Luigi Mangione is charged with murder as an act of terrorism
The man accused of killing the CEO of UnitedHealthcare has been charged with murder as an act of terrorism, prosecutors said Tuesday as they worked to bring him from a Pennsylvania prison to a New York court.
Luigi Mangione has already been charged with murder in the murder of Brian Thompson on December 4th, but the terror charge is new.
Under New York law, such a charge can be brought when an alleged crime is “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, to influence the policy of a governmental entity by intimidation or coercion, and to interfere with the conduct of a governmental entity by murder.” Murder or kidnapping.
Mangione’s New York attorney has not commented on the case.
Thompson, 50, was shot on a Manhattan street as he walked to a hotel where Minnesota-based UnitedHealthcare — the largest health insurer in the United States — was holding an investor conference.
Arrested at a McDonald’s
After days of intensive police searches and publicity, Mangione was arrested on December 9 after being seen at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. New York police officials said Mangione was carrying the gun used in Thompson’s murder, a passport and various fake IDs. including the one the suspected shooter presented to check into a New York hostel.
The alleged murderer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Luigi Mangione has been receiving a surprising amount of online praise lately. David Gilbert, a reporter at Wired, talks about what he’s seen online and why some glorify Mangione.
The 26-year-old was charged with weapons offenses and forgery in Pennsylvania and was jailed there without bail. His lawyer in Pennsylvania has questioned the evidence supporting the forgery charge and the legal basis for the weapons charge. The lawyer also said Mangione would fight extradition to New York.
The indictment could help advance procedural steps toward the suspect’s extradition.
Hours after his arrest, the Manhattan district attorney’s office filed papers charging him with murder and other crimes. The indictment is based on this paperwork.
Investigators’ working theory is that Mangione, an Ivy League computer science graduate from a prominent Maryland family, was driven by anger over the U.S. health care system. A law enforcement bulletin obtained by The Associated Press Week said that when he was arrested, he was carrying a handwritten letter in which he called health insurance “parasitic” and complained about corporate greed.
Mangione repeatedly posted on social media about how spinal surgery last year had relieved his chronic back pain and encouraged people with similar conditions to speak up for themselves when they were told they would just have to live with it.
In a Reddit post in late April, he advised someone with back problems to seek additional opinions from surgeons and, if necessary, say that the pain made it impossible to work.
“We live in a capitalist society,” Mangione wrote. “I have found that the medical industry responds to these keywords far more urgently than you do when it comes to describing excruciating pain and its impact on your quality of life.”
According to the insurer, he was never a customer of UnitedHealthcare.
Mangione has apparently cut himself off from his family and close friends in recent months. His family reported him missing to San Francisco authorities in November.
Thompson, who grew up on a farm in small-town Iowa, trained as an accountant. A married father of two high school students, he worked at giant UnitedHealth Group for 20 years and became CEO of its insurance division in 2021.
His killing sparked a violent outburst of resentment toward U.S. health insurance companies, as Americans shared stories online and elsewhere about being denied health insurance, being left in limbo because doctors and insurers disagreed, and that they stuck with high bills.
