Suspect in CEO killing is charged with murder. Records show he had California ties
A 26-year-old man has been charged with murder and multiple other counts in the death of the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, who was gunned down last week on the streets of New York.
After an intensive manhunt, Luigi Mangione was taken into custody Monday by law enforcement in Pennsylvania on suspicion of killing Brian Thompson, 50, in an early-morning ambush Wednesday.
He was charged in New York on Monday night with one count of murder, two counts of carrying a loaded firearm, one count of possessing a forged instrument and one count of criminal possession of a weapon.
At a news conference announcing the arrest, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said that Mangione was born and raised in Maryland, had ties to California and that his last known address was in Honolulu.
According to public records, Mangione spent time at Stanford University in 2019 and once worked for the Santa Monica company TrueCar, a digital marketplace for automobiles.
The shackled suspect was seen in video stepping out of an SUV on Monday afternoon and being led by deputies into a Pennsylvania courthouse.
He was charged in Pennsylvania with five criminal counts, including forgery, carrying a firearm without a license, tampering with records or identification, possessing instruments of a crime and providing false identification to law enforcement.
His arrest came after what police described as a significant use of police resources, including combing through thousands of hours of video, reviewing hundreds of tips, DNA testing, fingerprint analysis, drones and aviation canvasses, that for days appeared to yield no results.
Then a tip from someone at a McDonald’s restaurant in Altoona, Pa., broke open the case, Kenny said.
Altoona Police Department officers found Mangione seated at the fast-food chain wearing a blue medical mask and looking at a silver laptop, according to a criminal complaint. After asking him to remove his mask, they immediately recognized him as the shooting suspect.
Butte County authorities have identified the gunman, now dead, who staged an attack Wednesday on an elementary school that left two kindergartners critically wounded.
When they asked Mangione whether he had been in New York recently, he became quiet and started to shake, according to the complaint.
At a news conference Monday, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro praised the person at the restaurant who spotted the suspect and contacted law enforcement.
“I want to ask all of our fellow Pennsylvanians to demonstrate the same type of thoughtfulness and courage and smarts as the individual at McDonald’s did this morning and help law enforcement here in Pennsylvania as we continue with our investigation,” Shapiro said.
The governor also responded to online reaction to the suspect and the killing of Thompson. In social media posts, some have praised the killing and criticized the role of companies such as UnitedHealthcare in the healthcare industry.
“I have no tolerance or should anyone for one man using an illegal ghost gun to murder someone because he thinks his opinion matters the most,” Shapiro said. “Hear me on this. He is no hero.”
Mangione’s family broke their silence on the arrest through a statement posted on the social media profile for Republican delegate Nino Mangione, cousin of the alleged shooter.
“Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest,” the statement said. “We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved.”
Detectives obtained a handwritten, three-page document from Mangione when he was taken into custody that appeared to outline his motives for the killing, the New York City Police Department’s Kenny said.
Officials declined to discuss the contents of the letter but said Mangione appeared to have “some ill will toward corporate America.”
R.J. Martin, a friend of Mangione who lived with him in Hawaii in 2022, spoke with CNN about health struggles Mangione had faced in 2023. He said Mangione had struggled with chronic back pain and underwent spinal surgery that year.
“It was really traumatic and difficult,” Martin said, “you know, when you’re in your early 20s and you can’t, you know, do some basic things.”
Martin said he was shocked to hear that Mangione was a suspected killer.
“He never once talked about guns, never once talked about violence,” Martin said. “He was absolutely a nonviolent person as far as I could tell.”
Mangione was denied bond and was set to be transferred to a state correctional facility Monday night.
When Altoona police responded to McDonald’s, the suspect was carrying a firearm and suppressor that were “consistent” with the weapon used in the killing, said New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
The weapon was described as a ghost handgun capable of firing 9-millimeter bullets, police said.
Ghost guns are unserialized and mostly difficult to trace. They are at times purchased by individuals as kits, using unfinished frames and receivers and, other times, created with 3D printers.
Law enforcement sources said Mangione was carrying bullets, a loaded magazine, and a large amount of cash.
The weapon that was seized when he was detained contained 3D-made parts, including a 3D-printed silencer.
Officers also recovered clothing and masks believed to have been used by the suspect, Tisch said.
According to the criminal complaint, Mangione initially handed Altoona police officers a fake driver’s license bearing the name Mark Rosario with a birth date of July 21, 1998. Officers ran the name through the National Crime Information Center and found no record.
They then informed Mangione that he was under an official police investigation and would be placed under arrest if he lied about his identity. He then stated that his true name was Luigi Mangione, with a birth date of May 6, 1998.
When asked why he lied about his name, he said, “I clearly shouldn’t have,” according to the complaint.
Few details were available about Mangione’s time in California, but New York police noted a connection to the San Francisco area when announcing the break in the case.
A spokesperson for Stanford confirmed that a person named Luigi Mangione was employed as a head counselor under the Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies program between May and September 2019, and a Truecar spokesperson confirmed Mangione worked for the company and left sometime in 2023.
A former co-worker at Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies said Mangione seemed like a “really nice, goofy guy” during their time there. They asked to not be identified, as they had not spoken with him for several years.
Before Stanford, he studied computer science at the University of Pennsylvania, online profiles show. His LinkedIn and Github profiles reflected an entrepreneurial streak: Mangione founded a video game club and later a startup developing games.
Mangione was the class valedictorian in 2016 at Gilman School, a private all-boys school in Baltimore, according to the Baltimore Sun.
Race Saunders, who graduated from Gilman with Mangione, described him as “a great friend” and a “smart guy and kind, as well.”
“I don’t think this was a mental breakdown,” Saunders said in a text message. “I don’t want to speculate, I’m sure he will speak for himself.”
Mangione posted extensively in favor of experimentation with psychedelic drugs on social media and pontificated on trends in tech.
According to an archived page of Mangione’s Facebook profile, which was removed as of Monday, he co-founded a company called AppRoar Studios. He also worked as a UI programming intern at Firaxis Games from 2015 to 2017 in Maryland.
Mangione’s LinkedIn profile shows that he once volunteered for Lorien Health Systems, an assisted-living facility for elderly people in Maryland, in 2014, when he was in high school.
He is the grandson of Nicholas Mangione, a real estate developer who owned nursing homes and country clubs in Maryland. Mangione’s grandfather died in 2008 of complications from a stroke.
Nearly 500 female inmates who joined a lawsuit alleging sexual abuse at the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin will be provided protections for two years.
On Goodreads, he reviewed 13 books, including the Unabomber’s manifesto.
He appeared to empathize with some of Theodore Kaczynski’s writings, based on the review he provided on the site.
“While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite,” he wrote in February, “they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary.
“It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies. But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.”
He then copied in a comment from Reddit about the manifesto in which a commenter wrote: “When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive.”
CNN reported that police found a document when making the arrest in which the suspect allegedly railed against the healthcare system.
“These parasites had it coming,” CNN reported the document as saying. “I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done.”
The Times could not confirm the document or its origins.
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