Luigi Mangione latest: Gun found on suspect matches shell casings at the crime scene, police say
UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting suspect is fighting extradition to New York where he faces a second-degree murder charge in connection to Brian Thompson’s death
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The gun seized during the suspect’s arrest in Pennsylvania matched the shell casings found at the scene of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s murder, police say.
Fingerprints taken from Luigi Mangione also match prints on a water bottle and protein bar wrapper found near the scene of the Midtown homicide, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch announced at a press conference Wednesday.
These lab results mark the first forensic tie between Mangione and the crime scene.
It comes one day after Mangione’s lawyer, Thomas Dickey, told reporters that he hasn’t “seen any evidence that he’s the shooter.” His client faced an extradition hearing Tuesday in Pennsylvania after New York prosecutors charged him with second-degree murder in connection with last week’s brazen killing in Midtown Manhattan.
“It’s completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience!,” Mangione yelled as he was escorted in handcuffs into the Blair County Courthouse. The 26-year-old was denied bail and will remain in a Pennsylvania jail while he fights extradition to New York.
Authorities are also investigating Mangione’s notebook that laid out his plot to “wack” Thompson at his “parasitic bean-counter convention”, according to The New York Times.
Luigi Mangione shouts about ‘insult to the American people’ as he’s dragged into court by police
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Who is Luigi Mangione: What to know about man charged with murder in UnitedHealthcare CEO’s shooting death
Who is Brian Thompson? Everything we know about the UnitedHealthcare CEO and his murder in New York City
NYPD unveils forensic ties to Mangione
The gun found on the murder suspect is a positive match with the shell casings found at the crime scene, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Wednesday.
“We got the gun in question back from Pennsylvania... we were able to match that gun to the three shell casings found in Midtown at the scene of the homicide,” she said.
Lab results also showed a match between Mangione’s fingerprints with prints found on both the water bottle and the Kind bar near the scene of the homicide in Midtown, Tisch said.
The very online ‘gray tribe’ philosophy of UnitedHealthcare CEO murder suspect
The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson followed Richard Dawkins and RFK Jr, tweeted about neuroscience and Japanese birth rates, and shared posts about how to think more logically.
The 26-year-old was fascinated by AI and decision theory; pro-technology but anti-smartphones; secular and scientific in his outlook, but in favour of religion on Darwinian grounds.
What does it all mean? Luigi Mangione’s worldview might not be familiar to most Americans, and it’s certainly not a common one among politically-motivated killers. Nevertheless, his social media posts, and the users he engaged with, mark him out indelibly as a very specific type of online person – one that’s intimately familiar to me.
”Increasingly looks like we’ve got our first gray tribe shooter, and boy howdy is the media not ready for that,” wrote the journalist and extremism expert Robert Evans, who analyzed Mangione’s online life earlier this week.
There’s no single accepted name for this loose, extremely online subculture of bloggers, philosophers, shitposters and Silicon Valley coders. “The gray tribe” is one term; ”the rationalist movement” is another.
Read the full story.
The very online ‘gray tribe’ philosophy of alleged UnitedHealth killer Luigi Mangione
The man accused of killing Brian Thompson had an extensive social media history that makes his worldview very clear, writes Io Dodds
In photos: The manhunt for the murder suspect, from a NYC hostel to a Pennsylvania McDonald’s
Joe Rogan discusses the public’s reaction to Brian Thompson’s murder
Joe Rogan chalked up the country’s mixed reactions to the fatal shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO to the “dirty business” of health insurance.
Rogan and his guests, filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary, discussed the December 4 death of Brian Thompson on a Midtown Manhattan street on Tuesday’s episode of the mega-popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast.
The podcaster and his guests predicted there wouldn’t be much sympathy for the 50-year-old insurance executive due to the state of health insurance in the U.S.
“I don’t think anybody is going to be crying too hard over” Thompson’s death, Avary said.
“Maybe his family, but that’s about it,” Rogan replied. “It’s a dirty, dirty business. The business of insurance is f***ing gross. It’s gross, especially healthcare insurance.”
Read the full story.
Joe Rogan discusses reaction to Brian Thompson’s murder: ‘It’s a dirty business’
‘I don’t think anybody is going to be crying too hard over’ Thompson’s death, Roger Avary said on Rogan’s Tuesday show
ICYMI: McDonald’s customer speaks out about moment he spotted Luigi Mangione in fast food joint
Suspect was carrying a spiral notebook and manifesto at time of arrest
Along with numerous fake ID cards, a ghost gun, a silencer, and a manifesto, police recovered a spiral notebook from the suspect’s belongings when he was arrested.
Luigi Mangione, 26, was arrested Monday at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania after an employee recognized him from the photos widely circulated by the NYPD.
A NYPD intelligence report, obtained by CNN, detailed that the notebook included a to-do list of tasks to be completed to carry out the killing along with “notes justifying those plans,” the outlet wrote.
Although he contemplated bombing Manhattan, he decided against the idea over concerns this method “could kill innocents,” a law enforcement source told CNN.
“He appeared to view the targeted killing of the company’s highest-ranking representative as a symbolic takedown and a direct challenge to its alleged corruption and ‘power games,’ asserting in his note he is the ‘first to face it with such brutal honesty,’” says the NYPD report.
He also mentioned Ted Kaczynski, also known as the ‘Unabomber.’
Officials also uncovered a three-page, 262-word handwritten manifesto in his belongings, which police describe as a “claim of responsibility” for the shooting. NYPD Chief Detective Joe Kenny told Fox News that he believes the handwritten pages express “some ill will toward corporate America.”
Suspect’s green jacket is in ‘high demand’: report
People are trying to get their hands on a green jacket that closely resembles one worn by the suspected shooter.
Footage captured the suspect — and his jacket — on his journey across Manhattan in the wake of the fatal shooting in Midtown Manhattan on December 4.
Stills of the footage has circulated the internet for days as the manhunt for the suspect was underway.
Now, the green jacket is in “high demand,” according to Complex.
A similar jacket is being sold at Macy’s, where more than 700 jackets were bought in the last 48 hours, Complex reported.
The influx may have stemmed from a popular Reddit post from late last week that linked to a Levi’s Sherpa Lined Two Pocket Hooded Trucker Jacket sold at Macy’s.
The seven days since United Healthcare CEO’s shocking execution
The events of the last seven days read like something straight out of a TV crime series.
It all began just before dawn last Wednesday on the streets of Midtown Manhattan, where a hooded gunman staked out his victim, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was due to speak at the company’s annual investor conference.
What ensued was a dramatic six-day manhunt for the 26-year-old suspect, Luigi Mangione, an Ivy League grad and member of a prominent Italian family from Baltimore, who was finally caught in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s eating hash browns after police were tipped off by an employee.
Rhian Lubin has the story.
The seven days since United Healthcare CEO’s shocking execution
Rhian Lubin charts an extraordinary week from the fatal shooting of Brian Thompson, which culminated in a dramatic arrest in a McDonald’s
Clerk greeted ‘cagey’ man at hotel front desk – hours later Luigi Mangione was arrested
A Pennsylvania hotel clerk said that Luigi Mangione appeared “cagey” upon attempting to book a room at his lodgings on Monday morning before the shooting suspect’s arrest.
John Kuklis of the Horseshoe Curve Lodge in Altoona greeted a masked Mangione at the front desk, but turned him away due to a lack of clean rooms, he told ABC News.
The hotel is roughly a 17-minute walk from the McDonald’s where Mangione was arrested on Monday.
“He basically just walked in kind of cagey, just looking around, making sure he wasn’t being watched, asked if he could get a room here,” he said. “I told him that he wouldn’t be able to get one right now, that our housekeeper hadn’t cleaned the rooms yet, that he had to come back at one o’clock.”
Kuklis said he told Mangione that he wasn’t allowed to wait at the hotel, which lead to the suspect leaving without uttering a word or removing his mask.
Logan Township police officers called Kulis asking if Mangione had stayed at the hotel.
After arriving at the premises and surveilling his security footage, Kuklis said they told him: “‘Yeah, that’s him.’”
Mangione’s fingerprints apparently gleaned from Starbucks water bottle and cell phone
Luigi Mangione’s fingerprints were allegedly gleaned from a Starbucks water bottle and cellphone the shooting suspect dropped near the crime scene, according to law enforcement sources.
Police initially said the prints recovered from the items the day of Brian Thompson’s fatal shooting in Midtown Manhattan were smudged.
But two sources told ABC News that they appear to match the prints taken after Mangione was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Monday.