By Teresa Smith

The following is for entertainment purposes only.

On Dec. 4th, 2024, an American health insurance executive was gunned down in New York City, prompting a five day manhunt that captivated the world, ending with the arrest of Luigi Mangione in Altoona, PA. on Dec. 9th.

Immediately following the shooting, the masked suspect left the scene calmly, also leaving a trail of clues in his wake, clues that seem to allude to the motives for the killing. The first clue was uncovered shortly after the shooting: bullet casings etched with the words “deny” “defend” and “depose” at the scene of the crime. Three days later, a distinctive backpack resembling the bag warn by the shooter was found full of Monopoly money in Central Park. These clues were highly publicized, reported in news media shortly after they were found.

The next clues would not emerge until after Mangione’s arrest. This detail is important, but we’ll get to that…

Within minutes of Mangione’s name being announced as the apprehended “person of interest” in the case, Internet sleuths were quick to find his social media accounts. In particular, his Twitter account caught people’s attention with what seemed to be two clues in the header—clues that would ultimately point to a third clue. All three of these clues pertain to the number 286.

…the more deeply we look into the clues associated with Mangione specifically, especially the clues related to the number 286, the more it seems to indicate that Mangione was just as clueless about the details of the shooting as the rest of us. Could this prove his innocence?

Before we dive into these clues, it is worth pondering how, even though these clues are thematically linked to the CEO killing, they do not actually to link Mangione to the scene of the crime. They could have been manufactured by anyone after the shooting occurred thanks to the media bombardment of the public with evidence the police was finding in real time in the hours and days immediately after the crime. Likewise, the more deeply we look into the clues associated with Mangione specifically, especially the clues related to the number 286, the more it seems to indicate that Mangione was just as clueless about the details of the shooting as the rest of us. Could this prove his innocence?

The Curious Case of 286

The moment Mangione’s name became public, three clues simultaneously became available that pertain to the number 286. The first two clues were quite obvious, and could be used find the more elusive third clue.

The first two clues are as follows:

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

Was this was a way to draw attention to this number? Mangione, it seemed, was priming us to look for the number 286 with these clues. Soon, sleuths on the Internet seemed to have found a third instance of the number:

The route between the scene of the crime and site of Mangione’s arrest in Altoona, PA seems to be exactly 286 miles, but only if you follow the route the shooter was widely believed to have taken at that time.

The presence of a Pokémon in these clues might likewise allude to the concept of being “caught,” as the official slogan for Pokémon in the United States slogan is “Gotta catch ‘um all.”

From this clue, it does seem that Mangione he intended to be arrested exactly where he was, which was 286 miles from the scene of the crime, via the the route the shooter was widely reported to have taken out of Manhattan at that time. But the more we look at this clue, the more it seems to indicate that he knew no more than the public did about the shooter’s whereabouts.

How do we get this route of 286 miles?

In the days shortly after Mangione’s arrest, I was incredulous when I first heard chatter online about how the the distance from the crime scene to the place of arrest was 286 miles.

After all, if you try using Google Maps to look up various route configurations from Midtown to Altoona, you’ll never be able to to get the route to be exactly 286 miles. The reason for this, though, is that because the mapping software automatically assigns the shortest route through Manhattan. The shortest route, however, is not the route the shooter took.

While the manhunt was underway, it was widely reported that the shooter left Manhattan via bus at the Washington Bridge Station in Harlem. This is quite an out-of-the-way route if you are headed to Altoona, and you’re can’t even get the mapping software to trace it unless you break the trip up into two stretches.

Let’s work our way backwards from the site of Mangione’s arrest.

First, if we trace the shortest route from that Washington Bridge Station to the McDonalds where Mangione was arrested in Altoona, that gives us 279 miles, which is 7 miles short of 286.

It is important, when tracing this route, that you start at the George Washington Bridge Station, otherwise you end up with different numbers. During the manhunt, it was wildly publicized that this was where the shooter departed from.

Now, let’s turn towards at the first part of the route, the route from the scene of the crime to the Washington Bridge Station. This part is a bit more complex.

The path of the shooter through Manhattan

During the five days in which the manhunt was underway, the media and police worked together to attempt to recruit the public into assist in apprehending the shooter.

Each new piece of surveillance footage that emerged of the shooter on his route through the city sparked a new flurry of headlines, and each headline became a dot on the maps different news stations were constructing as the manhunt unfolded. Different variations of the map of the shooter’s route were created and widely shared by by CBS, the New York Times, CNN, and Fox.

Here is the version of the map released by the Associated Press as it stood two days after the shooting:

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 bag full of Monopoly money (this would not be found until three days later).

The suspect then exits Central Park via bicycle, hops into a taxi cab at 86th Street & Columbia, then travels seven miles north up to Harlem, where he is dropped off at the Washington Bridge Station. From there, it was widely reported that he must have taken a Greyhound bus out of town.

The math all seems to point to 286

While I’m too lazy to figure out how to make Google maps show the shooter’s exact route through the city, if you look up any of the routes north from the Midtown Hilton (the scene of the crime) through Central Park to the Washington Bridge Station, it shakes out to seven miles and some change:

And no matter which way you do the math, when you add those 7 miles to the 279 miles from the Washington Bridge Station to Altoona, you get 286 miles.

What are the odds?

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

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

• Of all the routes the shooter could have taken from the scene of the crime out of town, he picked the only route that would shake out to 286 miles. …Or did he?

And here is where Mangione may have messed up when he was creating this clue.

Plot twist: the shooter actually left town a different way

In a new development first reported on Dec. 13th, we are now learning that the suspect did not leave Manhattan via the Washington Bridge Station after all, nor did he leave via bus.

It is now reported that he boarded a train at Penn Station, and that this was how he escaped Manhattan.

He did, however, take a detour up to the Washington Bridge Street Station, a detour that we might now assume was meant to throw the police off his tracks.

What this means is the route the shooter actually took to get off of the island of Manhattan looked sort of like this:

The shooter managed to fool us all—the police, the media, and the public—into thinking he had taken this route off of Manhattan.

It is likewise worth contemplating the work the shooter did to make it look like he had taken this route.

The shooter tricked us all into thinking he had left Manhattan via the Washington Street Bridge

The shooter, it seems, created the false impression that he had escaped Manhattan via the Washington Street Bridge.

The way he did this is quite interesting:

As he traveled north through the city, he kept one identifying thing visible on his person that that would keep the trail from going cold in surveillance footage, while also shedding things as he went.

This may have made it more difficult for the patrols to find him that were looking for him at the time, but also left a “breadcrumb trail” in the surveillance footage to make sure that it would be believed he had taken this route from the city by those tracing the surveillance later.

The breakdown this “bread crumb trail” is as follows:

• At the time of the shooting, the shooter wore a very a distinctive backpack. This backpack can be clearly seen in surveillance footage of the shooting.
• He then flees through an ally, boards a bicycle, and heads north, still wearing the backpack, making it easy to identify him in surveillance footage in this leg of the route. He then disappears into Central Park via bicycle.
• Later, when he exits Central Park, he no longer has the distinct backpack and his jacket is gone as well. This makes it more difficult for patrols to identify him. But he still had the bicycle. This ensures that the surveillance footage will continue to track his route.
• He then leaves the bike somewhere on the streets of midtown (where it was probably stolen, as it has not yet been found) and enters a taxi.
• Many taxies now have in-vehicle camera systems (IVCS), so if he had wanted to hide his route, entering a taxi isn’t exactly the best idea. But if you want to continue to establish a clear path through the city via surveillance footage and a witness (the cabbie), this is rather smart move.
• In the images obtained from the footage in the taxi, it appears that his eye are red. Has the shooter been crying? We can also clearly see his new outfit: a puffer vest and a surgical mask.
• He has the taxi drop him off at the Washington Bridge station, and thanks to the footage of his new outfit in the taxi, it is easy to trace him to the station.
• That’s where he vanishes. This creates the impression that he left Manhattan on a Greyhound bus from that station, which is exactly what was widely reported.

It is now understood that in reality, the shooter became a lot less sloppy at that point.

It was not until after Mangione was arrested that the following was revealed:

• Rather than leaving town via bus, the shooter managed to quietly slip onto the subway, which he rode back down to Penn Station, and from there he escaped Manhattan on a train.

While seemingly risky, this “breadcrumb trail” turned out to be a clever way the shooter threw police from his trail, leading them on a fruitless chase to Atlanta.

Was Luigi Mangione tricked by the shooter as well?

At the time of his arrest, Luigi Mangione released three clues that point to the number 286, clues that seem to indicate that he though that the McDonalds where he was being arrested as 286 miles from the scene of the crime via the route that the shooter took.

But now we know that the shooter left Manhattan via an entirely different route—by way of Penn Station rather than the Washington Street Bridge.

According to most websites, this is just a 231 mile route.

Had Mangione had known the actual route the shooter had taken from the city, wouldn’t he have picked a different spot to be arrested, one that lines up with 286 mile via the route the shooter actually took?

Could this be an indicator that Mangione had just as much information as everyone else did about about the shooter’s actual movements, and that he was unaware of the shooter’s actual route through the city as he designed this clue, as that route wouldn’t make headlines until several days after his arrest?

As the manhunt for the CEO shooter unfolded, many calls emerged online to help the shooter hide. Once the grainy imagine of the shooter’s face emerged as he flirted with a hostel worker, could Mangione have noticed the guy in the image had somewhat similar features to himself, and from there, began to a plan began to form a plan…?

Could Mangione have decided to cosplay as a killer?

After all, what would be the best way to help the shooter hide, if not to make the police think they had caught him?

We know that Mangione had a background in designing games and knows his way around maker spaces and fabrication labs. It is also known that he had medical struggles, so perhaps he felt aligned with the shooter’s actions.

Could it be that, as the manhunt for the shooter unfolded, he began to fabricate “clues” and evidence that would seem to tie him to the crime that had occurred in Manhattan?

After all, how hard would it have been to 3-D print a gun resembling a WWII-era Welrod pistol, which was widely reported to have been used in the crime? The other pieces of “evidence” found on Mangione at the time of his arrest could have likewise been manufactured based on widely circulating public information.

But Mangione made one slip up, it seems, when it comes to picking the location in which he would be arrested.

If he had wanted the location of his arrest to be location exactly 286 miles from the scene of the crime via the route the shooter took, he was at least 30 miles shy.

He seems to have been making that calculation based on the information about the information widely available in the news at that time, rather than the route the shooter was later revealed to have actually taken.

Why does it seem Mangione was just as unaware of the shooter’s actual escape route via train from Penn Station as the rest of us?

Does this mean the CEO shooter is still at large?

Luigi Mangione was arrested with a pile of evidence and clues supposedly linking him to the crime.

But all of the clues and evidence he assembled—and that were either on this person or on his social media at the time of his arrest—were based entirely upon public knowledge of the shooting.

And he clearly picked Altoona as the place to be arrested because he thought it was 286 miles from the scene of the crime via the route the shooter was reported to have taken.

But in the days following Magione’s arrest, it would be learned that the shooter took an entirely different route out of Manhattan, which disrupts the 286 clue and completely throws the number off.

Could it be that Mangione was simply trying to cosplay as the killer, producing a set of clues seeming to tie him to the crime, only to mess up on the route distance because he only had access to the same information as everyone?

What do you all think?

Could this mean the CEO killer is still out there?