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Our live coverage has ended. Follow the latest updates on the arrest of Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson or read through Tuesday’s posts below.
Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was found carrying a “ghost gun” at the time of his arrest, according to police.
CNN’s Josh Campbell explains what ghost guns are and why they’re nearly undetectable to law enforcement.
Former classmates of suspected shooter Luigi Mangione are finding it hard to believe he is accused of killing United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York sidewalk.
Two fraternity brothers of Mangione shared their shock with CNN, one saying it was “unbelievable” that he was the suspect.
Neither recalled Mangione making any extreme or concerning comments in the years that they knew him. Mangione played video games and watched sports with others but dedicated most of his free time to his coursework.
“I feel like it’s a cliché, everybody is like, ‘He was a quiet guy,’ but like he was even more normal than that,” one of the men said.
Another University of Pennsylvania classmate remembered Mangione as a “totally normal guy,” while a former roommate told CNN they didn’t really discuss politics but “he was clearly a thoughtful guy.”
Freddie Leatherbury, who went to an all-boys private school with Mangione, told CNN that his classmate “had everything going for him. But he wasn’t really snobby. He was humble. He was unassuming and easy to approach.”
Another high school classmate said he was stunned when the 26-year-old who grew up in Maryland was named as the suspect. The former classmate, who asked not to be named, described Mangione as a brilliant person who could write a 20-page thesis on the night before it was due and be awarded the prize for best paper.
“If I opened my yearbook and was asked, ‘Who are your favorite people in your class?’ He would have been like in the top 10 or 15. He’s a great guy,” he told CNN by phone. “He was just somebody who… I mean, his brain was just like next level.”
CNN’s Emma Tucker, Curt Devine, Sabrina Shulman and Jennifer Sherwood contributed.
Tom Dickey, Luigi Mangione’s lawyer, told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Tuesday night his staff informed him that he’s received some emails of people offering to help pay for Mangione’s legal bills.
“I have received some emails. I have not seen them personally, but my understanding from my staff is people are doing that,” Dickey said while also saying he “probably wouldn’t” accept the offers.
“Obviously my client appreciates the support that he has, but I don’t know, … it just doesn’t sit right with me.”
The emailed offers come as Mangione has received sympathy on social media and has even been referred to as a “hero” in relation to the country’s growing frustration of its health care system.
Dickey also said during his interview Tuesday that he’s not convinced New York officials have the right guy as Mangione fights his extradition to the state where he faces five charges, including murder.
“I haven’t seen any evidence that they have the right guy,” Dickey said, adding that New York officials “need to convince me.”
Similar to what he did in an earlier news conference Tuesday, Dickey would not comment on who retained him to represent Mangione.
There is body camera footage of the encounter between Altoona Police Department members and shooting suspect Luigi Mangione, according to Altoona Deputy Chief of Police Derek Swope.
“There is bodycam video. At this point, it’s not gonna be released,” Swope told reporters Tuesday.
Mangione, the suspect in the shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona on Monday.
Community members as well as police officers in Altoona, Pennsylvania, are receiving threats in the wake of Luigi Mangione’s capture, Altoona Deputy Chief of Police Derek Swope told reporters Tuesday.
“We have received some threats against our officers in building here. We’ve started investigating some threats against some citizens in our community,” Swope said. “We’re taking all those threats seriously.”
Swope also called Mangione’s case “polarizing.”
Mangione, the suspect in the killing in New York of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was arrested Monday at a McDonald’s in Altoona, which is about 100 miles east of Pittsburgh.
Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, is fighting against his extradition to New York and it could take weeks before authorities can bring him to the state for prosecution, according to Karen Agnifilo, a CNN legal analyst and defense attorney.
There could be several reasons why Mangione is fighting his extradition, according to Agnifilo. It allows him more time to think about his defense, demand prosecutors present more evidence at his next hearing or try to get bail in Pennsylvania, which is unlikely, said Agnifilo, who previously worked at the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
Most criminal defendants facing prosecution on more serious charges in another state waive their right to extradition, but in murder cases like Mangione’s, “there’s no chance he’s going to be let out, so he’s fighting extradition,” she said.
“Eight or nine out of 10 times, defendants wave extradition because they realize this is so perfunctory, it’s so easy, and most of them don’t want to languish in detention in the other state because you don’t even get to fight your case yet,” Agnifilo said, adding that most of the time defendants waive their bail to start the process of getting bail.
Mangione was denied bail during his extradition court hearing in Pennsylvania on Tuesday and faces five charges in New York, including murder, according to court documents. He also faces gun charges in Pennsylvania related to the firearm police found on him when he was arrested on Monday.
Judge Dave Consiglio gave the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 30 days to obtain a governor’s warrant and denied bail related to both state dockets, saying Mangione would remain at SCI Huntingdon. After the warrant is obtained, Agnifilo said it can take up to two months before authorities can bring Mangione back to New York.
A book published in 2010 critical of the US insurance industry — and whose title appears similar to words found on shell casings near where UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was killed — has risen to number two on Amazon’s nonfiction best sellers list.
The book, “Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It,” by legal scholar Jay Feinman, has gained resurgent interest online. It comes after people compared the book’s title and subject matter to the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose” written on shell casings near the site of Thompson’s death, according to police.
The New York Police Department have not confirmed a direct link between the book’s subject and the motivation in the killing of Thompson. “Delay, deny, defend” is a popular term to describe tactics used in the insurance industry to reject claims.
An account saying it belongs to Feinman, who is a professor emeritus at Rutgers University, posted on X on December 6 that the paperback book was out of stock on Amazon and offered bulk orders on his website.
“Because folks have been asking: Delay, Deny, Defend paperback out of stock on Amazon,” the account holder wrote, noting that there would be a restock soon.
Feinman and Amazon declined CNN’s request for comment. Responses on X ranged from thanking Feinman for the book to criticizing him for the post.
Chris Kwock told CNN affiliate KGMB that Luigi Mangione lived next to him in their building in Honolulu, Hawaii. Kwock said he last saw his neighbor about three to four months ago.
Kwock said he asked Mangione where he had been for the past six months and he said he was on the mainland for “medical stuff.” Mangione didn’t complain about his medical issue, Kwock said.
He said he didn’t recognize Mangione when he saw photos on the news.
“I wouldn’t even think about someone living next to me in Hawaii, across the state or across the US (being the suspect),” he said.
After police found the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” printed on shell casings near the site where UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down, merchandise bearing those words started to appear online.
The phrase might be linked to a 2010 book critiquing the health insurance industry titled, “Delay Deny Defend,” a common description of the industry’s tactics. Those words appeared on a number of items on Amazon’s store, including hats, T-shirts and pint glasses.
The suspect in the case has garnered sympathy and online fandom partly because of people’s problems with the health insurance industry. The majority of insured US adults had at least one issue, including denial of claims, with their health insurance in the span of a year, according to a survey released in June 2023 by KFF, a nonprofit health policy research group.
Amazon has pulled the merchandise from the website for violating the company’s rules, according to a person familiar with Amazon’s decision making. It’s unclear how many people bought items emblazoned with the phrase.
However, “deny, defend, depose” merchandise remains on sale on eBay. The phrase itself doesn’t violate its rules, but “items that glorify or incite violence, including those that celebrate the recent murder of UHC CEO Brian Thompson, are prohibited,” a company spokesperson told CNN.
Read more here about how companies are trying to stop online support for the suspect
An online blogger who corresponded for months with Luigi Mangione said the UnitedHealthcare shooting suspect expressed a diverse range of political viewpoints, including support for a nationalized healthcare system.
Mangione was a subscriber to Gurwinder Bhogal’s Substack, “The Prism,” and the two corresponded this past spring. They held a two-hour video chat in May, when Mangione said he was in Japan, and exchanged almost 20 emails and direct messages on X and Substack, Bhogal told CNN.
He says Mangione told him he subscribed to his blog after reading an August 2023 article where Bhogal explained “how people today live in rigid tribes.” Mangione, Bhogal said, appreciated how he identified how individuals could express varying opinions, depending on the issue.
“This seemed to resonate with Luigi because he was also left-wing on some things and right-wing on others,” Bhogal told CNN in an email. “For instance, he was pro-equality (of opportunity) but anti-woke (i.e. anti-DEI, anti-identity politics). He opposed wokeism because he didn’t believe it was an effective way to help minorities.”
The two also discussed healthcare. Bhogal, who is based in the United Kingdom, said Mangione complained how expensive healthcare was in the US and “expressed envy at the UK’s nationalized health system.”
Bhogal says he only vaguely remembers Mangione discussing a back injury he sustained while surfing in Hawaii. Their last correspondence was in June.
“He was so thoughtful and polite,” said Bhogal, who described himself as bewildered when he saw Mangione’s name as the suspect in the shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson. “He seemed like the last person I’d suspect of murdering someone.”
Along with a three-page handwritten “claim of responsibility,” as police characterized Luigi Mangione’s manifesto, investigators are also looking at pages of notes in a spiral notebook that the 26-year-old wrote in, a law enforcement source briefed on the matter told CNN.
It included to-do lists of tasks that needed to be completed to facilitate a killing, as well as notes justifying those plans, the source said.
In one notebook passage, Mangione wrote about the Unabomber who CNN has previously reported Mangione wrote about in posts online as well. In the passage in the notebook, Mangione concludes that using a bomb against his intended victim “could kill innocents” but shooting would be more targeted, musing what could be better than “to kill the CEO at his own bean counting conference.”
Police have previously stated that after arriving in New York on November 24, Mangione allegedly took a cab to the New York Hilton to begin his reconnaissance and planning of the assassination.
Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, will fight extradition to New York.
He appeared at an extradition hearing today at the Blair County Courthouse in Pennsylvania after New York prosecutors charged him with murder, among other counts, related to the deadly shooting in Manhattan last week.
Here’s the latest on the case:
- Charges: New York prosecutors charged Mangione, who was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania on Monday, with one count of murder, two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, one count of second-degree possession of a forged document, and one count of third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, online court documents show.
- What else was in the court documents: Mangione was found with “a black 3D-printed pistol and a black silencer,” which was also 3D printed, according to the complaint. Detective Yousef Demes of the Midtown North Detective Squad also outlined evidence that officials say proves Mangione is the person depicted in surveillance video fatally shooting Thompson outside of a Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.
- Court appearance: The suspect arrived to court, yelling, in part, “It’s completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people. It’s lived experience” as he was escorted from the car to inside the building. Inside the courtroom, Blair County District Attorney Peter Weeks detailed what was found on Mangione when he was arrested. The judge denied bail.
- What happens now: Since Mangione is fighting extradition, a Pennsylvania court has given him 14 days to file for writ of habeas corpus, and a hearing will be scheduled if he does. Mangione will stay at Huntingdon State Correctional Institution in Pennsylvania. Prosecutors have 30 days to obtain a governor’s warrant, which New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said she will work with prosecutors to sign. Weeks said his office is prepared “to do what’s necessary” to get Mangione back to New York.
- Mangione’s lawyer: Defense attorney Tom Dickey said he has been retained to represent Mangione, though he wouldn’t say who hired him. He also said his client would be pleading not guilty to the charges he faces in Pennsylvania, which are related to the fake ID and gun found when Mangione was searched. He also said he anticipates Mangione would plead not guilty to the murder charge in New York and that it’s “a possibility” he could represent him there.
- Reported missing: Mangione was the subject of a missing persons report filed in San Francisco by his mother on November 18, according to reporting from The New York Times. CNN has reached out to the San Francisco Police Department. The NYPD has said that Mangione had ties to San Francisco — though the exact time he was there is unclear.
- Back injury: The suspect may have suffered a back injury in July 2023, New York Police Chief of Detectives Joe Kenny told Fox News, pointing to “some of the writing that he had” where he “was discussing the difficulty of sustaining that injury.” Kenny said investigators are looking into if anything happened with the insurance claim. Police found a handwritten document when Mangione was arrested.
Luigi Mangione’s former classmate said he thought the suspected shooter of CEO Brian Thompson was “totally brilliant” when they were in high school in Baltimore.
“He was the kind of kid who would like, just show up to class, never open a book after and aced the test,” the classmate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, told CNN in a phone call.
He said Mangione, who joined the Gilman School in 6th grade comes from a “really good family,” and recalls Mangione saying on their senior year retreat that he was “really impressed with his grandfather’s legacy and had a strong family relationship because of that patriarch unit,” said the classmate.
The suspect’s grandfather, Nicholas Mangione, a former masonry contractor who told the Baltimore Sun he started working at age 11, built a local real estate empire that included nursing home facilities around Maryland and two country clubs in the Baltimore suburbs.
In 10th grade, students were given three months to write a lengthy, up to 20 page-long, thesis paper, the classmate said, and Mangione wrote his on the night before and was awarded a prize for the “best paper written.”
“He was extraordinary. His friend group, I’d say was a bit nerdier and like more reserved, but Luigi was somebody that, socially, was very approachable and not confined to his close group of friends,” said the classmate. “He played soccer. He was decently athletic.”
The classmate said he was “shocked” when Mangione’s identity was released on Monday and hadn’t seen the photo before then. “When I got the early text that it’s Luigi, I was just in shock. Not only because of the relationship but it’s obviously shocking that type of person would commit it… Somebody that comes from a lot of money and had a lot to offer.”
“I’m saddened by the whole thing,” he added.
Luigi Mangione’s defense attorney said he told his client to be quiet while they were in court for an extradition hearing in Pennsylvania this afternoon.
Defense lawyer Tom Dickey said Mangione, who is accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, “shut his mouth” after he told him to keep quiet.
“Which is good, that’s what he needs to do,” Dickey said, adding that his comment to his client came after he thought he heard his voice.
Asked if he was aware of what Mangione yelled as he arrived to court this afternoon, Dickey said that he “heard some different versions of that, so I need to see what that statement was.”
“Hopefully there won’t be anymore of that,” he said.
Mangione could be heard yelling, in part, “it’s completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people. It’s lived experience” as he was being escorted out of the car and into the building.
Defense attorney Tom Dickey said he anticipates a not guilty plea for Luigi Mangione’s murder charge.
“From what I’ve seen, up to this point, he hasn’t been charged with that,” Dickey said. “I don’t really want to speculate, but if in fact that would happen, I would anticipate a plea of not guilty.”
Dickey also said it’s “a possibility” he could represent Mangione in New York.
The suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson may have suffered a back injury on July 4, 2023, New York Police Chief of Detectives Joe Kenny told Fox News on Tuesday afternoon.
“Some of the writings that he had, he was discussing the difficulty of sustaining that injury,” Kenny said of evidence related to the suspect, Luigi Mangione. “So, we’re looking into whether or not the insurance industry either denied a claim from him or didn’t help him out to the fullest extent.”
Kenny said investigators have looked at a handwritten document that was found with the suspect when he was arrested Monday and his social media postings.
Mangione was aware UnitedHealthcare was holding an investors’ conference around the time Thompson was shot and killed — and the suspect mentions he will be going to the conference site, according to the document, the chief of detectives said.
Thompson normally had his own security with him when at home in Minnesota, but chose not to while in New York, Kenny said.
Police received 200 tips about the shooting, but none named Mangione, Kenny added.
The defense attorney for the suspect in the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO said he believes the judge in the case should have set bail for his client.
At an extradition hearing earlier today, the judge denied bail to Luigi Mangione. His lawyer, Tom Dickey, argued that in Pennsylvania, most crimes are a “bailable offense” which means “you have to set some form of bail,” with the exception of capital cases.
Mangione faces a second degree murder charge, among others in New York, as well as charges in Pennsylvania related to a gun and fake ID police found when they arrested him.
“To simply say no bail, with all due respect to the judge, I believe bail should have been set,” Dickey told reporters on Tuesday.
“The judge could set $1 million bail. It could be $5 million bail, but damn it, you get bail. That’s what you do,” he said.
Luigi Mangione will be pleading not guilty to the charges he faces in Pennsylvania, his defense attorney, Tom Dickey, said Tuesday following Mangione’s extradition hearing.
“We’ve pled not guilty, at least to the charges in Pennsylvania. Like I said I’m not aware of any actual charges in New York,” Dickey said.
“I’m telling you as his lawyer, he didn’t have any … representation until I got involved this afternoon. And I’m telling you he’s pleading not guilty,” Dickey said.
Defense attorney Tom Dickey said Tuesday he has been retained to represent Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Mangione, who is fighting extradition to New York where he faces several charges, including murder, is in custody in Pennsylvania after a judge denied bail earlier today. He also faces charges related to a gun and fake ID police found when they arrested him in the state on Monday.
“We’re going to fight this along the rules and with the constitutional protections that my client has,” Dickey said of the fight against extradition.
When asked if Mangione’s family retained him, Dickey said, “I’m not going to get into that.”
Dickey’s office is located in Altoona, Pennsylvania, according to its website. That is where Mangione was arrested on Monday.