By Teresa Smith

The following is for entertainment purposes only.

Luigi Mangione is accused of assassinating a for-profit healthcare executive in New York City on Dec. 4th.

In a manhunt that captivated the world, a masked suspect calmly left the scene, leaving a trail of clues in his wake, including bullet casings etched with the words “deny” “defend” and “depose” at the scene of the crime, as well as a bag of Monopoly money in Central Park.

Within minutes of Mangione’s name being released following his Dec. 9th arrest, internet sleuths were quick to find his Twitter account, and there they noticed something we all should have expected by then: more clues.

The Curious Case of 286

In his Twitter header, we see that Mangione has made exactly 286 posts, and directly below that is the Pokémon Breloom, which has a Pokédex number of 286.

This has sparked a number of rumors that just like the bullet etchings and the Monopoly money, the number 286 is a clue.

But that isn’t all. Some internet sleuths have reported another instance of the number.

According to some, the route the suspect took from New York City to Altoona, PA, where he was caught, is exactly 286 miles.

Is the Route He Took Really 286 Miles?

I was incredulous when I first heard this rumor.

I tried looking it up myself, and found that even when I set the route to begin at the Washington Bridge Station (which was being reported as the route he took out of the city), all I got was 279 miles.

That’s seven miles shy of the “magic number” of 286.

But then I started wondering:

What happens if instead, I map out the route so it starts at a different spot that we know the suspect visited that day?

Below is a map widely shared by the Associated Press of the alleged route the suspect took the day of the crime. In the days before the arrest, while the manhunt was still underway, every news station came out with their own version of this map, modifying the maps to include new pieces of surveillance footage as they emerged. (Here are various versions created by CBS, New York Times, CNN, and Fox.) These maps were usually shared alongside calls for the members of the public to assist the police in apprehending the shooter.

Looking at this route, we can see that the suspect fled from the scene on bicycle, taking a detour through Central Park, where it is assumed he left a rather distinctive backpack full of Monopoly money (This wouldn’t be found until 3 days later).

The suspect then exits Central Park via bicycle, hops into a taxi cab at 86th & Columbia, and travels all the way up to Harlem, where he is dropped off at the Washington Bridge Station. From there, it is assumed he, she, or they took a Greyhound bus out of town.

And that’s how we get 286 miles

I’m too lazy to make a map that perfectly matches the alleged route of the shooter on the day of the crime, but if you tinker around with Google maps, you can see that pretty much any route you trace north through the city that starts at the scene of the crime at the Midtown Hilton and ends at the Washington Bridge Station shakes out to seven miles and some change:

Even with that little bit of variation, no matter which way you do the math, when you add the 279 miles from the Washington Bridge Station to Altoona, the route you get is 286 miles.

So that gives us three instances of 286—all being released at the exact moment his name became public.

I mean, what are the odds, right?

• Of all the Pokémon in the Pokéworld, he picked Breloom (#286).

• Of all the times he could have posted to Twitter, only posted exactly 286 times.

• Of all the routes he could have taken from the scene of the crime out of town, he picked the only one that would put 286 miles between the scene of the crime and the place of the arrest.

…Or did he?

Plot twist: We are just learning he didn’t leave town that way at all!

In a new development first reported on Dec. 13th, we are now learning that the suspect did not leave Manhattan via a bus the Washington Bridge Station, as was reported, and as his early actions seemed to indicate.

It seems, according to new reporting, that he actually left town via a train at Penn Station.

…but he definitely went all the way up to the Washington Bridge Station along the way.

What this means is the route he took from the scene of the crime to the train he used to get off of Manhattan Island more or less looked like a squigglier version of this:

Okay, fam. What!

The largest manhunt in modern surveillance history is literally underway. The world’s seventh largest standing army, the New York Police Force, has been mobilized to drop everything and look for you. And you’re on Manhattan. And what do you do? …YOU TAKE A DAY TRIP THROUGH TOWN??

I am in awe.

Planting a false escape route

Was the shooter’s plan to throw the police off his track? Perhaps this might explain why his plan north to Washington Street Station was quite sloppy, including exiting the park on the same bike he rode in and being caught on multiple surveillance cameras—including a high-definition camera inside a taxi cab.

Was he trying to be seen so to create a the false sense that he’d left town via a different route than the one he ultimately took?

According to the new reporting, after his (notably sloppy) route up Manhattan to the Washington Bridge Station, he the slipped onto the subway, which he took back down south to Penn Station. It seems he must have suddenly became a lot more circumspect in that moment which is perhaps how he threw police off his trail so throughly.

After all, police assumed he boarded a bus at the Greyhound station, sending them on a wild goose chase to Atlanta. Perhaps this was a cleaver, and was how the alleged suspect alluded capture for the next five days.

But also…

Why did he pick Washington Bridge Station as the place to plan this misleading track? After all, there are a dozen ways one might leave town: he could have chosen as one of them as the place to plant this false escape route.

Could it be that he chose to use this specific route to throw police (and the media, and the public) off his trail because he knew that when he was caught in Altoona, it would create the impression that he took a route that adds up to 286 miles?

Either way, what we know is this: At the moment of Magione’s arrest, we got two, if not three clues pertaining to the number 286.

This is one of several reasons I believe he intended to be caught exactly where he was.

Want to walk through the clues with me to see why I think this?

Check out my forthcoming post: “The Luigi Code: Luigi Mangione had every intention of being caught at that McDonalds, and here’s why.”

But hey, all jokes aside, we know Luigi Mangione wasn’t in Manhattan that day anyway. He was 1,000 other places that day.