Investigators into the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson are working on a “deep dive” into his personal lifeincluding his family and friends, a retired NYPD officer told Fox News Digital Friday.
“In this case, I think what the police are really looking at, what the investigators are really looking at is the victim, because the vast majority of murders are committed by someone who knows the victim,” said Ralph Cilento, a retired lieutenant commander of detectives at the NYPD and adjunct professor of police science at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice explained.
‘It’s a very high percentage, almost 90%, I think. So, beyond the analysis of the crime scene, what happens forensically, what shell casings and bullets are found and things like that in every murder – not just this one – there is a deep dive into the victim.”
He said even if the victim did not know the suspect, they may have known each other “by proxy if someone sent an assailant to kill someone.”
UNITEDHEALTHCARE CEO BRIAN THOMPSON’S ‘PREMEDITARY’ ATTACK A SUSPECT’S EXIT: TIMELINE
Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed in downtown Manhattan on Wednesday morning. (Businesswire | NYPD Crime Stoppers)
“So generally the way you investigate homicides is you start with the victim and you make concentric circles out of that, and usually the perpetrator is in there somewhere. Not always, but most of the time,” he explained.
Cilento also noted that the shooting occurred the morning of the evening Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lights.
Thompson was killed early Wednesday morning outside the Hilton in Midtown Manhattan.
“Now it’s before the tree lighting, but the way NYPD works, every detail starts the night before,” he said. ‘So it is a quite brutal act, and we can assume that there are many more officers on the street.
“So we don’t know whether this man walked past officers who had body cameras. So all that footage has to be reviewed. It is an enormous, painstaking and tedious task. It is an enormous workload to collect all the images that video.”
A split image of United Healthcare headquarters and CEO Brian Thompson, who was killed Wednesday. (Getty Images I AP)
Cilento also noted that a team of investigators is at Thompson’s home near Minneapolis.
“Remember that to get clues about the murder, you necessarily have to investigate the victim,” he said. “And from there you go around in circles – his emails, communications with his wife, with his family members, communications with current employees and former employees. Was he threatened in some way? Did he just deny a customer health care company coverage for something? All these avenues need to be explored.
He added that while he was not surprised the suspect was able to escape at short notice, but his days are numbered.
He said investigators are putting “way too many resources” into the investigation not to catch him quickly. And it’s impossible not to leave an electronic footprint, despite the suspect’s attempts to check into his Manhattan hostel with a fake ID and pay in cash before the shooting.
A screenshot of surveillance footage released by the NYPD shows the suspect in the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. (NYPD Crime Stoppers)
Cilento called the suspect with a fake ID and pay with cash just a “speed bump” in the investigation.
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“They’re investigating every lead,” Cilento said. “So there’s a team in Minneapolis, there’s a team dedicated solely to video recovery, which in itself is a tedious and difficult task. And it’s not just video recovery.
There are thousands, cumulatively, thousands of hours of video footage to be reviewed. And there are detectives somewhere sifting through video footage looking for a glimpse of this man. There are other detectives searching the NYPD body cameras on the off chance that he was unmasked and walked past an officer whose body camera was activated. And the only way to do that is to do it. And that is a tedious and detailed task that needs to be paid attention to. And I can assure you that attention is being paid to it.
