I read that Pappas' mother died in 1997 at the age of 90. He should be 41 then, which means his mother was 49 years old than him, isn't it interesting?
(I'm seriously questioning a heart surgeon would operate on a 90 year old patient)
Interventional cardiologist, not surgeon, but for every one that takes a pass, there's probably one that will do a procedure on a patient. Honestly, he was probably trying to help her and thought she was a good candidate for the procedure whatever it was, or that it was her only option or chance at extending life. For all we know, he counseled her that this procedure carried a high degree of risk but she decided to have it anyway because her quality of life was poor or she had a life threatening condition without the intervention.
We weren't even close were we. Professional hit, suspect in his 30's, highly trained killer, well-conditioned.
Pappas doesn't look anything like the sketch. And that's the mainstream proposals.
It went further out than that (foreign agents, affairs, et al). Makes you realize a) The unreliability of eye-witnesses the and and unpredictability of human behavior. Kudos to the brave souls that identified and turned him in. Thank you.
This was a case study in eye witness accounts being misleading. The sketch was obviously off as soon as the first pictures came out. The description of everything including the bike was wrong. It seemed so cold and calculated that a hit seemed likely, but I kept coming back around to the intensely personal nature of it - that face to face confrontation - that the killer wanted the victim to see him and he wanted to see the victim... that seemed to make a personal revenge or vendetta scenario more likely. Otherwise, it seems like a home invasion or something would be far easier, even just shooting from behind at close range...
So sad all around. I'm guessing this person had extensive experience with firearms and had been planning this for 20+ years, so that contributed to how polished it all was...