunting! But none of the rich family has done any hunting (yet). So far they are the hunted.

why are you romanticizing him? He waited outside a conference. That is like saying I hunted a hamburger at McDonalds.

All of this is besides the central point, which is that a killer would likely be on the run from detectives and maybe PIs for the rest of their lives.

I'm not. Hunting people in a safe democratic society isn't "romantic", it's not "The Most Dangerous Game" or anything else. Your analogy is absolutely accurate. Harvesting an oyster would be another. Still totally hunting (or maybe just gathering).

> the rest of their lives

Only if any of their adversaries survive with sufficient will to fight.

If it happened as they said, they couldn't really track him without the tip off.

He just happened to be at the right place at the right time with the right equipment?

I know a lot of game hunters who would say that’s pretty much the definition of hunting.

Reliable, repeatable coincidences like that are called "skills".

but we can't call it hunting, that's too romantic! it's only hunting when sweaty rich dudes kill animals.

> Is there a word for these types of snarky quips that trigger off a single word but fail to address the point?

No but please let me know when you find one! And indeed you are correct, this is a fairly new pattern and it's absolutely increasing.

> Is there a word for these types of snarky quips that trigger off a single word but fail to address the point?

They're (attempts at) a bon mot

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bon_mot

I think based on examples I am seeing for what qualifies as a bon mot, it would be different, but since you specified "attempt" in parentheses I guess it could qualify as some sort of attempt.

The thing is I don't think it is a genuine attempt. Is more like an intentionally counterfeit bon mot. It doesn't actually engage with the parent sentiment, but might fool people that are only half reading.

> All he had to do was continue to fly under the radar for a few more weeks until everyone forgot about it.

That is seriously underestimating the attention span of law enforcement. I’m not saying that they would have caught him for sure, but they have motivation and means to keep looking far longer than a few weeks.

> Being on the lam implies they knew his identity; they did not.

At the minimum they had a picture of his face. That stuff will stay in databases indefinietly and face recognition is only getting better. They might have had his DNA from objects he interacted with or things he discarded. They could have traced his burner phone to locations he previously frequented, or where he bought it from. They could have traced him via video surveilance further along his escape and tied him to a location or a car.

None of this is guaranteed to work. There is a certain amount of luck involved. But just because after a few days they didn’t know who he is, doesn’t mean they could not have found him months or years down the road.

They know what his face looks like and had a bunch of information about his whereabouts prior to visiting the city. It was only a matter of time until they found him. His one bet might have been to cross the border in Mexico.

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