A Manhattan grand jury on Tuesday indicted Luigi Mangione on first-degree murder and crimes reserved for suspected terrorists for the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Mangione, 26, stands accused of first-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism, second-degree murder as a crime of terrorism, and nine other offenses linked to the high-profile hit on Dec. 4 outside an entrance to the Hilton Hotel in Midtown on W. 54th St. near Sixth Ave.
The crimes charged against Mangione were upgraded from the second-degree murder count included in a complaint after his arrest. First-degree murder is typically charged against defendants accused of killing a member of law enforcement or a witness.
At a press conference, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said that if found guilty of the most serious allegations against him, Mangione faces a mandatory sentence of life without parole with “no discretion for the judge at all.”
“One charges that the killing was done as an act of terrorism, and the second [pertains] to the fact that the killing was intentional,” the DA said of the top counts. “In its most basic terms, this was a killing that intended to evoke terror.”
The DA and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch decried the public support Mangione has received, with Tisch saying authorities had tracked a “shocking and appalling celebration of cold-blooded murder.” An online crowdfunding effort had raised more than $140,000 toward his legal defense late Tuesday.
“Social media has erupted with praise for this cowardly attack. People ghoulishly plastered posters threatening other CEOs with an ‘X’ over Mr. Thompson’s picture, as though he was some sort of a sick trophy,” she said.
Mangione’s lawyer, former Manhattan prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo, declined to comment on the indictment.
Earlier Tuesday, a source told The News that Mangione is expected to waive his extradition to New York when he appears in court in Pennsylvania on Thursday. He has been held without bail at a Pennsylvania correctional facility since his arrest and previously indicated he’d fight being transferred to New York.
Barry Williams/ New York Daily News
NYPD officers and detectives investigate the shooting death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Midtown on Dec. 4. (Barry Williams/ New York Daily News)
Thompson, a 50-year-old father of two from Minnesota, was shot in the back and leg by a masked gunman as he arrived early for the annual investor conference of UnitedHealthcare’s parent company shortly after 6:45 a.m., footage shows.
In court filings, prosecutors said Mangione then darted uptown on an e-bike, got into a taxi to W. 178th St. and Amsterdam Ave., and fled the state by bus. They alleged he arrived in the city on Nov. 24 and checked in at the HI New York City Hostel on the Upper West Side with the same fake ID he had on him when he was arrested and that he extended his stay at the hostel multiple times.
NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny, at Tuesday’s press conference, said that on Dec. 7, before Mangione’s arrest, cops called his mother to vet a tip from a San Francisco cop handling a weeks-old missing person’s case regarding her son’s whereabouts who recognized him in wanted posters. Kenny said Kathleen Mangione told the NYPD she could imagine her son carrying out the killing.
“They had a conversation, where she didn’t indicate that it was her son in the photographs but she said it might be something that she could see him doing,” Kenny said.
The Ivy League graduate, who attended the University of Pennsylvania and comes from a prominent Maryland family, was apprehended on Dec. 9 following a five-day manhunt. Police say a customer at a McDonald’s in Altoona more than 200 miles from the scene recognized him from widely circulated surveillance footage stills.
When cops responding to a worker’s 911 call approached him at the fast-food restaurant, he allegedly lied about who he was and presented a fake ID. After he was pressed, he admitted to his real name and was placed under arrest. He faces charges in the Keystone State related to carrying a firearm without a license, forgery, and giving cops a fake ID. Pennsylvania prosecutors have said they will not seek to try him on those charges before his case in New York is resolved.
PA Department of Corrections, Altoona Police Department / Getty
Luigi Mangione in police custody in Pennsylvania. (PA Department of Corrections, Altoona Police Department / Getty)
Authorities allegedly recovered a 9-mm. 3D-printed ghost gun and silencer from Mangione’s backpack and ammunition matching shell casings at the scene. In court filings Tuesday, prosecutors said two discharged shell casings bore the words “deny” and “depose,” and a bullet featured the word “delay,” in an apparent reference to the health insurance industry routinely denying medical care to maximize profits.
Police have said they’ve also tied him to the killing with DNA recovered from a granola bar wrapper and a bottle of water left by the scene, which he purchased at a Sixth Ave. Starbucks before the shooting.
The cops also allege Mangione had a “manifesto” laying out his reasons for the killing. He allegedly wrote that insurers had “simply gotten too powerful,” continuing to “abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has [allowed] them to get away with it.”
“Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming,” the missive read, according to police.
Mangione was not a client of UnitedHealthcare, according to police. He posted on Reddit and other forums about the severe pain he endured that led him to undergo major surgery on his spine.
Mangione’s Pennsylvania-based attorney, Thomas Dickey, has said his client is innocent and that he hasn’t personally seen anything to suggest otherwise. Dickey could not immediately be reached for comment.
Once he is extradited to New York, Mangione is expected to appear before a judge for his Supreme Court arraignment at 100 Centre St. and enter a plea to the charges.
His attorney may request that he be released on bail while he waits for his case to play out. If a judge finds he poses a flight risk, he will likely wind up awaiting trial from Rikers Island.
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