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?








