I’m timid about this and might be late to a party where others already had this idea, so please, no haters.

I can’t get over how facile and stupid the identification of LM was at a McDoballs. This is someone who fell off the entire grid for three months??

Just asking… but couldn’t an organization trying to conceal its reach and inevitability track a fella… and then… force an identification?

I do not have any idea about details… it’s broad strokes. Could it be? How many other privacy lovers heard about these three months completely off the grid somehow and also wondered… how?

Please pardon if this isn’t the appropriate place but the real theme is privacy. What if the watchers are always watching even when a person might believe they have made themself completely digitally invisible?

  • Majestic
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    3 hours ago

    There is a certain smell of parallel construction. I hope his legal team is very thorough in examining every little detail, tearing apart time-lines of events, chains of custody, witnesses and find any holes at all in the public narrative if this is the case. One hopes that the parallel construction is in the way of they used illegal surveillance and intelligence capabilities to catch him and it could bring their whole case down, not in the way of they made up a claim that someone at McDonalds called the cops but really they were doing basic legal detective stuff tracking greyhound buses.

  • Dkarma@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    10
    ·
    9 hours ago

    Mcds is a red herring. They tracked him via the Greyhound bus database. He was dumb and rose the bus using the same fake id. The bus just happened to stop at a mcds when they caught up with it. .

  • Kairos@lemmy.today
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    11 hours ago

    This is someone who fell off the entire grid for three months??

    Its very easy to hide when nobody is looking for you.

  • Buffalobuffalo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    25
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    14 hours ago

    And that the police took the report seriously, to dedicate enough resources and shoot no one. They suspected he’d have a weapon, and no bullets flew from a group known for weak trigger discipline.

    How many shitty fake reports from the poor sighted and easily convinced did they need to sift through to jump up for this one.

    • zbyte64@awful.systems
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      13 hours ago

      Hell, I remember during Trump’s term they basically waxed a protestor as he was going to work. My guess is McDonald’s didn’t want the bad press of a shooting on their property.

  • poVoq@slrpnk.net
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    27
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    15 hours ago

    The most likely story I have heard is that these automated kiosks at McDonalds have built in face-recognition, but there is no officially legal agreement between law-enforcement and McDonalds to share this data, so they hushed it up with the unlikely story that an employee recognized Luigi.

  • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    40
    arrow-down
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    16 hours ago

    I don’t buy the conspiracy theories and “the Man sees everything and needed a plausible excuse” theories (although I’ll admit the Man does see a lot more than he should…)

    But I will say this: I find it extremely odd that a random McD employee in Fucktown, Nowhere, 275 miles from NYC, recognized a hooded dude wanted for murder in NYC, for the following reasons:

    • McD employees don’t look at patrons. They’re bored shitless and they’re not paid well enough to care. You could show up at any McD joint disguised as Elton John with a feather up your ass and the employee behind the counter would still tell you “Would you like fries with that” while looking right through you.

    • Do you follow the local news in a city 275 miles from where you live? I don’t. And even assuming it’s NYC and it’s a big enough city that people in Altoona pay attention, there’s a murder every 12 hours in NYC. Why would that one in particular enter the consciousness of a bored employee in a burger joint in Altoona.

    • Can you recognize a hooded guy you saw on a still photograph? I can’t. I might have suspicions, but I’m almost certain I wouldn’t be positive enough to call the cops. And again, I work at McD and all I really want is go home after my shift. So I might just forget I saw someone I might have vaguely recognized.

    • MrVilliam@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      59
      ·
      15 hours ago

      I think you’re already forgetting just how prevalent the story of the murder was. It wasn’t just local news. It was unavoidable.

      Luigi is innocent until proven guilty. I think it’s weird that cops found a backpack in central park with no real evidence, but found a gun, a suppressor, and a written confession that started off with praising the cops on this guy who decided to get McDonalds in the middle of the day. I’m not saying that the cops planted evidence to have somebody to finger, but it seems convenient.

    • imPastaSyndrome@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      12
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      14 hours ago

      Oh come the fuck on, you live in New York or did you not hear that he iced the slimy exec hours afterwards? Cuz everyone in the US did

    • catloaf@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      15 hours ago

      It was all over national news, and some international news, for days.

      You might not be sure, but you don’t have to be sure. I would expect they got a very large number of tips, most which did not pan out, of course.

      But I also don’t think it’s ever been confirmed that it was an employee. My suspicion is there happened to be some law enforcement officer and they called it in. That would explain the rapid response, and the caginess about the tipoff.

      • ExtremeDullard@lemmy.sdf.org
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        edit-2
        14 hours ago

        I also don’t think it’s ever been confirmed that it was an employee

        Oh yeah that’s another thing: would you rat out the guy who killed a disgusting CEO if you flipped burgers for a living? Whatever you think of murder, you might well look the other way in this instance.

        • catloaf@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          11
          ·
          14 hours ago

          For a $50k reward? Yeah, I don’t know what McDonald’s employees make at that location, but it’s probably low enough to make that very tempting.

  • raspberriesareyummy@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    9
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    edit-2
    12 hours ago

    Three months? And no one correcting you on that? WTF? Couple of days between shooting and arrest…!

    Other than that: yeah, unlikely anyone could recognize anyone from those pubished photos.

  • DessalinesA
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    21
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    15 hours ago

    I personally don’t think he did it. He could easily be a grifter trying to take credit for a very popular act. There’s no shortage of those. All you’d need to do:

    • Walk into a public place with a bag of somewhat incriminating items, but nothing that’s linked to the actual crime scene.
    • Arouse enough suspicion to get the cops called on you. Being a white guy with black hair and a hoodie is not enough for someone to call the cops on you, I have no idea why people believe that was enough for a McD’s employee to call the cops.
    • Claim credit for the shooting to the cops.
    • Bonus points - Have a social media history praising similar actions.

    The altoona cops then forwarded this to the NYPD, who were desperate to pin this on someone, after they messed up and let the shooter slip through their fingers. Out of the all the tips, this was the best one they’d gotten so far, so they’re running with it now.

    This also explains why Luigi’s taking credit for some, but not all of the claims the police made (especially about the money he was supposedly carrying).

      • Scirocco@lemm.ee
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        8 hours ago

        My sincerest wish is that he waits until most of the way through a trial before providing an incontrovertible alibi.

        Whether he is playing role as a body double for some someone else, or just a grifter, I hope it happens.

      • DessalinesA
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        9 hours ago
        • He couldn’t possibly know they’d go for that.
        • Grifters don’t always think things like this through.
        • A surprising # of people would probably willingly take the death penalty to get 15 minutes of fame, especially for an action as popular as this was.
  • Valmond@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    2
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    14 hours ago

    So you could show printed faces of people on the run at the self at a mcdonalds …