A man, a bike and a gun: Police search for evidence to solve the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO on the streets of New York

By CNN Newsource

Published December 7, 2024 10:01 PM

By Ashley R. Williams, Gloria Pazmino, Evan Perez, Mark Morales, Brynn Gingras, Shimon Prokupecz and Ryan Young, CNN

(CNN) — As the manhunt for a still-unidentified suspect in the fatal shooting of a health care executive in Manhattan continues on its fifth day, police are missing key pieces of evidence and combing through what they have gathered for more clues.

The New York Police Department is working with the FBI and other law enforcement agencies across the country to search for the suspect and offering rewards to the public. Two new photos released by police show the suspect masked with a hood in the backseat of a vehicle and wearing a jacket walking on the street.

While authorities say they believe the suspect has long left New York City after fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on Wednesday, they feel confident he will be captured.

Here’s what authorities are still trying to find:

The confirmed identity of the suspect
The weapon used in the shooting
The bicycle the suspect used to get away

And here are some of the key pieces of evidence they’ve gathered:

Images of the suspect’s unmasked face
Video evidence of the path he took to escape
A backpack possibly worn by the suspect, with a jacket inside
DNA from a discarded Starbucks water bottle
A partial fingerprint from the water bottle
A discarded “burner” cell phone
9 mm shell casings with the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose” written on them

Police divers concluded a search for the weapon in a lake in Central Park on Sunday without finding anything, after searching the park’s iconic boathouse and Bethesda Fountain on Saturday, a law enforcement official told CNN. The divers operated in the same area Sunday, according to footage from CNN affiliate WABC.

A Peak Design backpack was recovered during a second sweep of the park Friday, a law enforcement source told CNN. Police examined it at a forensic lab in Queens. Inside, they found Monopoly money, a law enforcement source told CNN. It also contained a Tommy Hilfiger jacket, law enforcement officials briefed on the matter told CNN. It was not immediately clear whether other items were in the backpack.

But crucially, there was no gun in the backpack.

There has also still been no sign of the bicycle used by the suspect.

Meanwhile, photos of the suspect have been circulated to multiple law enforcement agencies, including airports and border patrol stations along the Mexican and Canadian borders, in the hope he won’t slip out of the country.

Police said the suspect mostly wore a mask covering his face as he traveled through New York. “We had to go through lots of video evidence to get that one money shot with the mask down,” said police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, describing a photo of the suspect unmasked in an Upper West Side hostel where he checked in with a fake New Jersey’s driver’s license.

The FBI is offering up to $50,000 of reward money for information leading to his arrest and conviction. The NYPD has added another $10,000.

Piecing together clues

Thompson, 50, was shot on a busy Manhattan street early on December 4 as he approached the New York Hilton Midtown on West 54th Street to attend his company’s annual investor conference, according to New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. The killer was “lying in wait” outside the hotel, Tisch said. The CEO was shot at least once in the back and once in the right calf and declared dead at a hospital.

The shooter then crossed the street from the Hilton and fled northbound through an alley between 54th Street and 55th Street. He rode off on an electric bike on 55th, investigators told CNN. From there, the suspect headed north on Sixth Avenue toward Central Park.

Police say the man was spotted near the George Washington Bridge and George Washington Port Authority bus terminal at 178th Street around 45 minutes after the shooting. Police have obtained video of the suspect entering the Port Authority Bus Station but not exiting it, indicating he left the city.

The killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO has rattled other health care companies concerned about their own leaders’ safety and prompted some of them to ramp up security and scrub top executives’ photos from their websites.

The backpack, photos, surveillance videos, ammunition left behind, a burner phone, a water bottle and DNA evidence have thus far helped investigators get closer to zeroing in on the suspect despite hitting dead ends with the use of facial recognition software and an unusable fingerprint previously obtained by police, according to Joseph Kenny, the NYPD’s chief detective.

Investigators continue to search for the electric bike the suspect rode the day of the shooting and are examining whether the shooter used a veterinary gun, a larger firearm used on farms and ranches to put down animals without causing a loud noise, Kenny said Friday.

Looking for a motive

The 9 mm shell casings undergoing testing had the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose” written across them, with one word on each of the three bullets, Kenny told reporters.

Police are looking into whether the words, similar in phrasing to a common description of insurance company tactics – “Delay, deny, defend” – may point to a motive. A book critiquing the insurance industry was published with the title “Delay Deny Defend” in 2010.

“That might be him sending a message saying why it was that he shot (Thompson), but at the same time, it could be a diversion to try to get taken away from the real reason behind it,” former FBI Special Agent Kenneth Gray told CNN on Saturday.

“Until he’s caught, we won’t actually know the purpose of those words,” Gray said.

Although the motive remains unclear, authorities have said they believe the killing was premeditated and targeted. The shooter “definitely planned this out,” Kenny told CNN on Friday.

“He knew what time the victim was going to be walking by. He knew what hotel this conference was going to be in,” Kenny said.

Kenny said video of the suspect about 30 minutes before the shooting shows him “walking and wandering around the hotel area before he committed this act.”

The detective said at a Friday briefing there is no evidence the shooter and CEO had any prior interactions or the shooting was related to Thompson’s personal life, according to audio of the briefing the NYPD provided to CNN.

“As we’re going through our investigation, we’re coming across a lot of online comments, a lot of online threats, things of that nature,” Kenny said. “His wife indicated that he had received some prior threats. I don’t know the details of those threats.”

Thompson had worked for UnitedHealthcare since 2004 and was appointed CEO in 2021. He lived in Minnesota and was visiting New York for the company’s annual investor conference. He is survived by his wife Paulette and two children.

The shooting has prompted some to portray the killer as a vigilante enacting justice against a health care system they believe values profits over lives, and some users on social media have mocked the CEO’s death. News of the shooting inspired an outpouring of social media stories about denials of claims from UnitedHealthcare and other insurance companies.

What’s next in the investigation?

Police are tracking down as many tips as they can, as the manhunt spreads and authorities try to determine where the suspect might surface.

NYPD officials said they believe the suspect left New York City on an interstate bus, the same mode of transportation investigators believe he used to get to the city days earlier: He traveled to New York on a Greyhound bus starting its route in Atlanta, multiple law enforcement sources told CNN. Those sources added authorities do not know whether the suspect boarded in Atlanta or elsewhere.

The Atlanta Police Department announced Friday, without elaborating, it will assist the investigation after the NYPD contacted it. NYPD detectives arrived in Atlanta on Saturday as part of the probe, two law enforcement officials briefed on the matter told CNN.

In the meantime, the gun remains the key piece of outstanding evidence police are searching for, as they build a case against the shooter.

CNN’s Zoe Sottile, Elise Hammond, Holly Yan, Meg Tirrell, Dalia Faheid, Linh Tran, Sara Smart, Taylor Galgano, David Goldman, Amanda Musa, Rebekah Riess, Paradise Afshar, Nouran Salahieh, Josh Campbell and Karina Tsui contributed to this report.

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