I posted this elsewhere, but this is one of the few times I buy the conspiracy theory, not the official story.

Dude pulls off a targeted assassination, gets away clean, trolls the cops with a bag of monopoly money, gets out of the state, stays essentially hidden for almost a week... And then gets clocked by some poor maccas employee and gets taken in with a manifesto AND a gun on his person?

It's the nazi flag and 3 copies of The Sims all over again, except this time the folks doing it are slightly more competent and actually pulled it off.

This case is so important, so high profile, that they just need to arrest someone ASAP. Anyone. And that person is not in for a good time.

To be fair, people were posting actors who look like the very shitty pictures we have of the guy too, and I buy some of them. Honestly, the picture we have looks more like Timothée Chalamet than this guy. I'm not saying it isn't this guy, or it is Chalamet, but there's a shit ton of people in this world, and a lot look like the shooter.

Edit to add: I'll never trust the word of the authorities. They have to prove that this is the man. It's their duty, not ours.

It reminds me of people in the UFO community.

The fantasy takes are so close to the people that still believe GameStop and AMC will still have a short squeeze.

I said this to many folks IRL, the guy the NYPD charges will not be the shooter. just some poor sap that gets sent to prison for life because he had a dissenting opinion.

it's the high price we pay to keep them in power.

to make an example of someone to try to dissuade others from following in his footsteps

The killer is not as dangerous as the approval for his act. The government wants to prevent copycat vigilantes by making an example out of him. Regardless whether this guy is guilty or not, they'll drag him through the deepest mud and then string him up with the harshest possible sentence, to discourage others from gunning down CEOs.

I'm not adopting the conspiracy here, but if they can't find the shooter with the whole country getting behind him, then they would want the optics of finding the shooter. Which could backfire, of course. It would be very telling, for example, if the cops got real confident about it and then the real shooter made some kind of public display with the false shooter in custody.

They gain by preventing copycat killers. If other poors think that he got away with it, they might think they can, too.

Yeah, I get that. However, the optics of having a successful “martyr” symbol is very, very dangerous. A wide scope of narrative means difficult to control. Difficult to control introduces “motivator to action” symbols among a, I think, specific (and quite populous) demographic (think of all the young males with zero purpose, waiting to seize on an opportunity for a real life Mr Robot, for example)… “well if he could do it, get away with it, AND become a ’hero’, what’s stopping me from doing the same?”

Having someone, anyone, buys time to craft the narrative and gauge public sentiment and, most importantly, dampen the probability of a revolutionary ’spark’ if you will.

Obviously we don’t have enough information here. It very well could be the dude they have in custody. I am only sharing one possible theory based off my experience and observations. And there are a number of very suspect observations here that are in line with narrative management.