Luigi Mangione latest: Gun found on suspect matches shell casings at the crime scene, police say

Investigators announced finding their first forensic ties between Luigi Mangione and the Midtown murder scene.

Shell casings — marked with the words “deny,” “defend,” “depose” — that were found at the crime scene matched the gun that was seized during the suspect’s arrest Monday, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Wednesday.

Lab results also showed that Mangione’s fingerprints matched the prints on a watter bottle and a Kind bar wrapper near the scene, she said.

Luigi Mangione struggled with police and shouted about an “insult to the American people” as officers forcibly led him into a Pennsylvania courtroom for an extradition hearing Tuesday afternoon.

The 26-year-old, who has been charged with second-degree murder in connection to last week’s killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, was denied bail at the hearing and is fighting extradition back to New York.

He appeared at Blair County Courthouse in Hollidaysburg in the afternoon in handcuffs and wearing an orange prison jumpsuit.

“It’s completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience!” Mangione shouted after stepping out of a police car.

He was flanked by several officers who pushed him towards the door.

Rhian Lubin has the full story.

Joe Rogan chalked up the country’s mixed reactions to the fatal shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO to the “dirty business” of health insurance.

Rogan and his guests, filmmakers Quentin Tarantino and Roger Avary, discussed the December 4 death of Brian Thompson on a Midtown Manhattan street on Tuesday’s episode of the mega-popular Joe Rogan Experience podcast.

The podcaster and his guests predicted there wouldn’t be much sympathy for the 50-year-old insurance executive due to the state of health insurance in the U.S.

“I don’t think anybody is going to be crying too hard over” Thompson’s death, Avary said.

“Maybe his family, but that’s about it,” Rogan replied. “It’s a dirty, dirty business. The business of insurance is f***ing gross. It’s gross, especially healthcare insurance.”

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Police recovered a notebook — along with the ghost gun, silencer, and fake ID cards — when they apprehended the 26-year-old Monday.

The spiral notebook contained a to-do list outlining tasks to be completed to carry out the killing, as well as notes that justified those plans, CNN previously reported.

One passage, obtained by the New York Times, read: “What do you do? You wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents.”

Mangione is accused of fatally shooting Thompson on his way to speak at the company’s annual investor conference.

Authorities also recovered a 262-word, three-page handwritten manifesto, which references the notebook, according to the Times.

After analyzing the manifesto, investigators believed Thompson’s death to be a “symbolic takedown,” an internal report obtained by the outlet stated. The suspect “likely views himself as a hero of sorts who has finally decided to act upon such injustices.”

The report also noted concern that others might see him as a “martyr and an example to follow.”

GoFundMe has shut down multiple pages created to support the accused murderer of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

A masked man fatally shot Thompson in Midtown Manhattan on December 4 before escaping out of the city, leading to a six-day manhunt for the gunman, which ended Thursday with the arrest of 26-year-old Luigi Mangione. He has been charged with murder.

The insurance executive’s death captivated the nation and sparked serious conversations about the state of health care in the U.S., with some even celebrating the execution as many shared stories of being denied coverage for care. Since his arrest, GoFundMe pages have cropped up in support of Mangione, and the fundraising site has been removing them. It’s not immediately clear how many pages the site took down.

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A high school classmate of the suspect under arrest for fatally gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week said the news “came out of nowhere,” and described the situation as “just, really surreal.”

“He had a lot of things going for him,” Ellison Jordan, who graduated from the Gilman School alongside 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, told The Independent. “He was always cool people.”

Jordan attended Gilman, a prestigious all-boys prep school in Baltimore, with Mangione, and found him to be “a smart dude,” and “a regular guy,” he said on Tuesday.

“I’m being sensitive to Luigi, because I went to school with him,” Jordan, who has not spoken to the media previously about Mangione, went on. “I hope he didn’t do it. I’m praying he didn’t do it. It’s still ‘allegedly.’ It’s really shocking.”

Justin Rohrlich has the exclusive story.

Luigi Mangione’s lawyer is a seasoned trial attorney based in Pennsylvania with more than 40 years of experience.

Thomas Dickey was brought onto the case on Tuesday, one day after his client was arrested in a McDonald’s in the town of Altoona. The 26-year-old now faces a second-degree murder charge in connection to the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson by New York prosecutors who are seeking his extradition to the state.

Dickey said he expects his client will plead not guilty.

The lawyer, who claims to be “one of the few death-penalty qualified attorneys” in Pennsylvania, said on Tuesday night that it was “concerning” his client had been denied bail at an extradition hearing at Blair County courthouse earlier in the day.

Rhian Lubin has the full story.

In the days since the 26-year-old was arrested in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, comments from friends and family have painted a picture of the murder suspect.

Those close to Mangione seem “shocked” by the events that have unraveled in the past week.

“Unfortunately, we cannot comment on news reports regarding Luigi Mangione,” said the family in a statement posted on X by Luigi’s cousin Nino Mangione, a Republican member of the lower house of Maryland’s state legislature. “We only know what we have read in the media.”

One former Penn classmate told The Independent that she couldn’t believe the news.

“It’s really shocking…He never gave off a weird, creepy, Unabomber vibe” in college, she said. He didn’t post passionately about social causes in undergrad, so “I guess something really took a turn,” she added.

Some of his friends have discussed how Mangione suffered from debilitating back pain.

“He said his lower vertebrae were almost like a half-inch off, and I think it pinched a nerve. Sometimes he’d be doing well and other times not,” one friend told the New York Times. “He knew that dating and being physically intimate with his back condition wasn’t possible. I remember him telling me that, and my heart just breaks.”