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Comment by lr1970 | Hacker News Reader

lr1970

Neither of your theories answer the question -- how did he know that the CEO was staying in a hotel other than Hilton (conference venue) and would arrive by foot 1 hour and 15 minutes before conference opens at 8am (CEOs do not typically arrive so early in advance). The shooter was caught on camera talking on a burner phone 15 minutes before shooting. Who did he talk to? Was he acting alone or received some help? The shooter only had to wait for 15 minutes or so before his target arrives. Pure "luck" or help from inside?

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Find when CEO is going to speak at conference, work backward from there.

Conference probably had a hotel block they were booking and a link to book so you know which hotel to camp.

Not rocket science at all, just basic OSint

Waiting 15min instead of 1hr 15min was probably luck though.

> Conference probably had a hotel block they were booking and a link to book so you know which hotel to camp.

In this case it was Hilton. And if the CEO stayed at Hilton he had no reason to be on the street outside the hotel where the killer was waiting for him. Somehow the shooter knew that the target is not staying at the Hilton and will be walking to the front entrance. BTW, the normal practice for high profile individuals to arrive in a car to a service entrance hidden from the public.

This is my sticking point as well. The bullet messages only made sense for this specific guy and that’s a whole lot of work to engrave bullets, take a multi-state bus ride, camp out in a hostel, etc if you’re not 100% sure the guy is going to be there.

I’d feel more confident if he’d staked the route out for multiple days or if there was a plausible backup plan like breaking in to the CEO’s hotel or the conference.

Isn’t this just selection bias? If he had been wrong and not seen the CEO, we would never have heard about him.

For all we know he made 15 attempts before this.

Yep. Also, if you're trying to surprise someone at their arrival to an event, you absolutely do arrive super early to wait for them rather than try to guess their exact arrival time. If the target had arrived in mid morning after missing the opening speech instead, his killer would have waited. If the target had made a late decision not to attend, we'd have probably found out about the killer via the next event or next target

> that’s a whole lot of work to engrave bullets

They weren't engraved. It was just Sharpie. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/united-healthcare-ceo-brian-tho... "A source briefed on the investigation said each word was meticulously written, not etched, onto the casings in Sharpie."

> 100% sure the guy is going to be there.

One can be 100% sure the guy is gonna at least be at the conference, and humans tend to be predictable. He was also fairly likely to be at the venue the day before getting prepared.

This is exactly what us hunters do year after year, time and time again. Drive for hours, hike for miles. Gathering what information we can. Then at some point we have to make assumptions and commit to some scenario in hopes it pans out the way you assume.

A tremendous amount of time and effort is spent with it all riding on a few, hopefully, well placed assumptions. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. Usually your acquaintances only hear about the times the hunt works out. Same with this. We only hear about it, because it worked out for the hunter

> how did he know that the CEO was staying in a hotel other than Hilton

Because someone paid that much money stays at a fancier place, like one of the Conrads or Waldorf Astorias. Hilton's a mid-level brand.

Or, you follow him from the conference center the day before.

There are plenty of plausible explanations, but it probably wouldn't have been a huge lift to get Thompson's itinerary from his secretary by spearfishing or some other form of social engineering.

> CEOs do not typically arrive so early in advance

But they may well have arranged other, small meetings with people also attending the same annual meeting. It's then convenient to have them all in the same hotel.

Also I read it was a 3D printed gun and silencer which is hard to believe just printed it and never practiced or is he trained at shooting?

It does explain the malfunction though.

Yeah if a 3d printed silencer works at all it will only work once. It will be deformed by the heat and obstruct the bullet on the next shot.

No, it won't. It's possible to 3d print suppressors that withstand multiple shots, even mag dumps if they're made robustly enough.

He needed a Neilsen device or piston in the suppressor to assist with cycling on the action, which he didn't have.

He's not surprised that he has to rack the slide after every shot, he knows that it most likely will not cycle and he'll have to work it manually and he reaches immediately to do it.

edit: i'll speculate and say the suppressor still worked after the shooting because he still had it on him. if it was melted or broken, he may have been more apt to toss it.

Do you think he practiced before this or took a leap of faith with a possibly defective printed silencer? It’s bonkers to me that he would just hope for the best and possibly have it fail during the encounter and also it’s curious that he knew about the racking thing with every shot.

I mean he’s clearly a bright individual, Ivy League and comp sci major and all so did he study YouTube videos or something?

Was this the first time he tried it? Probably not.

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