It seems far more likely to be a case of incompetence. Law enforcement actually has an extremely low rate of "solving" cases, especially if you exclude all the "solved" cases where the suspect is caught on scene or that end in a plea bargain (i.e. did not have to establish sufficient evidence in the first place).
Ever since he got "caught" (if you can call someone literally telling the police where he is "the police catching him"), all I've been hearing about is how the police wants to use DNA evidence and bullet "fingerpints" (i.e. attempting to demonstrate that a bullet was not only fired from a given type of gun but a specific singular gun of that type) and other CSI woo to now tie the actual crime to him. They might actually be lucky and produce matches in this case as they have the actual suspect and murder weapon (assuming this wasn't an extremely unlikely 5D chess move of using a body double fall guy and/or different gun) but both of these types of evidence are extremely unreliable and rarely help actually finding the suspect even if they make for good television when they work. As I understand it the police even walked back on the mayor's initial claim about "having a name" to "having a list of names" - not to mention that you don't call in the FBI when you already have good leads yourself (if only for optics/political reasons).
He seems to have been mentally unstable for a while before engaging in this killing and the fact he wrote a manifesto strongly suggests he had an intention of being caught or at least considered it highly likely. The monopoly money bag wasn't necessarily a "red herring" as everyone I heard talk about it interpreted it as intending to send a message, which seems to agree with the apparent contents of his manifesto (based on what news reports have cited from it). The water bottle the police now wants to use for DNA evidence may have been deliberately left there for this purpose, too.
Based on what I've heard of his manifesto, he may have intended to kill other people too but have realized the difficulty involved given that his very public first killing likely spooked the other people on his list. I think it's more likely he didn't fully plan out an entire sequence of killings or didn't account for these complications and essentially gave up, settling on being caught sooner rather than later. People generally don't write manifestos when they don't also want to take credit for their actions.
People can have contradictory motives. People in real life aren't driven by carefully considered system of beliefs. Only in fiction are people required to make sense.
We just make enough sense to mostly get by in the world.
That said, apparently his manifesto is fairly short and honestly sounds more like a confession than an actual political manifesto.
My point is more that usually when you hear about a killer having a manifesto you expect a lenghty diatribe about what they think is wrong with society and why they think what they did helps fix it - whether it's early 20th century "propaganda of the deed" anarchists, late 20th century "fall of the West" primitivists or early 21st century "race war" white supremacists and "new crusade" Christian nationalists. Of course for e.g. Islamist terrorists you don't even need a manifesto because everyone knows the cliff notes version already (Western imperialism, Islamic caliphate, blasphemy, etc). Instead this guy seems to have largely been upset with privatized healthcare, which is a common sentiment but rarely enough to motivate someone to pull off such an elaborate stunt.
That his manifesto is pretty rushed and incomplete does support the idea that he's more mentally unstable than genuinely "politically radicalized" though. The Christchurch shooter's manifesto for example was fairly incoherent and seemed more like an elaborate trolling attempt than a sophisticated political tract but clearly some effort went into it. Luigi's almost feels like a half-hearted homework assignment. I wouldn't be surprised if he quickly wrote it after the killing on a whim and didn't give it much thought before, which again would fit with my impression that he really focused on the first killing and didn't plan out much beyond that. As someone struggling with ADHD and autistic hyperfixation (not saying either of those apply to him), I can relate.
They don’t even need to actually tie him to the killing to put him in jail for a long time - possession of an illegal suppressor is a slam dunk here, and that’s major jail time.
It wouldn’t help him with any of the rest of this mess, but possessing the illegal suppressor is an easy ‘we can keep him in jail until we figure out the rest of this’ situation.
> all I've been hearing about is how the police wants to use DNA evidence and bullet "fingerpints" [...] and other CSI woo to now tie the actual crime to him
I don't know about your country, but in my country if you look like the person shown on CCTV committing a crime, you're wearing the same jacket, you're carrying the same illegal gun, and you're carrying a handwritten manifesto justifying the crime?
That's enough evidence for a normal jury of normal people to convict. The cops don't really need to add any DNA or CSI woo, juries are capable of exercising common sense.
Only way there's reasonable doubt here is if the guy's carrying the first place trophy for the CEO shooter lookalike contest.
Yeah, that's why I'm pointing it out. It's like the police is trying to oversell their investigative work in the public image, which strongly suggests that they had very little hand in actually catching him and now try to compensate - whether it's because they really were tipped off by a McDonald's employee or because the FBI found him doing something fishier. But the fact he had everything on him strongly suggests that the McDonald's story is at least credible.
It's pretty humiliating if you have a big militarized police force and can't catch a guy who killed a big important CEO in public and then went on wearing the murder suit in public until a random McDonald's guy calls you up and literally tells you where to find him, in public.
Remember when hundreds of militants crossed the most secure border wall in any "Western" country ever both on foot, in vehicles and on paragliders and went on to massacre literally over a thousand people including hundreds of reservists before the second most overfunded military in the world was able to put a stop to them and stupidly ended up killing civvies and friendlies in the crossfire because it has a doctrine of preventing hostage taking at any cost?
Remember when the US spy agencies prevented a credible terrorist plot by accidentally catching a guy in the Middle East carrying a thumb drive with terrorist plans on it?
Surveillance exists to maintain control, it can't help establish it. Dragnet surveillance exists to reconstruct events, not to prevent them. And most importantly, it all exists to suppress, not to protect. It's about dominance, not security.
Ever since he got "caught" (if you can call someone literally telling the police where he is "the police catching him"), all I've been hearing about is how the police wants to use DNA evidence and bullet "fingerpints" (i.e. attempting to demonstrate that a bullet was not only fired from a given type of gun but a specific singular gun of that type) and other CSI woo to now tie the actual crime to him. They might actually be lucky and produce matches in this case as they have the actual suspect and murder weapon (assuming this wasn't an extremely unlikely 5D chess move of using a body double fall guy and/or different gun) but both of these types of evidence are extremely unreliable and rarely help actually finding the suspect even if they make for good television when they work. As I understand it the police even walked back on the mayor's initial claim about "having a name" to "having a list of names" - not to mention that you don't call in the FBI when you already have good leads yourself (if only for optics/political reasons).
He seems to have been mentally unstable for a while before engaging in this killing and the fact he wrote a manifesto strongly suggests he had an intention of being caught or at least considered it highly likely. The monopoly money bag wasn't necessarily a "red herring" as everyone I heard talk about it interpreted it as intending to send a message, which seems to agree with the apparent contents of his manifesto (based on what news reports have cited from it). The water bottle the police now wants to use for DNA evidence may have been deliberately left there for this purpose, too.
Based on what I've heard of his manifesto, he may have intended to kill other people too but have realized the difficulty involved given that his very public first killing likely spooked the other people on his list. I think it's more likely he didn't fully plan out an entire sequence of killings or didn't account for these complications and essentially gave up, settling on being caught sooner rather than later. People generally don't write manifestos when they don't also want to take credit for their actions.