NEW YORK — Shortly before sunrise on Wednesday, a shadowy figure shrouded in black stood quietly under the marquee of the historic Ziegfeld Theater in Midtown Manhattan, poised to raise the curtain on one of the city’s most sensational tales of cold-blooded murder, a murky motive and a frenzied manhunt for a mysterious killer.

The masked murderer, who had been lying in wait on that cold, dark morning, finally spotted his quarry. He crept up behind UnitedHeathcare CEO Brian Thompson as he walked down W. 54th St. toward the Hilton hotel, and aimed a powerful pistol equipped with a silencer at the back of the unsuspecting insurance executive.

The first bullet sent Thompson, 50, crumpling to the sidewalk. The gunman coolly cleared a jam in his pistol as he walked past his victim and fired two more times, leaving Thompson lying facedown on the grimy pavement.

Thompson died at 7:12 a.m. after being rushed to Mount Sinai West Hospital. Within a matter of minutes, through a combination of careful planning and sheer luck, his killer walked into a bus terminal near the George Washington Bridge, preparing to board a bus heading out of the city.

“We don’t know what bus he took and we’re working through the video with the Port Authority Police Department,” New York Police Department Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Friday.

A whirlwind investigation of the seemingly ideologically motivated murder — a blood-soaked criticism of the cutthroat medical insurance industry — followed, slowly uncovering clues to the identity of the gunman and revealing a possible motive. But much remains a mystery.

“Our thought is it could possibly be a disgruntled employee or a client,” Kenny said about the murder of Thompson, who was in town for a company-sponsored investors conference and was set to give a speech at the Hilton Hotel a couple of hours before he was slain.

Four days after the murder, hundreds of NYPD detectives have recovered a tantalizing amount of information from witnesses and surveillance footage about the suspect’s actions leading up to Wednesday’s shooting, but so far his final destination is still unknown.

The gunman arrived in New York City at Midtown’s Port Authority Bus Terminal on the night of Nov. 24. He immediately went to the Hilton — the scene of his future crime — before going to a HI New York City hostel on Amsterdam Ave. at 104th St. on the Upper West Side.

On the morning of the killing, he left the hostel at 5:30 a.m. and rode a bike to W. 54th St. and Sixth Ave., where he was seen walking back and forth near the Hilton entrance.

“While he’s walking around, he’s passing numerous New Yorkers going about their business,” Kenny said, bolstering the theory that the gunman was focused on one person: Thompson.

After the caught-on-camera shooting, the gunman fled and was later seen on surveillance video riding a bicycle north on Sixth Ave. to Central Park.

It’s believed he left the Big Apple behind him hours before cops released the first images of the masked shooter.

At the scene, cops found three 9mm shell casings as well as a few live rounds that had been expelled from the pistol as the suspect freed a jam. The words “Delay,” “Deny,” and “Depose” — a supposed insurance industry mantra for delaying claims and maximizing profits — had been written on the ammunition with a Sharpie, police said.

“We’re still in shock,” Thompson’s mother-in-law, Paulette Reveiz, told The New York Daily News hours after the health insurance CEO was killed. “The only thing I can say is he’s a good man. I can’t say anything else.”

His wife, Paulette Thompson, told NBC News that the CEO had received threats before his trip to New York.

“There had been some threats,” she told the TV station. “Basically, I don’t know, a lack of coverage? I don’t know details. I just know that he said there were some people that had been threatening him.”

A cellphone was found near the scene and a bottle of water and a Kind bar wrapper handled by the gunman were found at a nearby Starbucks the gunman had visited shortly before the killing, and were taken in for DNA testing. But the fingerprints had “no value” and couldn’t be used to find an ID, Kenny said.

During his 10 days in the city, the suspect never removed his black surgical mask, even when he ate in front of his roommates at the hostel, cops said.

The biggest break the police got was on the night he arrived in the city where a flirtation with an employee at the hostel prompted the suspect to remove his mask and smile at the worker, providing police with a clear photo of the suspect.

The image has been run through the NYPD’s facial recognition system, but has so far revealed no hits, Kenny said.

Thompson, a father of two and valedictorian of his 1997 class at the University of Iowa, lived in Maple Grove, Minnesota, near the Minnetonka headquarters of UnitedHealth Group.

Thompson began at the company in 2004, working on mergers and acquisitions. He steadily climbed through the ranks at the insurance giant, acting as chief financial officer for one division and chief executive officer of another before being named CEO of UnitedHealthcare in April 2021.

In 2023, Thompson’s total compensation was $10.2 million, including base pay, stock awards and cash incentives, according to a statement of executive pay from the company.

His murder triggered a torrent of rage-filled reactions on social media, most of them expressing contempt and dissatisfaction with the health insurance industry he represented.

“When you shoot one man in the street it’s murder,” one person wrote on X. “When you kill thousands of people in hospitals by taking away their ability to get treatment you’re an entrepreneur.”

On Thursday night, UnitedHealth Group issued an updated statement on Thompson’s murder, thanking the “caring people” who have offered their condolences and asking for privacy for Thompson’s family.

“While our hearts are broken, we have been touched by the huge outpouring of kindness and support in the hours since this horrific crime took place.”

“Our priorities are, first and foremost, supporting Brian’s family; ensuring the safety of our employees; and working with law enforcement to bring the perpetrator to justice.”

The FBI, which has been helping the NYPD in their investigation from the beginning late Friday, posted a $50,000 reward for information leading to the gunman’s capture — a gunman who, by now, could be anywhere.

As the manhunt went national, detectives will be looking into every nugget of information that comes their way on this case, Kenny said.

“We have teams specifically assigned to vet and investigate, as weird as some of them are, as detailed as some of them are,” he said. “We will vet and investigate every tip.”

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(Rocco Parascandola contributed to this report.)

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