CTI: Crime Team Investigation

[Mandle]

I would swear to god Mandle already did this but I can’t find the post.

I changed the name to "Officer Iam Aloser" in the updates where he solved the clue to keep it more realistic-sounding.

[Mandle]

St. George, Throggs Neck, Glen Oaks, Bayside, and Bay Terrace units all call in with nothing to report.

(OFFICIAL UPDATE)

Also including the map here again for ease of reference:

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[Stupot]

Sorry I’m getting hung up on these W’s. Can we send some divers out to the area of ocean shown in the red circle?

[Mandle]

Sorry I’m getting hung up on these W’s. Can we send some divers out to the area of ocean shown in the red circle?

4TH WALL BREAK

You must think I'm a right evil bastard indeed, that wants to get lynched by the AGS community.

Well, you're right, but not in this case.

Also, that is way outside of the jurisdiction of NYPD patrol boats.

[Ian Aloser]

OFF TOPIC: Thanks Mandle for making my nick look a bit more positive :-)
ON TOPIC: I had to look up the meaning of "to double up" and found that
there are different meanings to this verb , also depending on American/British English
(Collins Dictionary). I am not sure if we find two victims in two locations or in one location
or if there will be two victims at once at all this time. The fact that we are allowed to search two locations
simultaneously may be because we dallied too long finding the previous victim and our boss
wants to "speed things up a little bit"....

[Mandle]

A new letter arrives at the NYPD from the killer:

Hello,

Yup, back to basics.

My old stomping-ground.

Or should I say "stabbing-ground"?! Hehehe...

So many memories.

Yours Sincerely,
Justice Killer.

[Ian Aloser]

Stabbing grounds surely means Bushwick, the first crime scene
I have updated the map with the crime scenes (blue circles)
What I noticed is that the places where the victims were found are not too far away,
while the first two ones were the victim's homes. A kind of pattern might develop there...
Just to make sure: Could we send a unit to Bushwick ?

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[Laura Hunt]

Nice one, Ian.

I'm thinking that if Richmond Hill represents the eastern "G" in the letter matrix, then the other Gs would be more or less around Brownsville (SW) and Pomonok (NE), so...

Potential solution: can we send units to Brownsville and Pomonok?

[Mandle]

Units are sent out to Bushwick.

A few residents, on edge and vigilant after the stabbing there three weeks ago, said they did notice a strange, hooded fellow lurking around today, but that he soon left the area, so they thought it not important enough to report.

The police chief looks at the map Officer Ian Aloser put together on his own and says:

"This looks promising, but the guys down in Logistics could probably do a better job if asked the right way."

Later in the day, the units that went out to Brownsville and Pomonok turn up nothing of interest.

(OFFICIAL UPDATE)

Also including the map here again for ease of reference:

Spoiler

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[Ian Aloser]

OK, here is my (vague) theory about the matrix:
Obviously, the N,E,S,W must be of importance.
If each one of the murders so far represent a direction,
we would have 3 of 4. Putting the locations into the map, we suddenly notice
that the east direction points to the north ( see newly updated map hereunder)
Therefore, the place(s) we are looking for should lie on the vertical blue line.
So many memories
EDIT.Maybe the killer once worked at the Albert Einstein College Hospital, that would explain
how he could take apart the third victim
What I believe however, that the new east direction showing north now is the key...
Just don't find anything with "G" there...
POTENTIAL SOLUTION :
Chief , could we send a unit to Albert Einstein College Hospital and to Woodhaven ?
Just to make sure....
Chief, could we please send units to Glendale and Forest Park ?
Their letters appear in the letter matrix

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[heltenjon]

Ian Aloser - I don't follow your train of thoght that east is now north. Can you please elaborate? (If not successful, that is, then Mandle will do it for us.) 

I'll probably regret not sending squads to every Bay-area on the map, but...if Bushwick is back to Basic, that one may be the A in the matrix. Glendale could mark the G to the east. So...what if the alphabet paths points to areas to the northeast and southwest of Bushwick?

Because the killer mentions "memories", I'd like to (potential solution) send squads to the Brooklyn Museum and the Queens Museum.

[Ian Aloser]

OK, here is my (vague) theory about the matrix:
Obviously, the N,E,S,W must be of importance.
If each one of the murders so far represent a direction,
we would have 3 of 4. Putting the locations into the map, we suddenly notice
that the east direction points to the north ( see newly updated map hereunder)
Therefore, the place(s) we are looking for should lie on the vertical blue line.

That would rotate the letter matrix counterclockwise so that N,S and W are aligned with the 3 circles.

I believe that Glensdale is a hot candidate
And I am still not sure that we have to look for two places, we might as well find TWO victims in ONE place...

EDIT:

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[heltenjon]

I'm sending the guys in Logistics a large amount of their favourite donuts and asking them to make a map of all the relevant sites. Please make sure to include the double site from last time, if that is what we've missed.

I have a feeling that the sites will make some kind of pattern in the end.

[Ian Aloser]

heltenjon, don‘t understand what you mean with double sites .
The ones we guessed wrong so far ?
Yes, a pattern is what it is all about here, i believe

[heltenjon]

The last victim was cut in half, and the killer mocked us:

Hello,

Took you a while to find my latest site.

Or, rather, both of them. LOL!

Then, the reaction to your map:

The police chief looks at the map Officer Ian Aloser put together on his own and says:

"This looks promising, but the guys down in Logistics could probably do a better job if asked the right way."

I may be reading too much into it, but I think there is a hint there. And the only thing I can think of, is the site where the other half of the last victim's body was found. We cannot easily place it on the map ourselves without a place name, but logically, we (the PD) ought to know it. And maybe we can see another pattern then, with four points.

[Stupot]

Does the path made in the grid by the alphabet strings correspond to any roads on the map?

That major road going from the last site (the bridge near Howard’s Beach) down to Marine Park, seems to map quite nicely.

[Ian Aloser]

Dear colleagues,
I received an updated map containing our wrong guesses marked with a red "X".
I addition, I drew a line from the new SW to the new NE, vaguely passing the
assumed spot "A" at the intersection of the blue lines in Woodhaven.
That would make the MUSEUM OF THE MOVING IMAGE (so many memories ?) and ROCKAWAY COMMUNITY PARK
two hot candidates....
Could someone ask to send a unit to either place ?
EDIT: Updated the updated map

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[mkennedy]

Maybe the letter matrix is like one of those Boggle games. Would running it through a solver program be allowed or would that constitute cheating?

[Ian Aloser]

I think it would be called cheating.
However, i doubt that a solver would spit out the
names of locations, since , from my understanding,
it compares the hits with the contents of a dictionary ,
which will most unlikely contain the names of locations.
We already found that a number of places fully contain
the letters in the matrix ......
Looks like this time a graphical solution is required .

[heltenjon]

mkennedy - Using anagram solvers and the likes of it would be cheating, but if someone wants to check for letter replacement codes, like A=B, B=C and so on, I don't
think it could be considered cheating to do so digitally.  The point being that the player would do the thinking and the app only would speed the process up. Like using a tile counter in Scrabble/Wordfeud or a calculator in Yahtzee.

Nice maps, Ian Aloser! I've already sent my two squads this turn, but it looks promising. Have you tried with the normal compass directions? EDIT: Is it me, or would Kings County Hospital Center and Queens Hospital Center be placed exactly on a normal NW-SE-line? Coincidence?

Stupot, good spotting on the road! I've entertained similar thoughts, but only managed to see possibilities on the grid of Manhattan (Alphabet city).