Looks like the OP got it from the <title /> text instead of the actual headline of the article (which you quoted). Confused me for a minute, I thought "mark" was slang for a hitman's target.
It baffles me why you would do all that serious planning to commit such hifi murders but, somehow screw it all up by carrying a device that is designed to track your location, activities and probably other data (like heart beat rate) that would simply undo all your efforts?
IMO, even the dumbest of murderers don't carry their phones with them because they know very well they can be triangulated long after the murders. So, why would you carry a smart device that precisely does just that? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
If you read the article, he didn’t carry the device during the murder, he was carrying it a couple months before while he was doing surveillance for the future murder. And the only reason they found out about the GPS device was because they were already pretty sure he was the guy as witnesses saw him on his bike carrying a gun and wearing “commando gear”, which sort of , you know, stuck out like a sore thumb. They used the witnesses to track him down and arrest him, and only found the GPS data later.
Obviously he’s not that bright but the GPS was sort of a secondary issue.
I mean, it’s the UK. Presumably there is video. Plus witnesses. Plus GPS. Plus he left the country immediately after. Plus he is known hired muscle. Certainly enough to charge someone.
If there is video sure, but the rest is literally “I saw a guy who looked similar in a park” and “the GPS said this guy was in the park a few times before the event occurred”
It is the UK though, so idk, but even in the US people get convicted on less. Just seems open to reasonable doubt
When you start stacking up evidence that by itself is inconclusive, you find that the overall probability starts to get very tight.
For instance:
suspect was in this neighborhood at this time
suspect was wearing a blue jacket
suspect had short blonde hair
suspect was an acquaintance of the victim
Each of those by itself means next to nothing; you can't go around arresting anybody with blonde hair because there are millions of people with hair like that. But if you find somebody who fits all four, they are almost certainly your guy. The chance of there being two acquaintances of the victim with blonde hair and a blue jacket in the neighborhood at the time of the murder is much smaller than the chance of a false positive on any one of those individual conditions.
With enough circumstantial evidence, you can blow right past "reasonable doubt".
This line of thinking is rather dangerous when determining whether to lock someone up for life. Especially in the absence of direct evidence. The math is often tricky, given that we already know some highly unlikely things have in fact occurred (a murder, for one).
There is a huge difference between “here is GPS data, let’s see if somebody remembers seeing that guy” and “somebody reported seeing that guy, let’s see if his GPS data confirms that.”
In this case, it was the latter. An unusual sighting was corroborated after the fact by hard data.
Less circumstantial and less suggestive than “here’s some hard data, let’s ask people if they can remember something.”
Somebody better at stastitcs can probably prove this with some Bayesian formula.
There’s also this: “As seriously as Fellows seemed to take his preparation, he did not appear to consider witnesses would notice a cyclist wearing both commando gear and a hi-vis safety vest while toting a gun (they did, and they told the police).“
> IMO, even the dumbest of murderers don't carry their phones with them
Your opinion is simply factually wrong, which is why there are regular stories about murderers bring caught with cell phone location records as key pieces of evidence.
Haha. Okay so this wasn't the crucial evidence. He cycled by in his hi-viz carrying a gun and equipment. If you guys aren't familiar with Britain, you should know that carrying a gun is extremely rare and being all decked out is not a thing people do.
the ice man you speak of was called that because he stored bodies in ice lockers but it has also been used as a moniker ie iced(probably related to the ice man) and is used to mean a hit or assassination.
serial killers nikenames get reused as well like ripper killer monster strangler etc.
I imagine that's the nickname he had in English (?) the gang, yeah? They're probably can't be arsed to keep track of the used and infamous nicknames from gangs in the states.
The iceman nickname wasn't used for Kuklinsky in the mob. It was during media attention for his claimed body count of 200+ as a serial killer and mob hitman.
Jack the Ripper has nothing on Kuklinski, but people can remember both.
Fellows was in a gang in the UK... That was his nickname in the gang in the UK.
There's a vast ocean betwixt the states and England. While it's true that people can remember both names, it's far more likely that, in the UK, they'll remember the names of those closer to home - of the likes of Harold Shipman.
It could also be that the UK gang knew they were reusing a name, and considered that reuse part of their opsec. If anybody ever overheard the wrong conversation, they'd hear the name of a known and convicted hitman, which might lead them to believe the discussion they overheard was more mundane than they might otherwise have thought.
For instance, battle tanks are called "tanks" today because when they were being developed by the British during WWI, they wanted a word that would obscure meaning to anybody who happened to overhear the word. They were originally called "Caterpillar Machine Gun Destroyers or Land Cruisers", which was very descriptive, so they decided to call them "water containers" instead. W.C. was considered an unsuitable initialism though, so they so they settled on "tank" as in "water tank". That name stuck so well, today most people never suspect it was originally meant to obscure meaning. But at the time, any german spy who overheard the wrong conversation would think the british were discussing a method of transporting water.
Well, that’s also the nickname of Kimi Räikkönen, F1 driver, and probably a dozen other famous sportsmen known for their cold calculation under pressure. It’s just a common nick for calm people.
Luca Brasi? Saw the HBO documentary, psychopath if there was one (not that I can diagnose him but based on what I've read about the condition.) After a few killings it may make no difference, like killing chickens day in and day out.
Or at least tame the capitalization for a more readable "Hitman runner Mark Fellows convicted of murder on GPS watch data"