Lexi Alexander, director of the 2008 Marvel film Punisher: War Zone, is taking heat for celebrating the stabbing murder of a Bank of America employee with an X post featuring Luigi Mangione’s face superimposed on a drawing of Batman’s bat signal.
Bank officer Erin Piacenti was fatally stabbed in Times Square, New York, shortly after celebrating her second wedding anniversary — and the day of her murder was her first day back to work from maternity leave. Piacenti, 32, was walking near West 42 Street and Seventh Avenue when 49-year-old Pamela Cisneros of Queens stabbed the young mother and another person in unprovoked attacks. Cisneros was later shot and killed by police after she threatened them with her two butcher knives.
After the murder, Alexander, who calls herself a “Palestinian filmmaker” (born in Germany to a Palestinian mother and father), jumped to her X account and posted a drawing of Batman looking up at the bat signal, but in the lighted image in the sky, there is instead an image of Luigi Mangione’s face. Mangione is now on trial for the 2024 assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Alexander’s image was shared quoting a news blurb taken from Bloomberg that revealed Piacenti’s employer but not her name: “Bank of America vice president killed in Times Square stabbing – BBG.”
Her X post is still on her timeline, but it has been restricted from being embedded.
In a followup post, she accused everyone who criticized her post of being a “Hasbara bot,” meaning someone working for Israeli propaganda operations.
In still another post, the filmmaker reposted a message by a woman who said she “didn’t care” about Piacenti’s death and as a result faced death threats from “Zionists” because of her indifference.
In a now-deleted post, Alexander vented that her murder-glorifying meme had been covered by over a dozen different news outlets. Her gloating was an “absolute non-story,” she insisted, “because look at the time stamp, nobody knew it was a woman, a mother, low ranking branch manager. it sounded like another Luigi situation. I didn’t want to delete it because it was a good opportunity 2 remind people 2 #BoycottBofA.”
The New York City Police are still investigating the stabbing attacks in Times Square, but family members of the woman responsible for the attacks say she suffered from mental illness.
After Punisher: War Zone bombed at the box office (a $10 million gross to its $35 million budget), Alexander has mostly directed episodes of TV shows such as Supergirl, S.W.A.T., and How to Get Away with Murder.
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