Luigi Mangione latest: Top New York attorney tapped by defense as new details emerge on how suspect fled to Pennsylvania

December 4: The suspect set off from an Upper West Side hostel before dawn. He was seen on surveillance video walking back and forth at 54th Street and Sixth Avenue, near the Hilton Hotel where the UnitedHealthcare Group was holding its conference. After opening fire, the suspect fled by bike through Central Park before getting into a cab and was later spotted at a bus station. A manhunt ensued.

December 5: Investigators revealed a cryptic message carved onto the shell casings: “delay,” “deny” and “depose.” NYPD also released images of the suspect.

December 6: Police announce they believe the suspect has left New York City, expanding the desperate search. A backpack, thought to belong to the suspect, was found in Central Park and sent in for forensic testing. The now-viral “flirtatious” photo of the suspect speaking to a hostel worker was released.

December 7: NYPD releases another photo of the suspect, this time in the back of a taxi. The FBI also joined the hunt for the suspect, offering a $50,000 reward for information.

December 8: Although no leads on the suspect’s whereabouts were made public, investigators revealed the contents of the backpack included Monopoly money and a Tommy Hilfiger jacket.

December 9: A private service for Brian Thompson was held. Also that day, a McDonald’s employee in Altoona, Pennsylvania tipped recognized Mangione from the photos circulated by police. He was arrested in Pennsylvania on gun charges and hours later faced a murder charge in New York.

“Wanted” posters with the names and faces of health care executives have been popping up on the streets of New York. Hit lists with images of bullets are circulating online with warnings that industry leaders should be afraid.

The apparent targeted killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the menacing threats that followed have sent a shudder through corporate America and the health care industry in particular, leading to increased security for executives and some workers.

In the week since the brazen shooting, health insurers have removed information about their top executives from company websites, canceled in-person meetings with shareholders and advised all employees to work from home temporarily.

An internal New York Police Department bulletin warned this week that the online vitriol that followed the shooting could signal an immediate “elevated threat.”

Police fear that the Dec. 4 shooting could “inspire a variety of extremists and grievance-driven malicious actors to violence,” according to the bulletin, which was obtained by The Associated Press.

The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson followed Richard Dawkins and RFK Jr, tweeted about neuroscience and Japanese birth rates, and shared posts about how to think more logically.

The 26-year-old was fascinated by AI and decision theory; pro-technology but anti-smartphones; secular and scientific in his outlook, but in favour of religion on Darwinian grounds.

What does it all mean? Luigi Mangione’s worldview might not be familiar to most Americans, and it’s certainly not a common one among politically-motivated killers. Nevertheless, his social media posts, and the users he engaged with, mark him out indelibly as a very specific type of online person – one that’s intimately familiar to me.

”Increasingly looks like we’ve got our first gray tribe shooter, and boy howdy is the media not ready for that,” wrote the journalist and extremism expert Robert Evans, who analyzed Mangione’s online life earlier this week.

There’s no single accepted name for this loose, extremely online subculture of bloggers, philosophers, shitposters and Silicon Valley coders. “The gray tribe” is one term; ”the rationalist movement” is another.

Io Dodds has the full story.