Luigi Mangione, now charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, struggled with police officers and angrily shouted toward reporters as he entered a county building for a court appearance in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. In that hearing, we learned that the suspect will fight extradition to New York, where Thompson was murdered. The manhunt captured the nation’s attention. I spent hours on the air for NBC News and MSNBC analyzing each new bit of information during the five-day search for the unidentified shooter. Here are my biggest takeaways and my lingering questions.
Despite impressive detective work, state-of-the-art high-tech policing doesn’t appear to have led to this arrest.
First, despite impressive detective work by some of the finest investigators in New York City, and perhaps the world, state-of-the-art high-tech policing doesn’t appear to have led to this arrest. Had the person who killed Thompson outwitted modern technology? In a Monday news conference, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch rattled off the litany of techniques and tools applied to the search:
“For just over five days, our NYPD investigators combed through thousands of hours of video, followed up on hundreds of tips and processed every bit of forensic evidence, DNA, fingerprints, IP addresses, and so much more to tighten the net. We deployed drones, canine units and scuba divers. We leveraged the domain awareness system, Argus cameras and conducted aviation canvases.”
Yet, it was what I call crowdsourced crime solving that appears to have done the trick. After police culled the best photo and video images from relevant security cameras (no small task), their decision to share those images with the public led to the apprehension. A customer at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, saw Mangione sitting in the restaurant, recognized him from the released images and notified a restaurant employee, who called 911. A rookie cop, just six months out of the police academy, and his partner swiftly and seriously responded.
They did everything right to lawfully identify the man munching on hash browns at the back table. They searched him to discover fake IDs — including the one officials say Thompson’s killer used at a New York City hostel — thousands of dollars in U.S. and foreign currency, and a nontraceable ghost gun that may have been 3D-printed and that may be the murder weapon.
Importantly, the police say they recovered a brief document of about 300 words that they say is tantamount to a confession. They say it offered a clue into Mangione’s mindset against corporate health care insurers and UnitedHealthcare specifically.
Second, if officials are correct and Mangione is the killer, then he seems to have carefully planned his attack on Thompson and his exit from New York, but there are only minimal signs of planning beyond that. If he’s the person who killed Thompson, did he think he might not survive to escape, or did he have another target somewhere else? Police say the document he reportedly wrote stated, “These parasites had it coming.” That’s plural. Were more murders planned? If Mangione was the killer, why hadn’t he ditched all that evidence police say they found in his backpack at McDonald’s?
Mangione, officials said, had multiple forms of identification, plenty of cash and even a passport on him when he was captured.
Mangione, officials said, had multiple forms of identification, plenty of cash and even a passport on him when he was captured. A person running from the law might have tried to escape to a foreign country with which the U.S. has no extradition treaty. But officials say Mangione instead chose the bus route from New York to Philadelphia, then moved on to Pittsburgh and backtracked to Altoona.
Third, even though images of the shooter were omnipresent, it was a total stranger — not family, friends or colleagues — who was responsible for the suspect’s arrest. Between the murder and his arrest, did his family ever contact police? According to reports, Mangione’s parents had been looking for him for months. Did any of his family members suspect he was the killer, or was it beyond their imagination that their loved one or associate could be the suspect?
Lastly, no analysis of this event would be complete without mentioning the social media reaction to this killing. Deep-seated, visceral hatred for American health care insurance carriers was on full display. Internet denizens across major platforms railed against the corporate greed and profit-driven insurance claim denials so many of us have experienced. UnitedHealthcare decided to take down the Facebook post of its corporate news release about the murder after people posted tens of thousands of laughing emojis in responses. A song using the words “deny, defend, depose,” which officials say were inscribed on bullets found at the murder scene, went viral on TikTok, and some people breathlessly admired the suspect’s good looks. The McDonald’s in Altoona where Mangione was taken into custody was inundated with bad Yelp reviews referencing “rats and snitches” there. As a former law enforcement officer, I began to wonder whether the manhunt would be stymied by a public who viewed a murderer as a hero.
If we’re looking for heroes in this story, let’s look at the employee and customer at the Altoona fast-food burger joint who did the right thing at the right time. I want to see them get that $60,000 in combined NYPD and FBI reward money that was offered for the killer’s capture. We should all want to see these two citizens rewarded. We’re at a place in our society where it seems that not enough people are doing what’s right often enough. But alerting officials to the presence of a person who matches the description of a murder suspect is the right call every time.