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My takeaway is that he would have gotten away with it if he had the restraint to not go around confessing to murder. Probably would have helped to not steal from the house after it's a murder scene rather than a robbery, but it sounds like no one would have bothered to look in his trunk if he just shut up about it. The implications are discomfiting.
I wouldn't worry about it, I'm guessing you don't interact with many criminals or murderers on a regular basis, I've had that delight before.
They are all fucking idiots who can't help themselves, brag, and do other stuff that makes sure they get caught. Yes you have sampling bias issues (how do you meet the ones who aren't idiots?).
However almost by definition most murderers in particular have some sort of acute or chronic issue with impulse control. Why? Because the upside of murder is typically so minimal. For most people it's to sate some appetite (even if it is just anger at your partner for cheating on you). That's not a good reason to expose yourself to so much risk.
People who have any semblance of control make sure to use it, and those that don't are more likely to out themselves in some way, fuck up the cover up, etc.
Most killers by the numbers are gang types or addicted to drugs. How organized do you think those people are these days?
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Discomfiting because... ?
The face value implication that he was too stupid / psycho to resist blabbing to people about this brutal murder he did against a totally innocent woman after breaking into her home? Or something else?
Because it implies that the police are incapable of anything beyond security theater. A lot of other evidence is accumulating behind that hypothesis, and it bodes ill if you value a government monopoly on violence.
Don't be in the bottom half of murderers or bottom quarter of rapists and you'll probably get away with it.
Alternate take: it's the bottom half of murderers killing the bottom half of victims who are most likely to get away with it. In 2022 cook county (Chicago) had a 20% clearance rate (154/756). Maine had a 90% rate (54/60)
The bottom half of victims get the "he already had crack sprinkled on him, let's get out of here" investigation technique.
A gang member shooting a guy who looked at him wrong just has to be clever enough to use his girlfriend's car for the drive-by. A white collar guy who wants to murder his boss or an annoying neighbor needs to be Moriarty with a forensics post-grad.
(And cynically/realistically, only one of those two will get a billion dollar foundation helping him avoid justice, unless the professional's name is Leo Frank)
In addition to what hydroacetylene says, the majority of gangland shootings involve huge numbers of suspects at scenes with very large numbers of people were any one of them might well have a gun and fire it. White collar murders typically take place at locations where DNA evidence is much more compelling because, for example, a killer actually tries to dispose of the victim (almost guaranteeing a DNA trail) rather than using the spray and pray method and running away, which leaves no DNA.
In addition, the police are a taxpayer funded service and therefore try harder in cases where actual taxpayers get killed.
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White collar people who commit murder almost always murder eg a cheating spouse where the prime suspect is immediately obvious. You don't have to be Sherlock to figure this stuff out(and you wouldn't be able to get away with it by being Moriarty either). On the other hand the bottom half of murders are much more random.
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Are you saying if the police were competent they could have caught this guy without needing him to confess unprompted to randos? Or just that it's awfully unnerving how easily it would be for non idiots to get away with random acts of murder?
An NYPD friend told me once that if you just drive to some neighborhood you never go to and shoot somebody on that street the odds that they'll ever catch you are slim to none. But that was in the early 2000s...
Fortunately, non-idiots rarely commit murder, and when they do it’s usually a crime of passion where they would be the prime suspect regardless of evidence.
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That's the one.
The current era is best understood as a massive, distributed search for ways to hurt the outgroup as badly as possible without getting in too much trouble.
Here, we are seeing that there is a significant gap between the perception and the reality of "getting in too much trouble." Awareness of the gap invites arbitrage.
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