Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. We'll talk now about the midtown murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. It's been more than two days now and they don't have a suspect in custody. The Fortune magazine headline on this, Fortune magazine which of course covers big business, says Slain UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson's tenure was marked by rocketing profits and accusations of insider trading and coverage denial. Maybe you've been seeing that there's been a lot of posting online by people telling their stories of being denied coverage.

Not that they're condoning a murder, a possible assassination, that word might apply, but they're taking the opportunity to draw attention to why Thompson might have had a lot of random enemies and haters in the general public, which I guess the Fortune magazine headline implies, but a real life was lost here in a heinous crime. No matter what we think about the health insurance industry or this company specifically or what Brian Thompson may have represented in our nation. Here, more than two days out, the NYPD has not offered a motive for the shooting. They did, however, release two images of the alleged suspect and they said they recovered bullet casings at the site that appeared to have the words deny and delay written on them. I think also the word depose, and those words bring to mind, to many in the media and on social media, the frustrating ways in which health insurance companies will interact with people seeking medical coverage.

Joining us now to discuss the latest on the investigation and how this, which could have come from a movie or a classic Agatha Christie crime novel or something like that, major world-class CEO shot in broad daylight on a Midtown street. The killer gets away on a getaway bicycle and then they start trying to figure out who did it, how to find the person, and what the motive is. You couldn't make this stuff up how these manhunts are usually conducted. Well, we're going to hear from Felipe Rodriguez, a former NYPD detective sergeant who also worked with the FBI as well as the NYPD on gun cases. He's now an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Professor Rodriguez, welcome to WNYC. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Professor Felipe Rodriguez: Oh, no, thank you for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, as we dig into this, we invite your questions. What questions do you have for our guest about the investigation itself based on his observer status at this point, or for that matter, folks, if you saw something, say something, anyone with tips welcome to call in, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Professor Rodriguez, this is such a brazen hit job on a prominent person, and with all these elements, how do you start to investigate?

Professor Rodriguez: At this point, sometimes with a murder investigation, we call it like trying to find all the pieces of the puzzle. At this point, we bought a 500-piece set and we have 700 pieces. There's just so much evidence and so many different venues and different alleyways that we could have with this. It's one of the hardest, I think, murder investigations at this point.

Brian Lehrer: The shooting took place at the New York Hilton, Midtown, or outside of it. It's one of New York City's largest hotels in an incredibly busy area. Nearby is the Museum of Modern Art and Rockefeller Center. For people who don't know exactly where that is, the famous Christmas tree was lit Wednesday night, same day as the murder. Wouldn't such a busy and likely highly surveilled place have much more clues to offer? I know they do have surveillance images now of the alleged suspect.

Professor Rodriguez: You know, it's amazing, right? We're in the heart of the city. We have holidays coming up. We should have officers pretty much posted everywhere, but at this point, once again, short staffing in NYPD, surveillance cameras could only do so much. As you see, he was actively trying to what, counteract the capabilities of the surveillance. He was walking around with that hood that he didn't want to take off at any moment.

Everybody says, what kind of assassin was this? I said, well, we got to give him some sort of credibility at the end of the day. How many days was he roaming around, 10 days before even the CEO got into town? You're telling me this is the only little bit of video that we're able to ID him on? He played a good game of cat and mouse, and he almost got away with it. It wasn't for that little hostile slip-up that he had, when he was interacting with the female at the counter of the hotel.

Brian Lehrer: And video shows the suspect fleeing the scene on an e-bike into Central Park. Aren't e-bikes rented on credit cards and that would be a clue as to his identity?

Professor Rodriguez: Yes, that is, A, if he used his own credit card, which I doubt he did, but did it happen in the 1993 bombing? Remember the World Trade Center? The gentleman came back for a deposit on the van that he had used to blow them. I doubt he used his credit card and the reason I would say that is if he's walking around with a fake New Jersey driver's license, that could have been an issue. Also, think about it, how many e-bikes are just thrown along the side sometimes and people jailbreak them? Like we say, they're able to use them at all times. The e-bike should have a GPS system on it and it should help, but like I'm asking everybody else, where did this bike disappear to?

Brian Lehrer: Are you surprised at some of the reactions to this? We're getting it too, looking at the text messages coming in. These texts are coming in fast now, and a lot of them are saying similar things. This one, "Media response to this is hilarious because the only people I've seen expressing any reticence are clearly told by their bosses that they can't be happy." Someone else, "Brian, you are better than this. Doing a story on how to catch this person instead of the crimes against humanity that was committed by that company." Obviously, we talk about health insurance all the time. I'll tell you, a doctor friend of mine said yesterday, this person is probably responsible for thousands of deaths. I don't know that that affects detective work, but are you surprised to see this public reaction?

Professor Rodriguez: I've never seen anything like this. I think social media has put such a spin on murders and a situation like this, especially the head of such a large company, and that a lot of people are not looking for everyone, but at the end of the day, we got to remember human life was taken. Detectives, at the end of the day, we don't look at if the person is good or bad, we have to do our job, and our job is guess what? Find the murderer and always what? Find the truth and corroborate everything. Because when we don't, that's when we fail to properly investigate.

I know the public at this point is clamoring for, let's catch this guy. Believe me, these detectives are working day and night. Not because I was a detective sergeant, I could tell you, these officers, they take these cases on, it becomes a personal issue. It becomes a thing like, you know what? I need to get this done. We become fully invested in this. Doesn't matter what the person had done before. We can't judge that.

Brian Lehrer: And this is not the way to sell health insurance policy. I think and hope everybody texting will agree with that. Kyle in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hello, Kyle.

Kyle: Hi. I just had a question. Is it common when, say, someone is murdered that represents a large industry or an entity that isn't liked, that perhaps members of the public are less willing to cooperate with an investigation?

Professor Rodriguez: That does happen. Like I tell everybody, at the end of the day, we have to have the community's confidence. We have to work, and we actually do need the community. That's why we go at lengths to publish these pictures. Because you know what? No matter how good intelligence you have, no matter how dedicated the detectives are, without the public's help, we won't be able to capture certain individuals, we won't be able to prosecute crimes. At the end of the day, whether you like or hate cops, you hate the insurance industry or whatever, we have to work on this together. We only got one time on this earth, so let's be nice to each other at the end of the day.

Brian Lehrer: A few more minutes with John Jay professor and former NYPD detective Felipe Rodriguez as we talk about the investigation into the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Bobby in Union City, you're on way. Hi, Bobby.

Bobby: Hi. Good morning, Brian. Thanks for taking my call once again, and good morning to your guest. Now, a couple of things. First of all, it's right to say killing somebody, whether they're prominent or the head of state or whatever, doesn't solve any problem, okay? I'm very angry about some of the posts that I see online about people saying, yay, hooray, and everything. That's really sick. A man with a man's life was taken, and regardless of what people think about him, killing someone never solves any problems.

The other thing was I wanted to ask your guest, something that I noticed in the video footage where the man is doing the shooting, the gun kept jamming, and the person cycled the gun to eject the spent casing and all, and he used a silencer. Is it possible that he had a weapon that he was unfamiliar with or he might have been using subsonic ammunition? Because silencers really don't work with 9 millimeters. I grew up around guns, just so you know, I had kids and everything, my family. I know that most people who use a type of gun, they would use like a .22 automatic or something with a silencer. Also, what I find interesting, that this person would expose his face prior to committing this crime, if you have any thoughts about that. Also, I heard from someone that this person might have been from Atlanta. Do you know anything about that?

Brian Lehrer: Bobby, thank you for those questions. Yes, there is a report that he came up from Atlanta in November, right?

Professor Rodriguez: That's correct. They've been working with the Port Authority. There's another agency to be able to track down. The problem is, we know he landed in Atlanta in a bus, but we don't know actually anything further than that. He could have driven, he could have taken a plane, anything like that at all until he got to Atlanta, then went on a bus. That was a great question by the gentleman, because the fact is, my theory, I've also been around guns a little bit, everybody keeps saying that the gun jam, the gun jam.

In my professional opinion at this point, I would say that it was a B&T Station Six-type firearm. A lot of people don't know about it. It's not a big gun out in the market, but the way it cycles, the way that you have to clear the firearm, and it works in that type of form, and it does come already prepared with a silencer. I think using subsonic rounds, like he said, and the fact that it did have a suppressor because that's the technical term, suppressor, it ended up having to do that extra working to clear that firearm.

The mask, like I said, everybody's saying, "Oh, he slipped up, he slipped up." Yes, he did slip up, and thank God he did, and sometimes cops need that little bit of a break. Like I said, think of the days that he was already in town surveilling this gentleman. He was out there, like we used to say in narcotics, he used to make sure he went to bed. He wanted to know where he was laying his head. Every night he would check on him and make sure that he knew, and that's how he was able to efficiently commit the homicide.

Brian Lehrer: Bobby, thank you for your call. And that caller suggests that maybe because of his familiarity with the weapon, he was a professional hitman of some kind, that there's been a lot of speculation about that. I wonder if you have an opinion about that and if from everything that's known so far, if you have a take on the likely motive.

Professor Rodriguez: At this point, everyone can say, he's a hitman, he's not a hitman. I said, well, how many bodies does it take to get you to that category? I've done surveillance on people, I was in a specialized unit, that's all we did was surveil people. I got to know people better than they knew themselves, and the fact that he was here 10 days ahead of time, he was walking around the hotel, he was checking entrances and exits. I really don't know when is it that we give the person the certification of being a hitman. That could go back and forth when it comes to that type of opinion.

Brian Lehrer: And motive, do you think it was about the health insurance industry's practices?

Professor Rodriguez: You know what? This could have been a person that had these skills and just kind of had enough. I doubt that. I think that he's trying to throw us off the trail. It could be the fact of someone hired him and let's give him this idea, let's give him that idea. I can't see for an individual that was trying to be so surreptitious from the beginning that he just drops a cell phone, that he just drops a water container or something, a bottle of water. I think there's a lot more. Like I said, we got a giant puzzle, and we have too many pieces at this time, and we have to start eliminating some of them.

Brian Lehrer: Right. They found a water bottle and a protein bar wrapper from a trash can near the scene, and they think the suspect brought them from a Starbucks or bought them at a Starbucks just minute before the shooting. That's according to the AP. So if the police find DNA, let's say, on the bottle or the wrapper, would that necessarily lead to identification? Would the person have had to have previous contact with law enforcement for that to be helpful?

Professor Rodriguez: You got to remember, they call it an NCIC number at the moment that anyone is fingerprinted, but yes, most of the time it is. Someone has to have previous contact with law enforcement or applied for a special either firearms permit or working in some sort of certain field. That's the problem. DNA is the greatest. Yes, I love it. It's great for trial, it's great for convictions, but at the end of the day, that person is not in the database. We just have a lot of good stuff later on, not right now, and that's what we're stuck at right now.

Brian Lehrer: Other things regarding possible motives that have been reported, who was reporting on Brian Thompson before this, but it's now been reported that he was the subject of a Department of Justice insider trading investigation. It's now been reported that he's been separated from his wife for several years. How do you, as the detective, start to look at, well, is there some kind of economic motive from somebody in the company because of insider trading? Something, something, or somebody in his personal life? How do they do that?

Professor Rodriguez: There's a lot of money being played here we really have to look at, right? A multibillion-dollar trillion-dollar company. It's the day before he's supposed to do a special presentation that might have affected the way the company went. There's just so many motives behind this. He has the separation with his wife. God only knows. It's just that there's so many clues at this point, we need to start separating them, but one thing I can say, I've never seen a CEO have so many motives that could have aspired to create this.

Brian Lehrer: The Listener asked in a text message, "Can you ask the guest how NYPD is certain that the smiling photo is in fact the shooting suspect?

Professor Rodriguez: That's a great question. Because at the end of the day, think about it, we have a person that smiled and he could have been dressed like that. You know what? There's a lot of similar clothing, a lot of similar things, and that's when we have to put all these circumstantial facts. That wrapper, that water bottle maybe, and just even putting him at the scene, making sure that we go back and we trace and it's backtracking, it's having detective actually do footwork and go around and talking to people and finding additional CCTV footage.

At this point, two of us could dress the same and we could be looking for an innocent person. We really don't know until we know sometimes, and that's what people don't realize. That's the job of a good detective, and the people think it's just not finding the clues, it's being able to corroborate it because at the end of the day, we still have to be able to prove guilt.

Brian Lehrer: Are you surprised that now that they have the photo, they can't identify the name? Or maybe they have and they're just not releasing it. It seems like from the media reports, they've got the face, but they don't have the name.

Professor Rodriguez: Correct. I've traveled a lot, I've talked with the United Nations in different countries. These transnational borders, you don't know sometimes who's coming in and out, and at this level of the individual, the way he was, such a high profile individual, God only knows. I don't want to sound like a TV movie or something out of, far fetched, but this could have been hired outside professional help. They could have been hired just to come in and do this. We might not have anything on him and someone might not know him in the United States. At this point, who knows? We're trying every angle that we can look at and we have to search out.

Brian Lehrer: I'll just note that these texts are continuing to come in and for many different phone numbers. One writes, "Blue Cross Blue Shield had announced they would cap anesthesia services for surgeries. After this incident, they've retracted this change. To say these events would not bring change is false." Now we don't know if Blue Cross's policy changes as a result of that, but there's sympathy for this from a listener. Another listener writes, "A life was heinously taken in our beloved city."

Sorry, that's not the text I thought it was going to be. "Victim made $15 million personally selling 31% of his stock in the face of the SEC investigation. I read that he was worth about a half a billion dollars in UnitedHealthcare stock." And text says, "And doctors admitting they denied thousands of people coverage without reviewing their files." These are coming in and coming in and coming in regardless of how we judge them. Does that surprise you?

Professor Rodriguez: I am surprised. I just think it's the whole thing of viral. I think people are not being heard in government, and you're starting to see so many forms of hatred being perpetrated and constantly growing on the Internet. It's becoming scary. People have to realize that we have to hold big companies accountable. That's my opinion. Because you know what, at the end of the day, we're the ones paying the premiums. We're the ones that have to pay these ridiculous taxes to help other people pay for their medical costs and everything else. Something needs to be controlled, something needs to be done. That's something beyond my scope, but the Internet is becoming, I think it's fuel for hatred at this point, the way some of these people speak and express their opinions.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to leave it there for now with former NYPD detective Felipe Rodriguez, now a John Jay College criminal justice professor. Thank you very much for coming on with us.

Professor Rodriguez: My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

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