• Apepollo11@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    It was a McDonald’s customer who turned him in. (Edit: the article I read has been updated)

    But I can’t help but find the whole thing really suspicious. In his possession they found a gun, silencer, and three-page hand written manifesto.

    Who handwrites an essay before going out to kill someone? That just feels hard to believe.

    • OsrsNeedsF2P
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      12 days ago

      Also he had the same fake ID he used to check into the hostel? What the heck is this guy doing? While it seemed likely he would be caught eventually, disposing of the ID, his guns, the manifesto, and staying in his basement for a while would be by far the best course of action, not going to a McDonalds and eating it inside

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      But I can’t help but find the whole thing really suspicious.

      He was America’s Most On TV Human for the last week. I’m not shocked someone recognized him. And its not like he was picked off a bus in Manhattan at random. The guy was traced all the way to Pennsylvania.

      He probably could have gotten away if he’d laid low for another week or two. But this absolutely sounds like a guy with some serious mental health issues who was not thinking ten steps ahead as everyone in the fandom wanted to believe. He was just some angry 20-year-old doing a more newsworthy version of a school shooting, not The Leftist Jackal plotting elaborate Mission Impossible style assassinations.

      Who handwrites an essay before going out to kill someone?

      The same kind of person who signs their bullet casings.

      • AwkwardLookMonkeyPuppet@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        Carrying all of the evidence related to the crime several days later is very out of character with the careful preparation and execution of the crime itself, and a little too convenient for an open/shut case. The ruling class absolutely needs to crush someone very publicly right now out of fear of copycats.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          12 days ago

          He wasn’t traced there though?

          He was traced through the use of his fake ID and through security camera footage along the route he traveled. There were also plenty of sightings (some less reliable than others) that were coming into the police nationally. The tip off in Altoona was almost certainly not the only one made. He was observed on a cab security camera. He was sighted at a bus depot. And there were a few other data points police alluded to that weren’t made public. That rapidly narrowed down where he could have gone to next.

          Not enough people wearing a mask in New York or Pennsylvania that it didn’t make him stand out. That, and he was tall, and the upper part of his face was all over the news for days straight.

          That he had all his shit on him was unfortunate. But even if he’d dumped it, if it was on an observed route it would have just been one more data point for police to follow. Guy fought the law and the law won.

      • Apepollo11@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        It’s the handwritten bit that I find hardest to believe, though. The guy studied AI at university and was involved in Game Design classes. He was a tech guy. Nobody who’s that intimate with computers would choose to convey their message across three hand-written pages. It just seems really odd.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          12 days ago

          Nobody who’s that intimate with computers would choose to convey their message across three hand-written pages.

          Seems like a guy with a background in tech and a significant concern over his privacy would be exactly the kind of person to keep his heretical most views on paper rather than online. The guy had basically dropped off the web for months prior to the assassination.

        • 0xD@infosec.pub
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          12 days ago

          Being an IT guy makes you not use real pens or paper? The amount of cope for this guy is unreal. That’s just stupid.

          Handwriting is more intimate and allows for better expression through the script. For something so personal, it sounds perfect. I love handwriting, do it regularly and I’ve been intimate with computers more than once ;)

          • killingspark@feddit.org
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            12 days ago

            As an IT guy: I love and hate handwriting things. I get the point about intimacy but especially for longer texts expressing many connected thoughts I would never do it by hand. Being able to edit text, switch around blocks of text etc etc is so ingrained in me that doing this by hand frustrates me greatly.

            • 0xD@infosec.pub
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              11 days ago

              Yeah, I didn’t like taking handwritten notes (until I got an e-ink tablet) during lectures because of that.

              Though as I started doing audits I got better at writing with proper spacing and anticipating where something is missing, so it gets better.

      • 1985MustangCobra@lemmy.ca
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        11 days ago

        I feel like he could be on TV but the majority of the public puts that in the back of their mind and not something they are looking out for. I really think it’s this guy and he had a message from his now deleted YouTube videos that were supposed to be released after he was caught. We will never know unless he shares more in court what is going on. The only lead I have seen is his review of Teds book, and how much it spoke of someone fed up with the system and making a point that “those who don’t stand up to commit violence are cowards or the accused” or among those lines.

        • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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          11 days ago

          I feel like he could be on TV but the majority of the public puts that in the back of their mind and not something they are looking out for.

          You don’t need the majority to recognize him. Your just need a random distribution over a wide area.

          We will never know unless he shares more in court what is going on.

          “Everything to support the claim is made up” is going to be the rallying cry of an increasingly fringe group over time

      • clashorcrashman@lemmy.zip
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        11 days ago

        You’re not shocked someone saw someone and immediately recognized him as the hooded figure on the TV? “Oh yeah, I recognize those eyebrows, I’m going to call the police immediately,” doesn’t sound unusual to you?

    • johannesvanderwhales@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Who handwrites an essay before going out to kill someone? That just feels hard to believe.

      The kind of person who writes a message on the bullet casing (and fully expects to get caught).

  • thesohoriots@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    From AP News:

    In a news release, police say officers made contact with the man who was then arrested on unrelated charges

    Same old shit, just come up with something like “he took 31 minutes in the dining area so we got out the batons”

      • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        But this opens a whole new can of worms. You’re telling me he was smart enough to evade capture for a week, but wasn’t smart enough to ditch the ghost gun he had used in the murder?

        It smells like turned off body cams and planted evidence.

        • killingspark@feddit.org
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          12 days ago

          This. I don’t believe it. Why wouldn’t he at least stash the gun and papers somewhere instead of keeping that shit on him?

  • Melatonin@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    12 days ago

    The cops responded to a call saying “Yeah I think he’s here,” believed it and arrived in force within the time a person spends at a MacDonald (was the suspect playing in the ball pit?) and arrested him, finding the incriminating gun and silencer he had no reason to keep, along with a “manifesto”" which is a rarity among sane people but shooters have to have one according to cops?

    Sounds reasonable.

    • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      12 days ago

      Theory I heard is that he wanted to be arrested, because he has a plan, maybe using court as a stage for making a public statement.

      And that he may even tell the mcDonald worker to rat him out and collect the money.

      Probably far from truth, but it would be cool if all that was true.

    • zeroday@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      11 days ago

      I’m not normally one for conspiracy theories, but there’s a massive motivation for the US government to find anyone who looks about right and is disgruntled and then frame them, or plant evidence on someone they found through an illegal means. The US surveillance state uses parallel construction all the time to hide the actual (often illegal) ways they find someone.

      Plus, if you don’t have a suspect, the message to all the proles out there is that you can kill CEOs and get away with it. The internet just showed that the only reason the working class aren’t doing The Purge on CEOs is fear of consequences. That’s a critical threat to the ruling class, and they will 100% frame, pay to take the fall or blackmail someone into it rather than not convict somebody.

      It doesn’t line up at all that he brought a handwritten copy of his manifesto plus his fake IDs and his recently used murder weapon to a Macdonalds. Especially after being careful about escaping the city, and the amount of practice he had to smoothly clear the jams when he shot Thompson shows this was premeditated.

      Unless he takes the jury stand and uses it to verbally blast the ruling class and try to incite more violence, this ain’t the shooter IMO.

  • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    Only to have the reward money claim rejected because" without his tip they would have caught him anyway" or any other bullshit reason, just like insurance companies love to do. Oh the irony.

  • Treczoks@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    AFAIK it was a customer, not an employee. If it had been the latter, that location would quickly get a serious image problem.

  • jaybone@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    If the internet ever finds that McDonald’s employee, I predict they will not be happy about it.

    • UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      Can’t go through life just assuming every single person you meet is going to be a Team Player.

      Says something that he made a half a week and across state lines without anyone ratting on him sooner.

      • Allonzee@lemmy.world
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        12 days ago

        I think they mean we’ve been propagandized to undermine, oh I’m sorry, “compete with,” one another instead of having any social solidarity.

        We’d be a threat to the owners as they hurt us for profit if we all understood the reality that they’re our common enemy.

        For Profit Media: left right, old young, black white, gay straight, beat eachother bloody, poories!

        …just don’t look up.

  • rickdg@lemmy.world
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    12 days ago

    Imagine if Luigi also made the move to hand the bounty to someone who needs it.

    • pivot_root@lemmy.world
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      12 days ago

      They definitely won’t try to delay paying it or denying the tip led to a conviction. Not at all. Nope