I work on campus (very very close to the engineering building) and I previously lived near Brookline. So all of this hits home.
But what got me was the tipster who blew wide open the case is reportedly a homeless Brown graduate who lived in the basement of the engineering building (a la South Korean film Parasite). It made me so sad but also not surprised, that building does have a single occupancy bathroom with showers; and no keycard access was needed in the evening until 7pm.
So it made sense to me that he or she would've used that building for shelter and comfort. Also it didn't boggle my mind at all that a Brown grad (from the picture, the tipster looked like a artistic Brown student vs. the careerist type) would be homeless - given that I known many of my classmates who have a certain personality, brilliant but also idealistic/uncompromising that made them brittle unfortunately in a society that rewards conformity, settling and stability.
I can't get over the fact that two Brown student whom presumably have fallen on the wayside of society have chosen two different paths, (1) the homeless guy who still perseveres even in the basement of Barrus & Holley for 15 years a la Parasite after 2010 graduation but still has the situational awareness and rises to the occasion to give the biggest tip to the Providence Police, (2) the other guy who harbors so much resentment over a course of 25 years to plan a trip from Florida to gun down innocent kids who are 18 and 19 and his classmate when they were 18 and 19 year old.
"...the tipster who blew wide open the case is reportedly a homeless Brown graduate who lived in the basement of the engineering building..." Where did you read this?
> How a Reddit post blew Brown University shooting investigation wide open
> Frustration had mounted that the murderer had managed to get away and that a clear image of his face hadn't emerged - until a Reddit post finally put police on his trail.
We'll have to wait to see how the Brown student's life turns out after. We'll see if he drives a way in an RV. Doubtful he'll be living in the basement after this though
I think Christina Paxson should hire him to be a director of patrol or more realistically a community liason for Brown campus police. The RI/FBI circus were all mum on whether the guy will receive the 50K reward - very on-brand. He wants privacy so I don't know even if there will be a GoFundMe but I think they should do the right thing and give the guy his 50 grand at the very least.
I agree 100%. The biggest example here is if you read and go back to the threads of HN before the downfalls of SBF and Liz Holmes, you'll see so many people on here worshipping them and apologists for their bad behavior. Most are corporate types are conformists who buy what they are told ('till the narrative are changed). It used to bother me but nowadays I just keep it pushing and aim for the tails and let the mid-curve people be the mid-curve people.
> Maguire subsequently partially apologized for those comments in a video. “This tweet did not land the way I thought it would,”
What an asshole. He could have gotten the kid killed, not to mention the damage to his social reputation. And he can't even manage a "sorry if you were offended" non-apology.
I'm mostly surprised that someone can so consistently and repeatedly demonstrate an inability to filter information he receives and still be trusted with LPs' money. It's another form of Gell-Mann amnesia.
Rich guys are mainly incompetent. They'll tell you they're rich because of meritocracy, but I've found that too much money has the opposite effect. You end up surrounded by yes-men and can buy your way out of any failure, so your skills (if you ever had em) atrophy.
I live in the area. Crazy how many helicopters and drones showed up so quick and how many police there were. For several hours more and more police and FBI vehicles kept arriving. Probably ended up with close to 100 officers on scene. Salem NH PD, Methuen MA PD, Providence RI PD, NH state police, MA state police, FBI, and US Marshal service were the ones I saw.
I think it's the biggest response I've personally seen since the Boston Marathon Bombing.
all of that and they basically just got lucky. the guy walked to brown from his car parked nearby and shot up some kids, waited days, went to a guy's house in Massachusetts, killed him and never even got caught - he committed suicide and was only found days after his second killing
if anything this whole saga makes me happy smart people aren't killers more often because this guy basically got away...
I keep seeing this sort of sentiment everywhere and I'm trying to understand it. The same thing happened after Charlie Kirk was killed and the arrest there hinged on a confession by the killer to his dad. A lot of commentary then that the police/FBI got lucky. Ditto Mangione. They got lucky he was found in a random McDonalds.
What exactly is the expectation here? Is there some sort of wide-spread belief that the world works like an episode of Law and Order and every crime is instantly solved by rolling up your sleeves and doing good old fashioned detective work?
Would assume for the majority of planned murder to be resolved as quickly as these highly publicized cases have been (the Kirk deal took about 2 days also) there's going to have to be an element of luck. Piecing together digital/forensic evidence is going to require time and effort. If it's not an obvious connection (domestic violence etc.) and there's no direct witnesses it seems logical you only have a few outcomes:
A) Going to be solved due to a lucky break
B) Going to be solved after a ton of time/interviews/piecing together forensic evidence
C) Not be solved.
Also he only "got away" because he killed himself. They likely would have caught him fairly soon after this because they had his identity from the car tags. I guess the point is though luck is all you have if it's solved this quickly because it's so random.
I disagree that his catching was inevitable. They only knew an identity yesterday. If the suspect wasn’t a coward it’s plausible they could’ve just driven away to literally any other part of the United States and then flew back to Portugal. I have no comment on the Kirk case.
As for the expectation, other than if civil liberties are going to be violated in the name of safety I expect much faster results, and I’m sure the MIT professors family would agree.
How could they possibly have solved it faster than this? There's no magic to this and it takes time like anything else. Yes there's digital footage but someone has to go through it. The murder in Massachusetts isn't immediately obviously related.
Of course the family wants it solved right away but there's a reality to this that seems to be overlooked here but is also not unique here. A lot of murders are never solved. Luck is a factor all the time.
I am not saying luck isn't a factor - you're missing my point which is we're compromising privacy and going further into a surveillance state, yet it's not like the actual outcomes are improving.
I believe the theory that Mangione even wanted to be caught and arrested because he didn't see a viable life for himself anymore with his spinal problems and medical bills. Who social engineers their way into getting a CEO's itinerary and then keeps a manifesto on their person well after the crime
Now he doesn't have to worry about paying for that. Or getting reasonable treatment but hey,
Same perspective here just 15 miles northwest of scene. Pretty sure they confirmed officially presence of MA NH LEO, NHSP, MASP, FBI, CIA, ATF, and Secret Service.
The thing that bothers me about the whole story, apart from the deaths of course, is that we live in a surveillance state. While I want major crimes to be resolved and there to be deterrents to future ones, I just don't know about turning the whole US into East Germany. It's not going to work out well for any of us. As you can see, it didn't help solve the crimes, either. It was witnesses who did all the heavy lifting here.
This is admittedly very tangential only, but as a non-native speaker / not a US-American, I found this sentence from the NYT reporting[0] a bit confusing:
> John said that the suspect’s clothing was inappropriate for the weather and that they had made eye contact.
Why is the report mentioning the eye contact? Is that culturally significant, as in, in the US you don’t normally do eye contact with strangers, and if a stranger does make eye contact, it’s suspicious?
sadly flock ended up being helpful here (according to the police per the article). also interesting that it was some random homeless guy who happened to be there that blew the whole thing wide open. despite all of the surveillance...
How can you not read this and just see it's a huge puff piece for Flock. As far as I can read from the first article and reports they were not pivotal in tracking down the killer. It was once again only someone else who knew that person and came forward, exactly the same as Tyler Robison case
"Phil Helsel Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said a person who had information about the suspect played a crucial role in the case."
If there's any claim that "flock found these two plates were seen in both areas!!111" then how many other plates were seen in both areas in the same timeframe? How much of this is throwing away results that disagree with the narrative?
But what got me was the tipster who blew wide open the case is reportedly a homeless Brown graduate who lived in the basement of the engineering building (a la South Korean film Parasite). It made me so sad but also not surprised, that building does have a single occupancy bathroom with showers; and no keycard access was needed in the evening until 7pm.
So it made sense to me that he or she would've used that building for shelter and comfort. Also it didn't boggle my mind at all that a Brown grad (from the picture, the tipster looked like a artistic Brown student vs. the careerist type) would be homeless - given that I known many of my classmates who have a certain personality, brilliant but also idealistic/uncompromising that made them brittle unfortunately in a society that rewards conformity, settling and stability.
I can't get over the fact that two Brown student whom presumably have fallen on the wayside of society have chosen two different paths, (1) the homeless guy who still perseveres even in the basement of Barrus & Holley for 15 years a la Parasite after 2010 graduation but still has the situational awareness and rises to the occasion to give the biggest tip to the Providence Police, (2) the other guy who harbors so much resentment over a course of 25 years to plan a trip from Florida to gun down innocent kids who are 18 and 19 and his classmate when they were 18 and 19 year old.
> How a Reddit post blew Brown University shooting investigation wide open
> Frustration had mounted that the murderer had managed to get away and that a clear image of his face hadn't emerged - until a Reddit post finally put police on his trail.
Life imitates art.
https://www.fastcompany.com/91463942/sequoia-shaun-maguire-b...
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/12/conspiracy-rumors-...
What an asshole. He could have gotten the kid killed, not to mention the damage to his social reputation. And he can't even manage a "sorry if you were offended" non-apology.
I think it's the biggest response I've personally seen since the Boston Marathon Bombing.
if anything this whole saga makes me happy smart people aren't killers more often because this guy basically got away...
What exactly is the expectation here? Is there some sort of wide-spread belief that the world works like an episode of Law and Order and every crime is instantly solved by rolling up your sleeves and doing good old fashioned detective work?
Would assume for the majority of planned murder to be resolved as quickly as these highly publicized cases have been (the Kirk deal took about 2 days also) there's going to have to be an element of luck. Piecing together digital/forensic evidence is going to require time and effort. If it's not an obvious connection (domestic violence etc.) and there's no direct witnesses it seems logical you only have a few outcomes:
A) Going to be solved due to a lucky break
B) Going to be solved after a ton of time/interviews/piecing together forensic evidence
C) Not be solved.
Also he only "got away" because he killed himself. They likely would have caught him fairly soon after this because they had his identity from the car tags. I guess the point is though luck is all you have if it's solved this quickly because it's so random.
As for the expectation, other than if civil liberties are going to be violated in the name of safety I expect much faster results, and I’m sure the MIT professors family would agree.
Of course the family wants it solved right away but there's a reality to this that seems to be overlooked here but is also not unique here. A lot of murders are never solved. Luck is a factor all the time.
I'm not really sure what you think I'm arguing.
Now he doesn't have to worry about paying for that. Or getting reasonable treatment but hey,
Titanic basically sailed safely across the Atlantic, except for a bit of bad luck.
>Everyone's a superhero
>Everyone's a "Captain Kirk"
Anyone have the Reddit link? (I wonder why the article doesn't include it)
> John said that the suspect’s clothing was inappropriate for the weather and that they had made eye contact.
Why is the report mentioning the eye contact? Is that culturally significant, as in, in the US you don’t normally do eye contact with strangers, and if a stranger does make eye contact, it’s suspicious?
[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/us/brown-mit-shooting-inv...
"Phil Helsel Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said a person who had information about the suspect played a crucial role in the case."
Was he homeless? I haven't seen that mentioned in the articles.