> Detectives believe that the motive for the killing stemmed from Mr. Saleh having discovered that the assistant had stolen tens of thousands of dollars from him, despite the fact that Mr. Saleh had not reported the man and had set up what amounted to a repayment plan for him to return the money, one of the officials said.
Amazing how far this is from all the early speculation. Also incredibly sad.
Previous theories concerning hitmen from Saudi Arabia, Nigerian gangs, Chinese government involvement, and other salacious tales were really something.
I read a comment on another forum that made a big deal of the briefcase in particular. If they were just memeing/shitposting on the story that's one thing, but a lot of people seemed to sincerely believe that briefcase or suit ownership was actual evidence of being a contract killer.
The professional coordinated murderers of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh were caught on surveillance cameras wearing totally unremarkable clothing. In real life, contract killers don't have uniforms. However I think it's interesting to consider the possibility that the killer in this case was essentially role-playing as a contract killer as portrayed by popular media.
What's intriguing to me is the idea that not only might the killer have been (consciously or unconsciously) role-playing a "professional", but that the police were engaging in the same fantasy.
There were under 200 homicides in NYC in 2020 (to date). Undoubtedly the slimmest minority (if any) were, in the way one imagines, "professional". So it seems safe to assume the homicide detectives might not have significant firsthand experience with which to say, "this seems like a professional job."
I'm reminded a little bit of the Bellagio "Biker Bandit" (https://lasvegassun.com/news/2011/aug/23/bellagio-bandit-get... whole thing seemed super professional (full-face motorcycle helmet, full body-suit, in-and-out in minutes)...but it turned out to be a dude with a gambling problem and an Oxy habit.
I was once told my Dodge was a "drug dealer" car. I laughed, saying any sane drug dealer would choose a boring, nondescript, dime-a-dozen car that did not stand out. My Dodge attracts a lot of attention.
Sounds like there's a difference between drug dealers that do and don't know how to keep under the radar. And the person who said that to you, only knows of the unwise ones? :)
To be fair the only reason there was evidence was that they guy had to flee before he was done cleaning up. I don't blame the cops for their initial conclusions the level of premeditation in this murder was much higher than normal.
If anything, the impression that professionals do the job spotlessly seems like it goes hand-in-hand with the misattribution of this crime to a "professional."
From what's in the public record, even "professional" hitmen have their moments of conscience, laziness, procedural failures--and, apparently, quite frequently, presumably due to the moral pressure of conducting assassinations.
(Of course it's possible we don't hear about the hitmen who are truly pro-level, but I find that hard to believe.)
I think so. In the case of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, it was seemingly meant to look like natural causes:
> Initially, Dubai authorities believed al-Mabhouh had died of natural causes.[44] Fawzi Benomran, the Dubai police coroner, said, "It was meant to look like death from natural causes during sleep." It took 10 days for the Dubai police to come to the conclusion that al-Mabhouh was assassinated. Benomran described the determination of the exact cause of death as "one of the most challenging cases" his department faced.[45]
The team that killed him were on camera entering the country and in the hotel. However if they had been successful in convincing local authorities the death was natural, that would have made the (presumably very difficult to avoid) video evidence effectively irrelevant because nobody would have thought to consider it relevant.
In this case, it was a $2.25 million condo. A suit and tie may be unremarkable clothing in that area.
Also, if Fahim was a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy like the numerous pictures of him suggest he may have been, the assistant may have normally been around the building in casual attire normally as well. A suit could have been out of character attire to mask his ID further.
And when you are looking to solve a problem, particularly one in an area you are not an expert in, it’s just so good. Niche subs have a wealth of information, help and offers of direct messaging to help solve problems. When you hit a helpful sub it’s infectious too, and you find yourself passing on the support you received when you see someone struggling.
I used to live in Stack Overflow for help, but the closed and shut down questions just kills things. ‘Duplicate of...,’ ‘Off-topic,’ ‘Needs details or clarity,’ ‘Needs more focus,’ or ‘Opinion-based‘. I wasn’t even postings, as I was sure that the septic tone would become focused on me.
I've been hearing this for at least a decade. Same for Twitter. Seems to never work for me. And yet an un-curated FB feed is more enjoyable to me, which makes me a rube in some many folks' eyes.
I do think a lot of it comes down to one's tolerance for internet n00bs, popularity by upvotes rather than personal connection, an respect for influencers -- whether in the intellectual, professional, or stylistic realm.
For me the fire hose of trending topics was too much, even with the occasionally fantastic post among them. So I rarely go there.
Then there are the really large communities covering subjects that interest me. I do subscribe to them but rarely interact because it's still a fire hose - responses to comments are really sensitive to the time of day and since I'm at least half to a full day off the timezone of the average community member, trying to interact is futile.
Then there are the smaller communities, usually tech for me. There is no longer that fire hose, and individuals are genuinely interested in learning something new, or sharing something new, often created by them. Add a number of this type of community and your daily feed becomes transformative.
Yes, all of the people currently speculating on the motives behind the Twitter hack should remember how mundane and stupid things often are. Sometimes it is a mistake to overthink things. Small time grift is more common than grand conspiracy theories.
That speculation, specifically an organized Saudi hit à la Khashoggi and leaning on geopolitics and business regulation to make its case, dominated the HN thread. The discussion was sprinkled with dumping on Nigeria’s systems and business environment, assuming because he wasn’t American that he had to borrow from shady characters, linking recent changes to his business to the killing, and panicked nailbiting over NYT descriptions of his condo hitting a little close to home. With few exceptions (such as accusing Saleh of being involved with cocaine), the examples I’ve mentioned found themselves steering the discussion, not downvoted in the slightest.
I wish the HN guideline was “there’s no upside for anyone mentioning Reddit from an often glass house” instead of specifically calling out comparisons of this site to that one. When this forum dumps on Reddit, it walks away with an impression of superiority that could not be further from the truth. Observe my sibling. All forums have their problems and HN is not blessed with immunity.
> When this forum dumps on Reddit, it walks away with an impression of superiority that could not be further from the truth. Observe my sibling. All forums have their problems and HN is not blessed with immunity.
At the same time, I would rather HN have a false sense of superiority that sometimes keeps it from descending to the depths as people at least make the attempt sometimes to keep it better than that, rather than just accept that it's often no different, and thus excuse that behavior when it happens.
That is, having the perception of superiority is helpful in as much as it allows comments like yours to have weight. Your comment on Reddit might be met with "well, duh, it's Reddit." Hopefully here some people are instead thinking about what they want this forum to be and whether they helped or hindered that. That's a bit pretentious of me to say, but I also think it's true.
> assuming because he wasn’t American that he had to borrow from shady characters, linking recent changes to his business to the killing, and panicked nailbiting over NYT descriptions of his condo hitting a little close to home. With few exceptions (such as accusing Saleh of being involved with cocaine), the examples I’ve mentioned found themselves steering the discussion, not downvoted in the slightest.
Indeed. Because the cost of the deceased's apartment was mentioned, folks started grasping at straws, some assuming it's a politically motivated (with a vague implication that this may have been class warfare) killing.
Personally I'm just a tourist that posts here now and then (maybe a bit too much lately). And I have posted on Reddit more and for longer. I'm not some kind of smug HN insider that gains personally by it being seen as superior in some way.
And this site is way better than Reddit. In terms of maturity, intelligence, site rules, etc.
Though I don't really get what you seem to be upset about regarding the armchair detective work. The cops led with the same general theory. The victim actually _was_ american (correct me if I'm wrong here) but he did business in foreign countries.
“We did it Reddit” is quoting a Reddit comment made when the Reddit hive mind found a bunch of “evidence” that a certain guy was the Boston bomber, but he turned out to be someone totally innocent
> Previous theories concerning hitmen from Saudi Arabia, Nigerian gangs, Chinese government involvement, and other salacious tales were really something.
I mean everyone in the crypto space probably knows or at least knows of someone who has been cut up and dismembered, so it's not really that crazy. A lot of people here are founders, so that's the kind of thing we naturally worry about. I.e. you can probably get a better valuation if you skip the middlemen and go straight to family offices, especially ones in foreign countries, but then again if you take money from Ron Conway and things go sideways he's probably not going to send people to kill you.
What's amazing is how strongly people believe their own and others' speculation without any evidence. Look at what happened after the Boston Marathon bombing.
Occam's razor certainly applied here. I wonder if that rampant speculation earlier shows how disconnected we are from reality. Our minds are certainly warped by the sugary fictions and media we consume.
"professional" can mean so many things in this context though. Could just mean that the way the head, arms and legs were chopped were clean cuts, place was clean etc?
It's not really amazing, HN is incredibly xenophobic, just look at literally any thread that happens to mention China, even tangentially. I guess that's what happens when the majority of the userbase is well off Americans.
Last I ran the numbers, 50% of HN users were in the US. A lot of those are not Americans, since many HN users have come to the US from other countries. Moreover, a lot of the American userbase on HN are not "well off". So your assumption is far from correct.
What HN certainly is, demographically, is majority Western. What you're seeing on China-related topics is the growing rift between China and the West, the same trend that shows up in Western media and no doubt Chinese media as well. I spend a lot of moderation time and energy arguing for understanding about this. But there's no way we can expect HN to be immune from macro social and geopolitical trends.
There's no reason to believe that "HN is incredibly xenophobic" except insofar as human beings in general may be.
> There's no reason to believe that HN is "incredibly xenophobic" except insofar as human beings in general may be.
While he said what he said and you refuted, I think the thought behind what he said was influenced by the rise in anti-Chinese xenophobia of late, and to my mind that is a real phenomenon both on HN and off of it. It is accompanied by, it must be said, a sharp increase in xenophobia in China as well.
I "agree" with the general xenophobia, meaning the lack of progress and backsliding toward China aligning with western democratic and individualistic ideals that I hold dear is very disappointing, but I can also see that indulging in one's xenophobic feelings might not lead to a desired outcome either.
I just say that because, counter to your last statement, there is reason to believe that HN has become incredibly xenophobic (compared to where it was a few years ago), which similar to what you also said, is accompanied by a qualifier.
I don't disagree with any of that. I think we're just scoping the word 'xenophobic' differently. To me that word conveys something deeper and more permanent, especially if one uses 'is' with it, as in "HN is incredibly xenophobic". (which was actually a rather silly thing to say)
> There's no reason to believe that HN is "incredibly xenophobic" except insofar as human beings in general may be.
And that's likely the case so in a way the GP was right. HN is rapidly approaching being large enough to represent a fair cross section of the communities it is active in, with the note that it skews wealthy, educated and tech oriented. Whether that slice of the population is more or less xenophobic as a rule is an open question. I fear for the answer.
Exactly. These behaviors seem to be context dependent, rather than engrained in some people vs. not others, and the context seems to be shifting right now.
Sure, and equally obviously there are a lot of users below the median/mean. Millions of them, in fact. Some are below the poverty line.
HN is more varied than you're assuming. That is actually the leading problem facing the community. People develop a distorted image of what the HN community is, and then when they encounter posts that contradict their image, they resort to antagonistic explanations that are harmful.
The actual dynamic is this: many people here have wildly different backgrounds, and therefore strongly different views, than your own (I don't mean you personally, but all of us)—views which they come by as honestly as the rest of us come by ours. Yes there are bad actors, but users grossly overestimate the significance of that. We're far too quick to consign each other to the bad actor bucket, because we underestimate the variety and size of the genuine differences between us.
I'm not saying that it's exclusively people below the median/mean, I'm saying that due to the content the site focuses on the board is going to skew towards the more wealthy in whatever market they live in. Obviously I don't have the demographic data to back this up, but it's just the reality of the situation. Inside the US, this board's users are going to be wealthier than the average US population. I suspect that would hold true for any group you look at, whether its a global perspective (probably even more skewed if you look at the global average wealth). Beyond that, you need an internet connection at all to come here, so right there you're going to be skewing wealthier than you would if you picked an "average".
I'm not consigning anyone to the "bad actor" bucket, but when we talk about filter bubbles we should at least be honest about the composition of groups and what traits they might have. There's no reason to think that the average HN user is representative of the average individual given the content.
Beyond that, due to the upvote system, the majority is amplified, so even if there are millions in poverty on this site, their views are going to be pushed lower than the tens of millions not in poverty. This is a bigger problem than HN obviously, but it does nobody any good to deny it's existence. The same could be applied to any minority group, whether its gender, sexuality, or race for that matter. This is a consequence of the system and you see the same thing on various subreddits (the fact that they split things into smaller boards mean there are communities where the site minority might be able to actually have a larger voice than the majority)
I don't disagree with that. It's just that it still leaves many people, hundreds of thousands if not millions, who fall outside the description you're making, and thousands of them post comments here. There's simply a lot more variance in the community than it feels like there is. That mistake has a dramatic effect on discussion.
Edit: I was replying to the first version of your comment. I do disagree with the part you added later about upvotes. I think it is overinterpretation of the sort that feels-like-it-must-be-true, or feels-like-it's-probably-true. If there's one thing I've learned from moderating HN it's that those perceptions are extremely in the eye of the beholder and need to be bracketed if one wants to assess anything objectively.
p.s. Just to avoid misunderstanding, your account is still banned because you've continued to break HN's rules since we originally banned you. I restored your comments in this thread in order to reply to them. Users can also do that by vouching for good posts which shouldn't be [dead] (this is described at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#cvouch).
Most front-page threads mentioning China lately were actually about Zoom and yes there was a lot of criticism of Zoom's actions and there were many people angrily attributing that to xenophobia. Was it? Or is that your perception? People here tend to generally be very supportive of Hong Kong protesters. Is that also just xenophobia? Beyond that I've very rarely seen openly xenophobic or racist posts and when they happen they get downvoted into oblivion immediately which I think is a better representation of the HN community.
There has been a concerted campaign to paint China as the world's bogeyman mostly by the alt-right.
Topics such as BLM often involve whataboutism with many complaining about the lack of support for Hong Kong by supporters of BLM, see Senator Hawley's comments.
This is part of the coordinated anti-globalism, nationalist movement that Bannon and his cronies are promoting.
I am not convinced that they actually care about Hong Kong or the Uihgurs given how opposed they were to helping out the Syrian migrants.
China is doing some bad shit, but it's hard for me to judge them much more severely than any number of other countries.
I feel like you consider any criticism of the government which has Uighur muslims in camps, harvests organs from them, sells their hair as "hair extensions", bans blacks from restuarants as "alt-right". You are doing the very thing you accuse others of doing - making any criticism of China as an alt-right bogeyman.
I support criticizing and sanctioning China over the Uighur situation and HK.
What I don't support is when people use China as a tool to discredit movements like BLM because supporters aren't more broadly speaking out on injustices in other countries.
Bannon is strongly supportive of Russia even though the situation there is just as grim, see Chechnea, the loss of human rights for gays, and a Putin dictatorship of the country.
It's hard not to conclude that these criticisms are because China is a global economic power and a communist country.
Nothing wrong with unbounded speculation. Detectives have more facts to narrow the search space, whereas people online know a few facts: (a) CEO of a Nigerian start up; (b) regulatory problems in Nigeria; (c) fund raising. Don't blame the act of speculation; but blame the lack of additional facts.
If what is reported is true, then that is really sad.
Saleh's assistant Tyrese Haspil stole tens of thousands of dollars from him and instead of reporting him, he instead created a payment plan to be repaid.
Saleh showed compassion and that may have been a reason why he ended up dying in the end.
It's not clear that giving a criminal a second chance by not reporting him is compassionate. It may be compassionate to that individual but at the expense of his potential future victims. It's favoring the interests of the closer people over of the interests of strangers and is generally a selfish way to behave.
Unless you believe the justice system is wrong and nobody who does that crime should be convicted for it. In that case, it's standing up for what you believe in at the only opportunity you have to do so.
It's pretty clear that reporting a first time criminal, at least in America, is all but guaranteed to cement their life of crime and ensure there are future victims. Not because the justice system is wrong in what it punishes, but because it is wrong in how it addresses these sorts of problems. Deploying some compassion in an attempt to short circuit this demented cycle doesn't sound selfish to me. It sounds like the only civic thing to do.
1) That jail time will prevent long term future victims (it won't)
2) That jail will rehabilitate him (it won't)
3) That being compassionate will cause him to commit more crimes. In this case it did, however, I believe this is a pretty big outlier.
Well let’s agree that there is a murderer, and that having committed murder, the murder needs to receive the sharp end of the justice stick.
depending upon your Ideas around morality, that means one or more of punishment because “an eye for an eye,” punishment because of some debatable ideas around deterrence, removal from society because the murder is a threat to commit more crimes, and/or rehabilitation because life in prison does nothing except enrich prison contractors at the expense of taxpayers.... Or because civilized societies try to rehabilitate wrongdoers wherever it is a realistic possibility.
All that being said, this particular person is innocent until proven guilty. But ideally the murderer—whoever they are—will end up with one or more of these consequences, administered in a fair and transparent manner.
> Saleh showed compassion and that may have been a reason why he ended up dying in the end.
Yes, that's exactly what happened.
Lesson: report the crime to the police first. If you want to show compassion and keep the law out of your business, you can always refuse to cooperate with the investigation later, and they'll be obliged to drop the charges. But the perpetrator will know that they'll be at the top of the list if anything happens to you.
You can be held in contempt and face jail time for not participating in an investigation. The fifth only applies to self incrimiation, not to incriminating others.
> You can be held in contempt and face jail time for not participating in an investigation.
I anal but isn’t that a pretty slippery slope? Like someone rapes me or tries to kill me and the law will throw me in prison for refusing to relive those moments?
Also I’m pretty sure jstor didn’t want to press charges but the overzealous prosecutors did horrible things to Aaron Swartz anyways.
The district attorney for New Orleans, Leon Cannizzaro, has come under fire for not only issuing "fake subpoenas" that threaten jail time, he's actually arrested the victims and kept them incarcerated until trial in some cases.
It's important to note that the state of Louisiana uses a completely different system of law than the rest of the United States, based off the French civil code.
It gives judges and prosecutors a lot of leeway in how they handle cases.
Consider this situation: Alan assaults his partner Beth. He is reported by a neighbour, and Beth cooperates.
But Alan is an abuser who knows all of the tricks for exerting mental, emotional, and physical control over Beth. He convinces her to say nothing in court.
Some people argue—correctly—that threatening Beth with consequences for failing toi testify truthfully about the events she recounted to police when questioned is hurting the victim.
Others argue—also correctly—that without being able to compel victims like Alice to follow-through with the prosecution, we enable and even encourage domestic abusers to witness-tamper.
I don’t know that there is one easy works-in-all-circumstances approach.
Yes that is exactly the case. Often judges do order witnesses who express reluctance to testify into custody so that they can be sure that they will show up for the trial.
This is extremely rare in the US judicial system, and prosectors tend not to like take cases where the victim or a key witness is no longer willing to testify.
Yes, judges and lawyers for both parties in a case can legally compel witnesses to show up and testify, but doing so tends to damage the credibility of the witness, which can be fatal for their testimony.
> you can always refuse to cooperate with the investigation later, and they'll be obliged to drop the charges
This is completly false at least in the US where this story is happening. You don't decide to press or not to press charges. The presecution can decide to go ahead or not, no matter if you cooperate or not and no matter what you desire, they have no obligation whatsoever.
This is true but in a case where the bulk of the evidence is the victim's testimony, if the victim doesn't cooperate, the state will focus prosecution efforts on cases they have a better chance of winning
> Lesson: report the crime to the police first. If you want to show compassion and keep the law out of your business, you can always refuse to cooperate with the investigation later, and they'll be obliged to drop the charges. But the perpetrator will know that they'll be at the top of the list if anything happens to you.
I hope we still live in a world where "have fallback measures in case other people are going to murder you" doesn't need to be at the top of our contingency planning. Obviously it was here, and that's tragic, but I think and hope that most of us shouldn't need to learn to anticipate this as a likely, or even plausible, response.
> I hope we still live in a world where "have fallback measures in case other people are going to murder you" doesn't need to be at the top of our contingency planning. Obviously it was here, and that's tragic, but I think and hope that most of us shouldn't need to learn to anticipate this as a likely, or even plausible, response.
Sure, if you only consider murder, then it's unlikely (in America at least). But this same pattern happens for lesser things. Someone hits your car, and says "can we just settle this privately, I don't want my premium to go up", and you agree out of kindness, and a few days later you get a letter saying that they're making a claim against your insurance. You've missed your chance to get yourself on record as the victim.
In this case, or similar cases, the guy might have done other things like accuse him of blackmail, or accuse him of being involved in the crime etc.
Notwithstanding the risk of being compelled to testify, I would still take the route I mentioned above (report it but refuse to cooperate any further). I'd be surprised if the prosecutor decided to press ahead and grant you immunity to make you testify if you're not willing. You could retract your statement, which would signify that they cannot predict what you'll say at trial. Much more likely they'd just drop the case if the victim is unwilling...but I'm not a lawyer, I could be wrong.
> Someone hits your car, and says "can we just settle this privately, I don't want my premium to go up", and you agree out of kindness, and a few days later you get a letter saying that they're making a claim against your insurance. You've missed your chance to get yourself on record as the victim.
No this has happened to me and I won ultimately anyway. In California they ask people to immediately get out of the road if they can (i.e. move their cars), and generally deal with it privately if it's under some dollar amount. All states have some variant of this.
If the person then comes after you it will be decided between the insurance companies who directly investigate the car and take statements. In my case I explained what happened and pointed out how the scratches/dents/etc supported it.
As for playing games with the police, filing a false police report is a crime so be very careful about changing your official statements with them. I'd say talk to a lawyer to advise you on exactly what to say, of perhaps even have them deal directly to get you out of it.
FWIW This happened to me in South Carolina. It did not work out in my favor. Someone backed into my car and the next day filed a claim saying I hit her. The insurance companies sided with her...
It's not like a white collar criminal who embezzled money wouldn't be out on bail. Considering the level of detail that didn't go into planning this murder I don't think involving the police would have afforded the victim any extra protection.
The police are just men with guns that anybody can call. They're only really useful in any other situation where men with guns are useful, like breaking up a brawl.
They're men with guns and notebooks. Which makes them much more useful than men with guns in creating a paper trail. If the suspect had known he'd been reported to the police, he probably would have guessed he'd be the cops first interview when his boss turned up dead.
Well how would that have helped the perpetrator? He'd be the first person the police would look at. In most cases, retaliating for this kind of thing is not the rational thing to do. That doesn't mean it won't happen, but it's unlikely.
When people retaliate against victims for reporting them, it's generally because there's a long game that they're concerned about. It could be an organized crime outfit that's concerned about it's future, it's reputation etc. Or an abusive partner who expects to be able to continue the abuse long term, so they want to "nip it in the bud" when someone talks to the police. So even though they may get in more trouble for the retaliation, they think it's worth it in the long term. The victims in these cases are usually captive in some sense.
Imo, generally when you're the victim of an unexpected crime, you're safer reporting to the authorities than you would be keeping quiet about it.
>> Saleh showed compassion and that may have been a reason why he ended up dying in the end.
The real lesson is that nobody should take the law into their own hands. Putting a criminal on a repayment program is a terrible idea especially with covid-19 economic crisis and so many people struggling to survive. During tough times, you should expect the worst of human nature.
> Police identified Haspil through “anti-felon identification cards that were spewed like confetti in Saleh’s apartment,” NBC New York reported.
Can someone explain what this is? I assumed the guy would quickly be suspect #1 once they combed through Saleh's computer and found discussions about the stolen money. What's this "anti-felon identification cards" reference about?
Looks like its a deterrent to someone using a Taser in a "bad" way:
> So in 1993 the AFID system was created. Now, when many Taser guns are fired, they disperse dozens of colourful anti-felon identification (AFID) tags, which resemble confetti and are printed with tiny serial numbers. It would be very time-consuming to pick all the tags up and so inevitably the police are able to find some and trace the (TASER) gun that was used.
When you fire a tazer, along with the wires a bunch of confetti sprays out as well. The confetti has id numbers on it that can be traced back to who purchased it.
I think this is the major point but it's side-tracked from the writer.
Here is an interesting tidbit:
> In order to track the weapon’s use, the cartridges containing the projectile darts are given serial numbers. When fired, the projectiles are accompanied by 20 to 30 vibrantly colored circular paper tags, a little smaller than one-quarter inch in diameter. The tag is known as an AFID with each AFID bearing a serial number printed on it corresponding to the serial number of the cartridge from which it was fired. Despite the bright colors of the AFIDs, their size makes them very difficult to detect. This presentation demonstrates a method for locating the released AFIDs using an alternate light source.
tl;dr: Tasers' use is traceable and identifiable. The assistant probably didn't know that.
The alleged killer won first place (along with another person) for website design in a Future Business Leaders of America competition held in Rochester. [1]
The NYT wouldn't have hesitated to publish Tyrese's photo had he been white and Fahim had been black. Probably their respective races would have even been mentioned in the headline.
You’re being downvoted because this is unhelpful speculation which adds nothing to the discussion - be it true or untrue. If the response to what you say is “OK...”, what you have said is not terribly interesting.
Which makes sense. Black people have historically been and currently are scapegoats for a lot of crimes they did not commit. Kinda makes sense to give them more leeway.
I also don't like how they detail every sex crime a sexual assault. It's very confusing to know xx needs 50k for bail and yy needs 2k both for sexual assault which ranges greatly from groping to rape.
I'm so confused by this post. is "xx" referring to chromosomes? Cis women need a lot of money for bail? "yy" is not even a thing, you need at least one x.
> Detectives believe that the killer, dressed in a black three-piece suit, wearing a black mask and carrying a duffel bag, followed Mr. Saleh off an elevator in his building and into his apartment, a law enforcement official said. He used a Taser to immobilize Mr. Saleh and then stabbed him to death.
It appears the security of the elevator opening directly into the victim's apartment and the COVID-19 crisis (the suspect was wearing a black mask) both played a role.
Since it appears the victim and perpetrator were strongly familiar with each other, the interaction could have been as simple as the perpetrator asking to meet up and suggesting that some of the money that he had been asked to repay was in the duffel bag — unless the victim was coerced or threatened beforehand, he may not have even realized his life was at risk until after the two of them arrived at his apartment.
This is not the scenario suggested by evidence presented in the article. Might be worth a read ;)
Police allege the accused 1) disguised self [article implies video evidence suggested victim did not recognize the accused], 2) followed victim onto elevator [faked pressing button for different floor], 3) followed victim off elevator, 4) incapacitated victim using taser [which, it turns out, spews owner identifying material when fired], 5) stabbed victim to death, 6) left scene [multiple times?] to procure materials for cleaning of crime scene, 7) may have been interrupted in the cleaning of crime scene by victim's sister who, 8) called police upon discovering brother's partially dismembered corpse.
Sounds so weird. Anything short of a full mask, seems like there would be a high chance Saleh would recognize an assistant. This is someone you work with closely on a regular basis. Height, build, hair, skin complexion would still be visible under a half mask.
On the flip side, I'd be nervous as hell about being recognized if I was the assistant.
To be fair, the suspect was 21. His tenure at the victim's company cannot have been very long.
Despite the victim "knowing" the suspect as an employee, I find it easy to imagine him not recognizing his employee who had a fairly average build, in a fairly common outfit, in an elevator with people being conditioned to keep as much distance as possible. How often do you closely look at fellow elevator riders' faces? Especially these days?
That being said, with the brief tenure assumed, it's incredible that the CEO would be willing to work so flexibly with a relatively new employee who stole what amounted to up to 100K.
> I find it easy to imagine him not recognizing his employee who had a fairly average build, in a fairly common outfit, in an elevator with people being conditioned to keep as much distance as possible
I find it hard to imagine to be honest. If they tracked him down because he bought the Taser and other items, but don't have a clear ID from the CCTV and DNA, it's possible that the assistant hired someone for the dirty job and provided him with the tools?
And did the guy really think he wouldn't be recognized just bc of the mask? Obviously detectives are going to have co-workers look over surveillance videos...they'd probably be able to identify the "man in the suit" pretty quickly
An understated fact of most criminals is they are notoriously dumb. I mean, think about it, you begin stealing money, you think you can away with, then you think you can get away with invasion, murder, and disposal of the body. You really have to be dumb to even embark on this adventure.
1. Why? Money. Works almost always. 2. Scary how little you can be killed for. 3. Scary how big of a risk to their own life people are willing to take for money. 4. Is it really money? Criminals are usually spendthrifts. All that stuff really doesn’t improve life much. Seems like status signals must be the real insatiable desire. 5. Rethinking, this seems like the work of a drug addict. The person has reasonable executive capacity (dopamine drive), but lacks empathy for others or their own future.
This, so often. The amount of pain, heartbreak, and trauma caused by relatively-meaningless amounts of money, which a family would easily part with if it kept their loved one alive.
The article doesn't say that the stolen money was directly used to pay off family debts. It instead insinuates that the man was well-paid in the first place.
> Detectives believe that the motive for the killing stemmed from Mr. Saleh having discovered that the assistant had stolen tens of thousands of dollars from him, despite the fact that Mr. Saleh had not reported the man and had set up what amounted to a repayment plan for him to return the money, one of the officials said.
Tidbit from the article: He founded PrankDial.com and it's a $10M business.
I'd never heard of it. Wow... $10M run rate for a website that sends prank calls to others? Like "Chinese Apology" "Indian Tech Support"? Talk about a site that should be cancelled: https://www.prankdial.com/?category=services
Some years ago in Bethesda, Maryland, the manager of a Lululemon store was murdered by her assistant after she confronted the woman about money gone missing. The assistant gave herself some minor injuries and tried to sell the police a story of a man breaking in and attacking them. The story fell apart pretty quickly.
Its possible they only have hard evidence of second-degree murder at this stage, so rather than risk the guy being released due to lack of probable cause for first degree murder they can just bring a charge with fewer elements to prove and then add first degree murder later when they have gone over the evidence more.
After all, maybe he didn't originally intend to kill the guy, he did start by tasing him.
NYC law makes a first-degree charge a little more difficult even with premeditation. You need aggravating factors such as murder in the process of another crime (robbery, kidnapping, arson, rape, ...) or if the victim is a cop, judge, witness, etc.
Prosecutors can always upgrade charges later as more evidence comes in.
Having to refile with lesser charges gives the defense an advantage because they can tell the jury "look even the prosecution doesn't believe they have enough evidence of my clients guilt!"
This sounds like something Patrick Bateman, from American Psycho, would do. However, in the book/movie, he doesn't get caught and didn't do this act for financial reasons.
A seemingly normal person goes and dismember his colleague after things doesn’t go his way when he when in for a scam. Why is it not 1st degree murder?
Because with initial charges, when you've got pretty solid probable cause for intent (2nd degree), there's no reason to take any risk at the probable cause hearing with premeditation (1st degree); if you've got evidence that you think can get a conviction on that as you investigate, upgrading charges is easy.
You have to prove the accused went there with the intention to kill. He could have gone with the intention to talk about their debt situation, but then saw the victim and went red with rage or something like that.
It's really, really hard to get prove exactly what someone was thinking. You need a very concrete piece of evidence that proves intent, just going somewhere is not going to be enough.
How about going there completely disguised, and pretending to go to a different floor in the building than Fahim? If he went there to talk to him, he wouldn't press a button in the elevator for a different apartment.
It'll probably be upgraded later when they finish their investigation. The priority now is keeping him in custody, and for that they may have to present evidence to a judge. So they're going with what they know they can prove right now.
David Spade's personal assistant famously attacked him with a stun gun, so be careful!
Normally, though, the story is the reverse: a celeb mis-treated their personal assistant and is now being sued.
Or gets totally thrown under the bus by hostile testimony, like is happening to Amber Heard right now in the Heard/Depp trial. Her PA poked a bunch of holes in Heard's story after AH tried to publicly claim a personal tragedy of the PA's as her own for sympathy and lost all of the PA's goodwill.
Don't screw with the person who knows your whole life in and out, I guess.
This is utterly tragic. Not sure that there’s a lesson to be learned other than life is short and people can be unpredictable. Must be so hard for his sister and family.
My takeaway is if I discover a crime being committed by someone I don't know well, report and cut all contact. Upgrade Security. Be alert. This whole situation is a tragedy, and his willingness to impart reason with the unreasonable cost him his life.
There are cameras everywhere nowadays. I don't understand how someone thinks they can realistically get away with something like this, especially in the middle of NYC in broad daylight.
This is sad. I’m thinking the assistant was planning on sawing the ceo up and dump him in a river. Which doesn’t make sense. He would be a suspect on the list if Saleh had disapeared. Unless he planned to make out like a bandit into a country that doesn’t extradite criminals.
I guess the theory would be that - if the body was never discovered, the police wouldn't be able to prove a crime occurred. They would simply have questioned a couple of people and if none of them 'broke', they would have been let go
That's good. The NY Times did not help this situation, or the hundreds of other potential situations that may or may not evolve in the future, with their breathless coverage of this "likely the work of a professional" job.
I knew Fahim personally. I know people who spoke to him the day of about this very issue, so I have some information that most people don't. I absolutely do not believe this kid did it.
Fahim was well liked in Nigeria but he was disrupting a dangerous market.
Tyrese had recently purchased and signed for the taser that was used in the attack. He was at home depot buying cleaning supplies right after the murder. That's some very significant evidence.
1) For one thing, he was not the only running a well funded motorcycle transportation business in Nigeria.
2) He had already pivoted into last-mile delivery and again he was not the only one running a well funded one
3) Let's even assume his motorcycle transportation was disrupting a dangerous market, it is basically the same market that Uber and those before Uber disrupted in Nigeria and nothing like this happened
This sounds like a good old coverup lol. Seriously? The assistant? Because he stole tens of thousands of dollars and got a payment plan setup for it? And then what, he goes and uses an electric saw to dismember the body? Right. That's probably how it happened.
It's much more likely that the assistant was either blackmailed or paid a much larger amount by a 3rd party to carry this out, potentially stealing the money from him to provide an alternative motive. The way the crime was carried out might be some signature card that people involved will recognized and see as a warning.
I don’t see how this type of speculation is helpful. People in the original thread were convinced this was a professional hit an because the guy used a saw and had a duffle bag, even though professional hitmen would know how to dispose of a body and not show up on camera.
In fact, what's really likely is that that 3rd party is being manipulated by lizard overlords to make us believe there are still humans with agency in the world when actually they have brainwave modifiers that override everything we want to do.
With Neuralink, I won't even be able to say these seditious things. Celebrate your last few moments of free will!
I hate to admit it, as someone who previously lived with a friend who took mental health nose-dive and ended up a conspiracy theory nut, the practical side of my mind leads me to support this kind of theory. Of course, we'll never know for sure, but how many PA's have cartel hit man level knowledge of disposing a body?
The thought that someone would kill someone with this level of professionalism without external leverage is questionable. Especially since only tens of thousands of dollars was involved in the alleged strife. If I were looking for a perfect fall-guy, this is a home run of a way to knock someone off and then have a "lovers revenge" type cover sweep everything out of the limelight.
Having read that now, I'm starting to think he was on some serious drugs the day it happened (most people aren't going to be able to stomach chopping up a human, led alone an animal) and then slowly lost it a number of days later.
My own anecdote. I hated frogs and disgusted by them. I don’t like frogs because I saw them chopped alive when I was a kid in a wet market in Asia, my mom brought me there to accompany her grocery buying. I think I was a first or second grader elementary.
Then I became a senior high schooler, and we had a biology class where we need to open up a frog. It was a group project.
After I opened up the frog, there’s no way for us to fix the frog anymore. Then I rip the frog even more apart, from skinning it completely to cutting it in many ways to the bone and skull to “learn more”.
My friends in my group were a bit horrified with what I did and they said I looked like I enjoyed it.
It was until a few days later it dawned on me like “how was I able to do that without any disgust, not only that, but with an interested curious somewhat happy look on my face? I am a psycho!”
> maybe the whole steal money to make that look like the motive is part of a much larger setup...
You can play this game ad infinitum. Maybe there was a larger setup, but what if that larger setup was just a false flag for a much larger setup? And what if that much larger setup was all part of an even larger setup? And what if...
Other possible lessons: Don't get a PA, manage your own affairs. Keep your PA at a very comfortable distance. Take your privacy and security very seriously. Go to the police when someone steals of 10s of thousands of dollars from you. Do what you can to see that person charged to the full extent that the law allows. Don't come up with a payment plan for them. My own read is this guy was more concerned about being/appearing socially responsible and forwent good risk management.
In the end tho, to end up dead and dismembered from this, this guy is still very unlucky.
It sounds like you've never had the privilege of working with a good PA. They're a force multiplier and allow you to focus on bigger, more important issues. I'd have one if I could afford it.
Out of topic. When I met my (now) wife on online dating. A lot of her friends actually noted her to be careful, because there are a lot of crazy people here (NYC). I agree with that notion.
That's going to increase the base number of those with some flavor of mental instability, but I've never seen anything to suggest the ratio is different than other places.
In general: "studies have shown that the risk for serious mental illness is generally higher in cities compared to rural areas" [1].
For NYC specifically: about 60k out of America's 500k homeless people live in New York City, which is the highest homeless population of any US city [2]. The "large majority of street homeless New Yorkers are people living with mental illness or other severe health problems" [3].
These sources confirm what I think a lot of people have seen for themselves through personal travel and experience: mental illness/instability correlates with urbanization.
It doesn't matter if they have public social media profiles, a bunch of accolades, or not. There is a group of people that carry tasers in their purse for a sense of security, theoretically putting the people that don't carry purses at all at more risk.
You can also have a healthy relationship.
YMMV. Its actually pretty random and potential dates miss many connections if they resort to overfitting to reduce potential strife. The end.
That's objectively not true. "Crazy people" as measured by people with serious mental illness disproportionately gather in big cities. Even IF the per-capita rate were absolutely flat across the urban-rural dimension, which it is not, you'd still face more opportunities to cross paths with a "crazy person" in a dense city compared to a smaller one.
Amazing how far this is from all the early speculation. Also incredibly sad.