UnitedHealthcare CEO murder: Investigators start small, focus on family [Video]

NEW YORK – After UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered in Manhattan and a manhunt gripped the city, the New York Police Department likely employed a multipronged strategy in their efforts to find the killer and his motive, former law enforcement officers told Fox News Digital.

In an ambush caught on surveillance video, a gunman dressed in head-to-toe black and covering his face aimed a pistol with a silencer at Thompson at 6:46 a.m. Wednesday outside the Midtown Hilton Hotel and shot the executive three times.

Among the clues investigators were sifting through were a phone dropped in the alley that the shooter used to flee the scene, which the NYPD pulled fingerprints from and was scouring for data; a water bottle left at a Starbucks near the scene of the murder, which the suspect paid for …