Images of a gunman brazenly murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of New York City last week baffled the country, and after days of searching, law enforcement finally has a suspect.
Video footage showed the killer nonchalantly ambling off last Wednesday, with authorities unable to find the suspected shooter.
That changed on Wednesday when the police arrested Luigi Mangione in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and charged him with one felony count of forgery, one felony count of carrying a firearm without a license, one misdemeanor count of tampering with records or identification, one misdemeanor count of possessing instruments of a crime, and one misdemeanor count of false identification to law enforcement authorities.
Here is everything we know about Mangione.
Who is he?
Mangione is a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate with ties to Maryland. Heir to a holiday resort fortune, Mangione is the grandson of real estate mogul Nicholas Mangione, who was the owner of Turf Valley Resort and Hayfields Country Club.
Mangione graduated as valedictorian of the Gilman School in Baltimore in 2016. The suspect has computer science degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, according to his LinkedIn account.
He has no known criminal record and appears to be an enthusiast of computer programming and gaming.
“Nothing strange,” Nam Vu, an acquaintance of Mangione, told the New York Times. “He was a nice guy.”
Mangione’s presence on social media paints the picture of a fairly typical young person.
His apparent Goodreads account shows he was an avid reader, rating books from Atomic Habits and The 4-Hour Workweek to Vice President-elect J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, to which he gave only three stars.
Another post from a Facebook page set up for Pennsylvania University to write anonymous notes to crushes showed Mangione engaging in romantic drama typical among college students.
“Luigi Mangione. Hot damn. Are you single? You make us engineers have hope!” a post sent Mangione’s way six years ago read.
Mangione responded: “Despite all my best efforts … yup still single.”
At the time of his arrest, Mangione was a data engineer at an automobile company based in California, per his LinkedIn. His last known address was in Honolulu, Hawaii, according to police.
Connections to Thompson and healthcare industry
Mangione’s motive for allegedly murdering Thompson remains unclear, though New York City Police Department Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said it “does seem that he has some ill will toward corporate America.”
The extent of Mangione’s interest in healthcare played out on his social media accounts, with Goodreads records showing that Mangione seemed interested in back pain.
He read two books on the subject: Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery by Cathryn Ramin and Back Mechanic by Dr. Stuart McGill.
One of Mangione’s cover photos on his X account also included an image of a spinal surgery X-ray, although it is not clear whether he ever underwent surgery.
At the time of his arrest, Mangione was found with a three-page handwritten document that, in part, criticized healthcare companies for putting profits above care, according to police.
“We don’t think that there are any specific threats to other people mentioned in that document,” Kenny said.
The document mirrored quotes Mangione had highlighted on his Goodreads account by Ted Kaczynski, according to the New York Post. Known as the “Unabomber,” Kaczynski mailed bombs across the country for nearly two decades before his arrest in 1996.
Mangione noted that Kaczynski was a “violent individual — rightfully imprisoned — who maimed innocent people.”
One Kaczynski quote Mangione lifted from the book Industrial Society and Its Future read: “Science fiction, it is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual’s internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable.”
The shooting
Video footage captured the shooter’s movements before and after the shooting last Wednesday. Minutes before the shooting, he stopped by a New York Starbucks to buy water and energy bars, according to police.
Minutes after Thompson’s murder, the person believed to be Mangione was seen riding a bike into Central Park.
By Friday, New York City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch told CNN that authorities had gathered “a huge amount of evidence,” including fingerprints and DNA evidence tracking the suspect’s movements.
Authorities tracked Mangione leaving New York City by bus, with video footage showing him taking a taxi to the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
“We don’t have any video of him exiting, so we believe he may have gotten on a bus,” Kenny said. “Those buses are interstate buses. That’s why we believe he may have left New York City.”
Mangione was captured in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s after an employee recognized him as a possible suspect.
At the time of capture, Mangione was found with a ghost gun, a silencer, a U.S. passport, and multiple fake IDs matching documents used by the suspect to check into a hostel in New York City before Thompson’s murder, according to multiple reports.
Mangione was escorted by police to the Blair County Courthouse in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, on Monday evening for a preliminary arraignment.
He has not yet been charged specifically for Thompson’s murder.
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Pennsylvania’s governor weighed in on the case on Sunday evening.
“In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint,” Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) said. “I have no tolerance, nor should anyone, for one man using an illegal ghost gun to murder someone because he thinks his opinion matters most … he is no hero.”
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
