NYPD releases new photos of possible Brian Thompson shooter – NBC New York

You saw him smiling on a hostel security camera, but you don’t know his name. They found the backpack he had thrown away while escaping, but don’t know where it went.

As the search for UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s killer continues, investigators face a tantalizing dilemma: They have plenty of evidence, but the shooter remains a mystery.

Police don’t know who he is, where he is or why he did it, but are convinced it was a targeted attack and not a random act.

“The network is getting tighter,” New York Mayor Eric Adams said on Saturday.

Hours after he spoke, police divers were seen searching a pond in Central Park where the killer fled after the shooting. Officers searched the park for days for possible clues and found his bag there on Friday.

Late Saturday, police released two more photos of the suspected shooter that appeared to be from a camera mounted in a taxi. The first shows him outside the vehicle and the second shows him looking through the partition between the back seat and the front of the cab. In both cases, his face is partially obscured by a blue medical-style mask.

Police have traced the shooter’s steps through surveillance video and apparently left the city by bus shortly after the shooting outside the New York Hilton Midtown on Wednesday morning. He was seen on video about 45 minutes later at a downtown bus station, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said.

As the high-profile search expanded across state lines, the FBI announced late Friday that it was offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction, in addition to the reward of up to $10,000 , which the NYPD has suspended. Police believe the suspect acted alone.

Police did not provide an update on the hunt Saturday, but investigators are urging patience — even if a killer is on the loose.

Hundreds of detectives are scouring video footage and social media, reviewing tips from the public and interviewing people who may have information, including Thompson’s family and colleagues, as well as the shooter’s randomly assigned roommates at the Manhattan hostel where he was staying.

“This isn’t ‘Blue Bloods.’ “We’re not going to solve this in 60 minutes,” Kenny told reporters on Friday. “We are carefully reviewing all the evidence that comes into our hands.”

The shooter paid in cash at the hostel, presented what police said was a fake ID and is said to have paid for taxi rides and other transactions in cash. He didn’t talk to others in the hostel and almost always kept his face covered with a mask, which he only lowered when eating.

But investigators got a break when, shortly after his arrival in New York on November 24, they came across security camera images of an unguarded moment in which he briefly showed his face.

Police distributed the images to news outlets and on social media, but so far have not been able to identify him using facial recognition — possibly because of the angle of the images or because of restrictions on how the NYPD can use the technology, Kenny said.

On Friday evening, investigators found a backpack in Central Park that the shooter had been carrying, police said. They didn’t immediately disclose what was inside but said it would be tested and analyzed.

Another possible clue, a fingerprint on an item he bought at Starbucks minutes before the shooting, has so far proven useless in his identification, Kenny said.

Using surveillance cameras on almost every building and block, police were able to track the shooter’s movements.

They know that he ambushed Thompson at 6:44 a.m. as the manager arrived at the Hilton for his company’s annual investor conference, using a 9mm pistol similar to the weapons farmers use to kill animals, without a loud noise to cause. They know that ammunition found near Thompson’s body bore the words “delay,” “denial” and “dumping,” mimicking a phrase used by critics of the insurance industry.

Kenny said the fact that the shooter knew that UnitedHealthcare Group was holding a conference at the hotel and which route Thompson might take to get there suggested he may have been a disgruntled employee or customer.

Investigators know from surveillance video that the shooter fled into Central Park on a bicycle and parked it near 85th Street around 7 a.m.

He then walked a few blocks, got into a taxi and arrived at 7:30 a.m. at the George Washington Bridge bus station, which is near the northern tip of Manhattan and provides commuter service to New Jersey and Greyhound routes to Philadelphia, Boston and Washington.

Investigators don’t know what happened next. They are searching more surveillance videos, but have not yet found any video showing the shooter boarding a bus or leaving the train station.

“We have reason to believe that the individual in question has left New York City,” Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told CNN on Friday.

Police used a video to determine that the shooter had been in the city for 10 days before the shooting. He arrived at Manhattan’s main bus station on a Greyhound bus from Atlanta. However, it is not clear whether he boarded there or at one of about half a dozen stops along the route.

Immediately afterward, he took a taxi near the Hilton and stayed there for about half an hour, Kenny said.

On the evening of his arrival, he took a taxi to the HI New York City Hostel around 11 p.m. There, while talking to a clerk in the lobby, he briefly pulled down his mask and smiled, giving investigators the glimpse they now rely on to identify and catch a killer.