In the end, it was the simple act of distributing photos — not sophisticated facial recognition technology — that led the police to a man they are calling a “person of interest” in the fatal shooting of a health care executive in Midtown Manhattan last week.
After the shooting of Brian Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, last Wednesday, the New York Police Department began releasing a steady drip of images. The photos, taken together, appeared to show a young man with light skin and dark features. One photo — critically — showed his entire face.
Even as the police recovered what they called an “enormous amount” of forensic evidence and video, it was that specific photo that led to the arrest of a man on Monday morning about 300 miles from New York City, according to Joseph Kenny, the Police Department’s chief of detectives.
Just after 9 a.m. on Monday, in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., an employee spotted a man who looked like the person in the photos, and then called the police, who detained the man for questioning.
The man, whom the police identified as Luigi Mangione, 26, of Maryland, was carrying a gun, a silencer and some kind of manifesto, the police said.
Chief Kenny said that it was hard to credit the break in the case to any one moment or piece of evidence, but that if he had to, “it would be the release of that photograph to the media.”
For experts, the case was a reminder of how — even as facial recognition technology grows more sophisticated — distributing photos and relying on the public to recognize a face can still play a critical role in investigations.
Sean Patrick Griffin, a former Philadelphia police officer and a criminal justice professor at The Citadel, a military college in South Carolina, said this was not a typical case. “That photo has been seen more times than in your average homicide,” said Mr. Griffin, who added that the photos also showed enough of the man’s face to play a useful role.
In the photo that appears to have led to Mr. Mangione’s arrest, the suspect has distinct facial features: dark eyes and eyebrows, high cheekbones and a broad smile that curls at the corners. “Not just dark, but prominent eyebrows,” said Mr. Griffin, who said such a recognizable trait was not ideal for someone seeking to get away with a high-profile crime.
Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. officer and the author of several books, including “The Perfect Kill: 21 Laws for Assassins,” said he was surprised only that it had taken so long for the police to find someone. “Once they had that guy’s picture, when he pulls his mask down, it was a given he would be arrested,” he said.
Like other experts, Mr. Baer mentioned that a professional hit man would have been more careful about exposing his face on camera.
The arrest, on gun charges and for questioning in connection with the shooting, came five days after Mr. Thompson was killed outside a Hilton hotel in Midtown. Within hours, the police released grainy images of a man wearing a backpack, his arms extended as he fired his gun, and, later, riding a bicycle as he fled.
More images of the suspect were soon released. Two photos — captured by cameras at the hostel on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where he stayed — showed a man in a hooded jacket. His face was not covered, and in one, he was smiling.
Over the weekend, two images emerged showing a man in a slightly different get-up — a surgical mask and a black coat — taken from a taxi. In one, he is seen peering through the partition in the cab, his dark eyes and eyebrows clearly visible above his mask.
The images helped fuel broad interest in the case.
Some people drew comparisons to celebrities. There was at least one look-alike contest, in a Manhattan park. The suspect even had something like fans, because, in the words of one expert, Michael C. Farkas, “people hate the health care insurance industry.”
Mr. Farkas added that many people, however, were clearly interested in helping law enforcement solve the case.
“There’s a reason why people are still doing things that would seem strange, like printing ‘Wanted’ posters,” said Mr. Farkas, a defense lawyer who has worked as a New York City homicide prosecutor. “People actually recognize photos from hard-copy sources.”
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