Suspect Luigi Mangione’s fingerprints also matched what was found on a water bottle and protein bar wrapper that police recovered near the crime scene, Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Wednesday during a press conference unrelated to this case.
Police previously said the shooter purchased the items at a nearby cafe while waiting for his target.
Luigi Mangione, 26, was charged with the murder of Brian Thompson, who ran the largest health insurance company in the United States. Authorities believed that writings found in the suspect’s possession suggested he harbored a hatred of corporate greed.
Officers recovered a spiral notebook that Mangione had kept, as well as a three-page handwritten letter found during his arrest Monday in Pennsylvania, a law enforcement official said Wednesday. Police have not revealed the contents of the notebook.
The letter, found during Mangione’s arrest Monday in Altoona, Pa., raises the possibility that clues to the assault — “scattered notes and to-do lists that shed light on the essentials” — could be found in the notebook, a law enforcement official told the Associated Press (AP) on condition of anonymity.
New York Police Department (NYPD) Chief Investigator Joseph Kenny told CBS New York on Tuesday that the motive could be linked to an accident that forced Mangione to go to the emergency room on July 4, 2023.
A law enforcement bulletin obtained by the AP earlier this week said Mangione’s letter expressed anger at what he called “parasitic” health insurance companies and his aversion to greed and power of big business. The university graduate wrote that the United States has the most expensive health care system in the world while big business profits continue to rise, but life expectancy does not, according to the newsletter.
“Insult to the intelligence of the American people!”
In his first public statements since his arrest, Mangione emerged from a patrol car Tuesday screaming to denounce an “insult to the intelligence of the American people” as officers pushed him toward a courthouse door. Mangione remains in custody in Pennsylvania, where he was originally charged in that state with weapons offenses and document forgery.
Manhattan prosecutors are trying to fly him back to New York to stand trial for Mr. Thompson’s murder. At a brief hearing Tuesday in Pennsylvania, his lawyer, Thomas Dickey, said Mangione refused to waive his right to first get an extradition hearing.
Luigi Mangione was arrested Monday at a McDonald’s restaurant in Altoona, about 230 miles west of New York, after a customer recognized him and told an employee, authorities said.
New York police officials said Mangione carried a gun like the one used to kill Brian Thompson and the same fake ID the suspected shooter used to check into a New York hostel, as well as as a false passport and other false identity documents.
Brian Thompson, 50, was killed on December 4 while walking alone to a Manhattan hotel for an investors conference. Based on surveillance video, investigators determined that the shooter quickly fled New York, possibly by bus.
His movements afterward are unclear, but authorities believe he took steps to stay under the radar. Prosecutors said at his hearing in Pennsylvania on Tuesday that when he was arrested he had Faraday bags for his cell phone and laptop, which prevent those devices from transmitting signals that authorities can use to trace them. .
Mangione, the grandson of a well-known Maryland real estate developer and philanthropist, has a degree in computer science and worked for a time on a car-buying website. During the first half of 2022, he housed in a “co-living” space in Hawaii, where those who knew him said he suffered from severe and sometimes debilitating back pain.
His relatives said in a statement that they were “shocked and devastated” by his arrest.
