Pretty interesting that no cars seem to have been mentioned. The guy might not be the brightest but he clearly thought it through and thought it through well.
I know a guy associated with outdoor rescue organization. He said the first thing they do for missing people is track their car. According to him just about any car past 2015 can be tracked if you have access to the systems, which they do somehow as a search and rescue op. This is believable considering how Mozilla foundation gave cars "below their worst possible" digital privacy rating. I was reminded of this when I was rolling through a parking lot a while back looking at the various cars. All the older cars, like the much beloved 1999 Corolla I used to have, or anything from the early 2000s, had smooth tops. All the recent cars had some kind of antenna bump on top. Never gave it too much thought since I figured it was for satellite radio or GPS. Now I see the antenna bump much differently and wonder how we ever agreed to have our cars tracked by the government. But we didn't agree. It was done between the corporations and the government; we are just consumers and subjects, pigs in a cage. Another reason I'm sad my 2006 died on me. But even without actual car tracking, there's probably enough toll booths, speed cameras and plate readers you can't go far in a car without being tracked. So things are a lot different than the roaring 20s when getaway cars let gangsters get away with crimes and then disappear out of town. Nowadays if you want to get away with murder you have to leave your phone home and also never get in a car, which this guy seems to have done.
Typical buses and metro systems are surprisingly anonymous. I was reminded of this when I was in DC this summer. If you have cash, you ride--anywhere you want, on any train, circulate and change lines, and get off, and there's no authentication or verification. Even if you use a SmarTrip card, it's a cash-equivalent card....you buy it with cash, it's not associated to you at all; you can swap (I bought one for my son while he was still in the hotel). On systems that still use paper tickets, if you use paper tickets, they can't even associate the exit turnstile with the entrance. If you use a cash card, presumably the ability to match those is there, but I don't know if it's actually used or not. And there's the option of jumping the turnstile or swapping cards with someone...I'm sure with some charm if you had a card with $50 you could swap it with any random somebody who's card is running low and just say you're leaving the city and loaded up too much etc...or just bribe them with more cash than they have on their card.
Buses seem even better because many still allow you to pay straight up cash and get off wherever. I suppose that's why the Claims Adjuster went by bus.
Early reports said he rode a Citibike rental bike at some point. I thought that would be the stupidest thing to do, because you normally need a phone app to ride them, and between that and whatever GPS they obviously have, would just be the stupidest thing to do. Now I'm hearing it wasn't a rental bike. Which means either he relied on being able to steal a bike, he stashed a bike ahead of time (possibly still stolen), or he coordinated with somebody else to stash a bike. And I haven't heard about a bike being identified or recovered either.
The limiting factor for a crime like this seems to be video surveillance. The bus and subway are going to be limited by whatever cameras they have, but there's cameras all over NY anyway. I've been assuming face recognition and AI will change that game to where you can't walk down the street anon anymore, or at least not for much longer, but the fact this guy got out actually is a promising indicator that the surveillance state, even in NY, is far from perfected. A bit of disguise, a swap of clothes, and going through a few surveillance dead spots seems to be enough still.
So basically if you wanted to get away you'd do exactly what this guy did.... leave your phone at home of course. Take a bus into the city, so nobody knows what stop you got on, got off, or even when you came in. Never use a car, because even a hired or stolen car can be tracked nowadays. Some strategic disguise swaps and you're gone. He was probably in another state within 2 hours. Personally I think the hostels angle is a total false lead. Of course the police questioned the hostel and of course there has somebody who checked into the hostel fitting the description (white male, 16-40 yo). The hostel guy is probably completely unrelated person, he's just the only lead they have, although it wouldn't surprise me to see them track down hostel dude and run him through the wringer just so it looks like they have a lead.
I'm more worried about this crime being used as justification for anti-privacy than that it will be used to push gun control.... NYC is already gun control ground zero anyway. More worried about bus systems requiring ID, bikes needing registered, checkpoints, camera swarms in central Park, etc. etc.