It reminds me of the Muslim sniper killings in DC.
Portray the killer - when you have no evidence to support such a theory - as a conservative white guy (I mean, the police sketch looks like some trucker you'd run into in a honkytonk dive bar) and play down the actual background of the non-conservative, non-white killer when he is caught.
I remember that. The media was definitely pimping the white racist meme at the time.
Wasn't there something about a "white van observed at the scene" at several of the shootings that turned out to be totally bogus?