A high-profile violent crime typically sets social media abuzz with tips and theories from amateur internet sleuths, hunting for the alleged perpetrator.
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.
“I have yet to see a single video that’s pounding the drum of ‘we have to find him,’ and that is unique,” said Michael McWhorter, better known as TizzyEnt on TikTok, where he posts true crime and viral news content for his 6.7 million followers. “And in other situations of some kind of blatant violence, I would absolutely be seeing that.”
Thompson’s targeted killing has sparked online praise from people angry over the state of U.S. health care. Tens of thousands of people have expressed support on social media for the killing or sympathized with it. Some even appeared to celebrate it.
“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.
In a statement, Thompson’s family said he was “an incredibly loving father” to two sons and “will be greatly missed.”
Still, some of the most popular internet sleuths have sat out the investigation.
“We’re pretty apathetic towards that,” Savannah Sparks, who has 1.3 million followers on her TikTok account — where she tracks down and reveals the identities of people who do racist or seemingly criminal acts in viral videos — said about helping to identify the shooter. She added that, rather than sleuthing, her community has “concepts of thoughts and prayers. It’s, you know, claim denied on my prayers there,” referring to rote and unserious condolences.
Although Sparks, 34, has been tapped by law enforcement in the past to help train officers on how to find suspects online, according to emails seen by NBC News, she said this time she isn’t interested in helping police.
Sparks, who also works in health care as a lactation consultant and holds a doctorate of pharmacy, didn’t mince words when asked if her community was working to find the suspect in Thompson’s murder.
“Absolutely the f--- not,” she said.
Another popular TikTok sleuth, thatdaneshguy, who has 2 million followers on the platform, made a video that was critical of the health care industry, saying that he wouldn’t try to identify the killer. “I don’t have to encourage violence. I don’t have to condone violence by any means. But I also don’t have to help,” he said.
That attitude among some content creators comes amid amplified attention on frustrations with medical care in the U.S. in the wake of the killing.
A Gallup poll released Friday found that Americans believe health care quality is at a 24-year low.
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.
And when Gabby Petito, 22, went missing as she documented her cross-country travels on social media with her fiancé, online sleuths jumped into action. It was later determined that Petito was killed by her fiancé Brian Laundrie, who died by suicide.
At least one person who did try to help find Thompson’s killer was criticized on X, formerly known as Twitter, for doing so.
In a viral post, Riley Walz, a software engineer, said he was “fairly confident” about where the shooter fled to on a bike after scouring data from the Citi Bike’s bikeshare program. He said he shared the information with the police.
Walz declined to comment Friday. Since his post, some X users have called him a “snitch.” McWhorter, or TikTok’s TizzyEnt, said backlash toward those who did try to help might cause others to not want to step in.