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Top internet sleuths say they won't help find the UnitedHealthcare CEO killer

TikTok users who would normally leap at the chance to identify an alleged criminal are standing down during the manhunt for the killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

But after UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down in New York City this week without a primary suspect being identified, a rare occurrence happened in the thriving true-crime world: silence online from highly followed armchair detectives. “The surge of social media posts praising and glorifying the killing of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson is deeply concerning,” Alex Goldenberg, a senior adviser at The Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University previously told NBC News. Online sleuths have helped the FBI identify hundreds of Capitol rioters and catch previously arrested Jan. 6 defendants committing crimes that the bureau’s own review had missed, in one case even finding evidence of a Proud Boy assaulting an officer in the middle of his seditious conspiracy trial.

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