The line between politically motivated killings and mental illness can be a thin one. Absent an obvious problem like untreated schizophrenia featuring delusions, what does a vague history of emotional troubles mean?

Not much, really. How many completely well-adjusted people shoot their girlfriends in the stomach and then set out to randomly murder two policemen? I would say the answer would be “zero.” But the fact that angry ideologies of revenge and hatred appeal to people who are already nursing some sort of maladjustment and unhappiness is to state the obvious. However, maladjustment, unhappiness, and antisocial behavior do not a mental illness make.

Yet we have this headline in today’s NY Times: “New York Officers’ Killer, Adrift and Ill, Had a Plan.”

Here is the sum total of the evidence that Brinsley was “ill”:

Relatives told the police he had taken medication at one point, and when he was asked during an August 2011 court hearing if he had ever been a patient in a mental institution or under the care of a psychiatrist or psychologist, he said yes. He had also tried to hang himself a year ago, the police said.

So according to Brinsley he once took medication and at least on one occasion had visited a psychiatrist or psychologist, two things that he shares with a huge percentage of Americans, most of whom are not mentally ill. Incarceration in a mental hospital is a better marker for actual mental illness, but we have no evidence that Brinsley was ever in a mental hospital. A failed suicide attempt is the same thing: it can be evidence of mental illness, but often is not. And we have no idea of the seriousness of Brinsley’s attempt, or how the police came to learn of it.

All in all, pretty slim evidence to hang a headline on.

Here’s how the Times describes Brinsley’s taking his own life after the murder of the police officers:

He fired four shots, killing both men. He fled to a nearby subway station, where he shot himself.

Readers can be forgiven for thinking Brinsley’s suicide was part of the plan all along. What the Times omits is the story I wrote about here, which is that two police officers had chased Brinsley into the subway station, and in a wild scene told everyone to hit the decks as they “engaged” him and he then shot himself. In other words, he was cornered, and chose to take his own life rather than be taken in and/or wounded by police. Yet the Times—and nearly every other report I’ve seen—fails to mention what really happened. It seems likely they would be prefer to keep it ambiguous in order to further the narrative of mental illness rather than the idea that Brinsley’s suicide was more of a rational act.

What we do know is this: Brinsley’s life had been a long and messy succession of failures, anger, violence, and law-breaking. Something was wrong with the guy; of this there is little question. But emphasizing the slim evidence for “mental illness” is mostly a way to counterbalance the idea that this was a politically motivated killing based on the recent furor over the Michael Brown and Eric Garner cases.