{"id":823375,"date":"2025-01-31T12:12:34","date_gmt":"2025-01-31T18:12:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/31\/why-top-internet-sleuths-say-they-wont-help-find-the-unitedhealthcare-ceo-killer\/"},"modified":"2025-01-31T12:12:34","modified_gmt":"2025-01-31T18:12:34","slug":"why-top-internet-sleuths-say-they-wont-help-find-the-unitedhealthcare-ceo-killer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/31\/why-top-internet-sleuths-say-they-wont-help-find-the-unitedhealthcare-ceo-killer\/","title":{"rendered":"Why top internet sleuths say they won’t help find the UnitedHealthcare CEO killer"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

A high-profile violent crime typically sets social media abuzz with tips and theories from amateur internet sleuths, hunting for the alleged perpetrator.<\/p>\n

But after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down<\/a> in New York City last week without a primary suspect being identified, a rare occurrence happened in the thriving true-crime world: silence online from highly followed armchair detectives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have yet to see a single video that\u2019s pounding the drum of \u2018we have to find him,\u2019 and that is unique,\u201d said Michael McWhorter, better known as TizzyEnt on TikTok, where he posts true crime and viral news content for his 6.7 million followers. \u201cAnd in other situations of some kind of blatant violence, I would absolutely be seeing that.\u201d<\/p>\n

A masked gunman, who is still on the lam, fatally shot the 50-year-old executive in front of a busy New York City hotel Wednesday, police said. A senior New York City law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said Thursday that shell casings found at the scene\u00a0had the words \u201cdeny,\u201d \u201cdefend\u201d and \u201cdepose\u201d written on them but police clarified Friday that it was \u201cdelay\u201d and not \u201cdefend.\u201dThompson\u2019s targeted killing has sparked online praise<\/a> from people angry over the state of U.S. health care. Tens of thousands of people have expressed support on social media for the killing or sympathized with it. Some even appeared to celebrate it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe surge of social media posts praising and glorifying the killing of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson is deeply concerning,\u201d Alex Goldenberg, a senior adviser at The Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University previously told NBC News<\/a>. (Thompson was CEO of UnitedHealthcare, not of UnitedHealth Group, its parent company.)<\/p>\n

In a statement, Thompson\u2019s family said he was \u201can incredibly loving father\u201d to two sons and \u201cwill be greatly missed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are shattered to hear about the senseless killing of our beloved Brian,\u201d the statement said. \u201cBrian was an incredibly loving, generous, talented man who truly lived life to the fullest and touched so many lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, some of the most popular internet sleuths have sat out the investigation.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re pretty apathetic towards that,\u201d Savannah Sparks, who has 1.3 million followers on her TikTok account \u2014 where she tracks down and reveals the identities of people who do racist or seemingly criminal acts in viral videos \u2014 said about helping to identify the shooter. She added that, rather than sleuthing, her community has \u201cconcepts of thoughts and prayers. It\u2019s, you know, claim denied on my prayers there,\u201d referring to rote and unserious condolences.<\/p>\n

Although Sparks, 34, has been tapped by law enforcement in the past to help train officers on how to find suspects online, according to emails seen by NBC News, she said this time she isn\u2019t interested in helping police.<\/p>\n

Sparks, who also works in health care as a lactation consultant and holds a doctorate of pharmacy, didn\u2019t mince words when asked if her community was working to find the suspect in Thompson\u2019s murder.<\/p>\n

\u201cAbsolutely the f— not,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Another popular TikTok sleuth, thatdaneshguy, who has 2 million followers on the platform, made a video<\/a> that was critical of the health care industry, saying that he wouldn\u2019t try to identify the killer. \u201cI don\u2019t have to encourage violence. I don\u2019t have to condone violence by any means. But I also don\u2019t have to help,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

That attitude among some content creators comes amid amplified attention on frustrations with medical care in the U.S. in the wake of the killing.\u00a0A Gallup<\/a> poll released Friday found that Americans believe health care quality is at a 24-year low. Those polled said health care coverage is even worse, with 54% saying it\u2019s fair or poor.<\/p>\n

Online sleuths have helped the FBI identify hundreds of Capitol rioters and catch previously arrested Jan. 6 defendants committing crimes that the bureau\u2019s own review had missed, in one case even finding evidence of a Proud Boy<\/a> assaulting an officer in the middle of his seditious conspiracy trial.<\/p>\n

And when Gabby Petito<\/a>, 22, went missing as she documented her cross-country travels on social media with her fianc\u00e9, online sleuths jumped into action. It was later determined that Petito was killed by her fianc\u00e9 Brian Laundrie, who died by suicide.<\/p>\n

At least one person who did try to help find Thompson\u2019s killer was criticized on X, formerly known as Twitter, for doing so.<\/p>\n

In a viral post, Riley Walz, a software engineer, said he was \u201cfairly confident\u201d about where the shooter fled to on a bike after scouring data from the Citi Bike\u2019s bikeshare program. He said he shared the information with the police.<\/p>\n

But a source close to Lyft, which operates Citi Bike, later said the NYPD told the company directly that the incident did not involve the bikeshare program.<\/p>\n

Walz declined to comment Friday. Since his post, some X users have called him a \u201csnitch.\u201d McWhorter, or TikTok\u2019s TizzyEnt, said backlash toward those who did try to help might cause others to not want to step in.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re seeing it in such a groundswell, I have to imagine that factors into some people\u2019s decision,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But mostly, McWhorter said, \u201cthere\u2019s this weird thing, this vibe of like, I don\u2019t see a bunch of people just feeling an urgency.\u201d<\/p>\n

McWhorter posted his first video about the incident Friday evening. The roughly two-minute video was about \u201chow much people don\u2019t care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sukrit Venkatagiri, an assistant professor of computer science at Swarthmore College, said many people feel a lack of connection with a wealthy CEO.\u201cThey don\u2019t really empathize with who the victim is in this scenario,\u201d Venkatagiri said.<\/p>\n

Venkatagiri, who has studied the harms of misinformation and disinformation as well as crowd sourcing investigations, said, anecdotally, he has seen less talk of finding Thompson\u2019s killer on spaces like the subreddit r\/Reddit Bureau of Investigations, an online sleuthing page on Reddit that claims it is \u201cusing the power of the internet to solve real-world problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are less motivated, from an altruistic perspective, to help this victim in this specific case,\u201d Venkatagiri said.<\/p>\n

Beyond a lack of online sleuthing, which can sometimes muddy law enforcement\u2019s investigations, there has been a flurry of information released by the New York Police Department.<\/p>\n

Police released two images of a \u201cperson of interest,\u201d including one in which he is smiling while using a fake ID to check out of a hostel on New York City\u2019s Upper West Side, as well as several surveillance videos, including one in which the suspect shoots Thompson.<\/p>\n

Investigators believe the shooter may have traveled to New York City from Atlanta last month by bus, three senior law enforcement officials familiar with the case told NBC News.Investigators have not identified a suspect, although the investigation is ongoing, a senior law enforcement official briefed on the matter said Friday. Police have found dozens of images from surveillance cameras of the suspect from tracking his timeline in Manhattan, the official said.<\/p>\n

Police have offered a reward of up to $10,000 for information leading to an arrest and conviction.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Clora Pekar
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A high-profile violent crime typically sets social media abuzz with tips and theories from amateur internet sleuths, hunting for the alleged perpetrator. But after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down in New York City last week without a primary suspect being identified, a rare occurrence happened in the thriving true-crime world: silence online from<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":823376,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2448,38344],"tags":[6865,141313],"class_list":{"0":"post-823375","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-internet","8":"category-sleuths","9":"tag-internet","10":"tag-sleuths"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=823375"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823375\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/823376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}