Suspect in murder of health insurance CEO charged with murder after McDonald’s customer recognizes him

ALTUNA, PA. After the CEO of UnitedHealthcare was shot dead on a sidewalk in New York, police used dogs, drones and scuba divers to hunt down the masked gunman. Officers used the city’s surveillance system. Investigators analyzed DNA samples, fingerprints and Internet addresses. The police went from house to house looking for witnesses.

When an arrest was made five days later, this extensive investigative effort shared the credit with the citizen’s sensitive instincts. A customer at a McDonald’s restaurant in Pennsylvania noticed another customer who looked like the man in the slanted security camera photos which the New York police made public.

Luigi Nicholas Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate from a prominent Maryland real estate family, was arrested Monday in the murder of Brian Thompson, who headed one of the largest health insurance companies in the United States.

He remained incarcerated in Pennsylvania, where he was initially charged with possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false police identification. Late last night, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office filed a murder charge, according to an online court filing. He is expected to be extradited to New York eventually.

It was unclear if Mangione had an attorney available to comment on the allegations. Asked Monday if he needed a public defender, Mangione asked if he could “answer that in the future.”

Mangione was arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after a McDonald’s customer recognized him and reported it to an employee, authorities said. Police were soon called to Altoona, about 230 miles west of New York.

They arrived to find Mangione sitting at a table in the back of the restaurant, wearing a blue medical mask and looking at a laptop, according to a Pennsylvania State Police criminal complaint.

At first, he gave them a fake ID, but when the officer asked Mangione if he had been to New York recently, he “shut up and started shaking,” the complaint said.

When he pulled off his mask at the officers’ request, “we knew it was our guy,” rookie officer Tyler Frye said at a news conference in Hollidaysburg.

New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a news conference in Manhattan that Mangione was carrying a gun similar to the one used to kill Thompson and the same fake ID the shooter used to check into a New York hostel. as well as passport and other fake IDs. .

NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenney said Mangione also had a three-page handwritten document that showed “some ill will toward corporate America.”

A law enforcement official, who was not authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity, said the document contained a line in which Mangione claimed to have acted alone.

“I’m going to keep this brief to the feds because I respect what you’re doing for our country. In order to avoid a lengthy investigation, I clearly state that I did not work with anyone,” the document reads, according to the official.

It also included a line that said, “I’m really sorry for any strife or hurt, but it had to be done. Frankly speaking, these parasites just made it up.”

Pennsylvania State Attorney Peter Weeks said in court that Mangione was found with a passport and $10,000 in cash, $2,000 of which was in foreign currency. Mangione denied the amount.

Thompson, 50, was killed Wednesday as he walked alone to a midtown Manhattan hotel for an investor conference. Police quickly dismissed the shooting as a targeted attack by a gunman who appeared to be waiting for Thompson, approached him from behind and fired a 9mm handgun.

Investigators said “delay,” “deny” and “destroy” were written on ammunition found near the body of Thompson, the executive of Minnetonka’s largest subsidiary, Minnesota-based UnitedHealth Group. The words mimic “delay, deny, defend,” a phrase used to criticize the insurance industry.

From surveillance video, New York investigators concluded that the gunman fled on a bicycle into Central Park, got out, and then took a taxi to a bus station in northern Manhattan.

Once in Pennsylvania, he traveled from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, “trying to stay low,” avoiding cameras, said Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Col. George Bivens. Altoona is about 100 miles (about 160 kilometers) east of Pittsburgh.

The grandson of a wealthy real estate developer and do-it-yourself philanthropist, Mangione is a cousin of a current Maryland state legislator. Mangione was valedictorian at his elite prep school in Baltimore, where in his 2016 commencement speech he praised the “incredible courage of his classmates to explore the unknown and try new things.”

He earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020, the spokesperson said.

“Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest,” Mangione’s family said in a statement posted on social media Monday night by his cousin, Maryland state lawmaker Nino Mangione. “We are praying for Brian Thompson’s family and asking people to pray for everyone involved.”

Luigi Nicolas Mangione worked for car-buying website TrueCar for a while and left in 2023, CEO Jantoon Reigersman said in an email.

From January to June 2022, Mangione lived at Surfbreak, a “shared accommodation” on the edge of touristy Waikiki in Honolulu.

Like other residents of the shared penthouse, which caters to remote workers, Mangione has been vetted, said Josiah Ryan, a spokesman for owner and founder RJ Martin.

“Luigi was just considered a great guy. There were no complaints,” Ryan said. “There were no indications that would point to these alleged crimes that they allege he committed.”

At Surfbreak, Martin learned that Mangione has had severe back pain since childhood that interfered with many aspects of his life, from surfing to romance, Ryan said.

“He was surfing with RJ once, but it didn’t work out because of his back,” Ryan said, but noted that Mangione and Martin often went to the climbing gym together.

Ryan said Mangione left Surfbreak to have surgery on the mainland, then returned to Honolulu and rented an apartment.

Martin stopped hearing from Mangione six months to a year ago.

Although the gunman covered his face during the shooting, he left a trail of evidence in New York, including a backpack he dropped in Central Park, a cell phone found on a pedestrian plaza, a water bottle and a protein bar wrapper.

In the days since the shooting, the NYPD has collected hundreds of hours of surveillance video and released clips and photos in hopes of drawing public attention to help find the suspect.

“This combination of old-school detective work and modern technology led to this result today,” Tisch said at a news conference in New York.

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Scolforo reported from Altoona and Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. Associated Press writers Cedar Attanasio and Jennifer Peltz reported in New York; Michael Rubinkam and Maryclaire Dale in Pennsylvania; Leah Skeen in Baltimore; and Jennifer Cinco Kelleher in Honolulu.