NEW YORK - Luigi Mangione , the man accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare’s CEO Brian Thompson in an assassination-style ambush in Midtown Manhattan on Dec. 4, 2024, is awaiting trial on his state and federal murder charges.
A customer at the McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where Mangione was arrested, said one of his friends had commented beforehand that the man looked like the suspect wanted for the shooting in New York City. "It started out almost a little bit like a joke, my one friend thought he looked like the shooter," said the customer, who declined to give his full name. The tipster thought Mangione looked like the suspected gunman in photographs shared by police. He "had the same eyebrows," law enforcement sources said. "I think the one worker that actually thought it was him. She said between his eyes and his eyebrows … it was like she got in her mind, ‘Oh my God. It’s the guy from New York.’" According to court documents, Mangione was sitting at a table in the rear of the McDonald's wearing a blue medical mask and looking at a silver laptop computer and had a backpack on the floor. In photos obtained by FOX 5 NY , he appears to be eating hashbrowns. Photo credit: Pennsylvania State Police. When he pulled down his mask, Altoona police officers "immediately recognized him as the suspect" in the murder of Thompson, court documents say. Asked for identification, Mangione provided officers with a fake ID — a New Jersey driver’s license bearing another name and the incorrect date of birth. The ID matched one the suspect used to check into a New York City hostel before the shooting, Tisch said. When an officer asked Mangione if he’d been to New York recently, he "became quiet and started to shake," the documents say. In his backpack, police found a black, 3D-printed pistol and a 3D-printed black silencer, the papers say. The pistol had a metal slide and plastic handle with a metal threaded barrel. It had one loaded glock magazine with six 9 mm full metal jacket rounds and one loose 9 mm hollow-point round. "As of right now, the information we’re getting from Altoona is that the gun appears to be a ghost gun that may have been made on a 3D printer, capable of firing a 9 mm round," NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a news briefing. Blair County District Attorney Peter Weeks said in court that Mangione was carrying a passport and $10,000 in cash — $2,000 of it in foreign currency. Mangione disputed the amount. He was also found with a box of masks, the prosecutor said. Police found a three-page document with writings suggesting that Mangione had "ill will toward corporate America," Kenny said. The handwritten document "speaks to both his motivation and mindset," Tisch said. "They were very detailed, and everything we have is going to be turned over to NYPD," Altoona Deputy Chief of Police Derek Swope told The Associated Press. The document also included a line in which he claimed to have acted alone, according to a law enforcement official who wasn’t authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. "To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone," the document said, according to the official. It also had a line that said, "I do apologize for any strife or traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming." Luigi Mangione is one of 37 grandchildren of Nick Mangione Sr., according to a 2008 obituary. Mangione Sr. grew up poor in Baltimore’s Little Italy and rose after his World War II naval service to become a millionaire real estate developer and philanthropist, according to a 1995 profile by the Baltimore Sun. He and his wife Mary Cuba Mangione, who died in 2023, directed their philanthropy through the Mangione Family Foundation, according to a statement from Loyola University commemorating her death. They donated to a variety of causes, ranging from Catholic organizations to higher education, to the arts. Mangione Sr. was known for Turf Valley Resort, a sprawling luxury retreat and conference center outside Baltimore that he purchased in 1978. The father of 10 children, Nick Mangione Sr. prepared his five sons — including Luigi Mangione’s father, Louis Mangione — to help manage the family business, according to a 2003 Washington Post report. The Mangione family also purchased Hayfields Country Club north of Baltimore in 1986. On the Monday afternoon following Mangione’s arrest, Baltimore County police officers had blocked off an entrance to the property, which public records link to Luigi Mangione’s parents. A swarm of reporters and photographers gathered outside the entrance. Luigi’s parents are Louis and Kathleen Mangione. The New York Times reported his father Louis still works for the family business and his mother Kathleen runs a boutique travel company. The paper reported Kathleen is from a Maryland family as well; her father Joseph N. Cannino Jr., founded a funeral home in East Baltimore.
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The answer to the question of when Mangione's trial begins is threefold, as he faces charges in three jurisdictions: federal, New York State and Pennsylvania. His New York State trial is expected to begin first. He was arraigned and indicted, pleading not guilty to the 11 charges , which include murder as an act of terrorism , in late December 2024. His last court appearance in this case was Feb. 21, 2025. A trial date was not set. Federal prosecutors have yet to bring an indictment against Mangione; once indicted, Mangione can enter a plea in response to the federal charges . The delay in bringing the federal indictment first came after prosecutors and lawyers jointly requested more time to prepare for the trial, and has since been continued twice more. The last continuance set a court appearance for April 18, 2025. Prosecutors have said the federal and New York state cases will proceed on parallel tracks. Mangione would also face trial in Pennsylvania, where he was a rrested at a McDonald's in Altoona. Any court appearance for Pennsylvania state charges remains unscheduled.When did Luigi Mangione appear in court?
New York Supreme Criminal Court appearances:
Feb. 21, 2025: Mangione appeared in court for the first time since he was arraigned on charges brought by the State of New York.Mangione federal court appearances:
On Dec. 4, 2024, Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare’s late CEO, was gunned down in the early morning hours as he went to enter the side entrance of a Midtown Manhattan hotel, where he was scheduled to speak at an annual investor conference on behalf of the Fortune 500 company. FOX 5 NY was among the first news crews on the scene, capturing video of paramedics attempting to perform life-saving measures of chest compressions, and speaking to witnesses who saw and heard the "brazen, targeted" killing. The masked killer, wearing a distinctive gray backpack and black hooded jacket, was caught on chilling footage walking up behind Thompson, raising a handgun with glove-covered hands. The culprit fires off several rounds, shooting the CEO in the back. At one point, the gun appeared to jam. The assailant then appears to smack the gun on the side while walking toward the victim, who is attempting to get away. As he gets closer to Thompson, the man appears to continue to struggle with the pistol, possibly firing off one more round at the victim, who appears to be struggling to move. Thompson was rushed to Mt. Sinai Hospital after being shot. Despite efforts to save him, he was pronounced dead at 7:12 a.m. The coroner confirmed that the cause of death was gunshot wounds. Shell casings found at the scene were etched with the words "delay," "deny" and "depose," seemingly reflecting the criticism of the healthcare industry. "It appears the suspect was lying in wait for several minutes and as the victim was walking to the conference hotel, the suspect approached from behind and fired several rounds, striking the victim at least once in the back and at least once in the right calf," NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said during a news conference on the morning of the shooting. "This was a frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation," Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said at a news conference at the time. "It occurred in one of the most bustling parts of our city, threatened the safety of local residents and tourists alike, commuters and businesspeople just starting out on their day." A few hours later, police released images of the suspected gunman, who appeared to be a white male who was carrying a distinctive gray backpack. Investigators later released additional photos of a "person of interest" which showed an unmasked man in the lobby of a Manhattan hostel. More photos showed the masked suspect inside a taxi. Five days after the killing, police took Mangione into custody inside a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa. The 26-year-old man was a star student from a prominent Maryland family who "had everything going for him." This screenshot shows the X profile of Luigi Mangione. Mangione was born and raised in Maryland, and he was the valedictorian in the 2016 class at Baltimore’s private Gilman School. In his graduation speech, he talked about his classmates’ "incredible courage to explore the unknown and try new things," the Associated Press reported. "Quite honestly, he had everything going for him," said Freddie Leatherbury, a former classmate. Leatherbury described Mangione as a smart, friendly and athletic student who came from a wealthy family, even by the private school’s standards. He earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science in 2020 from the University of Pennsylvania, a spokesman told The Associated Press. He learned to code in high school and helped start a club at Penn for people interested in gaming and game design, according to a 2018 story in Penn Today, a campus publication. His posts also suggest that he belonged to the fraternity Phi Kappa Psi. They also show him taking part in a 2019 program at Stanford University, and in photos with family and friends in Hawaii, San Diego, Puerto Rico, the New Jersey shore and other destinations. In a statement, Stanford confirmed someone with the same name was previously employed as a counselor at the college. "We can confirm that a person by the name of Luigi Mangione was employed as a head counselor under the Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies program between May and September of 2019," a university spokesperson told our sister station KTVU . According to his LinkedIn account, Mangione was last employed with TrueCar, Inc. A spokesperson confirmed that "Mangione has not been an employee of our company since 2023." He also has ties to San Francisco and his last known address is in Honolulu, Hawaii. A few hours after the attack that killed Thompson, police released images of the suspected gunman, who appeared to be a white male who was carrying a distinctive gray backpack. Investigators later released additional photos of a "person of interest" which showed an unmasked man in the lobby of a Manhattan hostel. The Saturday following the killing, police released several new images of the person of interest, on camera in a NYC taxi cab. The first shows him outside the vehicle and the second shows him looking through the partition between the back seat and the front of the cab. In both, his face is partially obscured by a blue, medical-style mask. NYPD divers returned to Central Park on Sunday, as they searched for evidence, including the gunman's firearm. Police believe that after stalking and shooting the Fortune 500 CEO in the ambush attack early Wednesday, the gunman boarded a bike , ditched evidence in Central Park, then hailed a taxi cab on the Upper West Side. The cab took the gunman to George Washington Bridge Bus Station, where the killer likely boarded a bus to flee New York City, investigators believe.Retracing the killer's steps
Before the shooting
Police determined from video that the gunman was in the city for 10 days before the shooting. He arrived at Manhattan’s main bus terminal on a Greyhound bus that originated in Atlanta, though it's not clear whether he embarked there or at one of about a half-dozen stops along the route. Immediately after that, he took a cab to the vicinity of the Hilton and was there for about a half hour, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said. At around 11 p.m. on the night he arrived, he went by taxi to the HI New York City Hostel. It was there, while speaking with an employee in the lobby, that he briefly pulled down the mask and smiled, giving investigators the brief glimpse they are now relying on to identify and capture a killer. The shooter paid cash at the hostel, presented what police believe was a fake ID and is believed to have paid cash for taxi rides and other transactions. He didn't speak to others at the hostel and almost always kept his face covered with a mask, only lowering it while eating.After the shooting
Investigators know from surveillance video that the shooter fled into Central Park on a bicycle and ditched it around 7 a.m. near 85th Street. He then walked a couple blocks and got into a taxi, arriving at 7:30 a.m. at the George Washington Bridge Bus Station, which is near the northern tip of Manhattan and offers commuter service to New Jersey and Greyhound routes to Philadelphia, Boston and Washington. Investigators don't know what happened next. Aside from the images of the suspected gunman released to the public, footage from surveillance cameras has let police retrace the shooter’s movements. Photo obtained by FOX 5 New York. On Friday evening, investigators found a backpack in Central Park that had been worn by the gunman, police said. Police also had another potential clue, a fingerprint on an item he purchased at a Starbucks minutes before the shooting. FOX News reported Luigi’s mother Katheen Mangione spoke to police the day before his arrest, telling them the murder of the UnitedHealthcare CEO ""might be something that she could see him doing." Kathleen filed a missing person report for her son with San Francisco police in November 2024, telling officials she had not spoken to Luigi since July of that year. In a news conference, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said investigators in California thought they recognized Mangione from the missing persons report as the person of interest shown in NYPD images and contacted the FBI on Dec. 5 with the tip . Investigators spoke with Kathleen three days later to ask if the suspect could be her son. Five days after the killing, police took Mangione into custody inside a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa. Mangione was taken into custody on Monday, Dec. 9, around 9:15 a.m. after police received a tip from a worker that he was eating at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, hundreds of miles outside of New York City, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said at a news conference.A customer at the McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where Mangione was arrested, said one of his friends had commented beforehand that the man looked like the suspect wanted for the shooting in New York City. "It started out almost a little bit like a joke, my one friend thought he looked like the shooter," said the customer, who declined to give his full name. The tipster thought Mangione looked like the suspected gunman in photographs shared by police. He "had the same eyebrows," law enforcement sources said. "I think the one worker that actually thought it was him. She said between his eyes and his eyebrows … it was like she got in her mind, ‘Oh my God. It’s the guy from New York.’" According to court documents, Mangione was sitting at a table in the rear of the McDonald's wearing a blue medical mask and looking at a silver laptop computer and had a backpack on the floor. In photos obtained by FOX 5 NY , he appears to be eating hashbrowns. Photo credit: Pennsylvania State Police. When he pulled down his mask, Altoona police officers "immediately recognized him as the suspect" in the murder of Thompson, court documents say. Asked for identification, Mangione provided officers with a fake ID — a New Jersey driver’s license bearing another name and the incorrect date of birth. The ID matched one the suspect used to check into a New York City hostel before the shooting, Tisch said. When an officer asked Mangione if he’d been to New York recently, he "became quiet and started to shake," the documents say. In his backpack, police found a black, 3D-printed pistol and a 3D-printed black silencer, the papers say. The pistol had a metal slide and plastic handle with a metal threaded barrel. It had one loaded glock magazine with six 9 mm full metal jacket rounds and one loose 9 mm hollow-point round. "As of right now, the information we’re getting from Altoona is that the gun appears to be a ghost gun that may have been made on a 3D printer, capable of firing a 9 mm round," NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a news briefing. Blair County District Attorney Peter Weeks said in court that Mangione was carrying a passport and $10,000 in cash — $2,000 of it in foreign currency. Mangione disputed the amount. He was also found with a box of masks, the prosecutor said. Police found a three-page document with writings suggesting that Mangione had "ill will toward corporate America," Kenny said. The handwritten document "speaks to both his motivation and mindset," Tisch said. "They were very detailed, and everything we have is going to be turned over to NYPD," Altoona Deputy Chief of Police Derek Swope told The Associated Press. The document also included a line in which he claimed to have acted alone, according to a law enforcement official who wasn’t authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke with The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. "To the Feds, I’ll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone," the document said, according to the official. It also had a line that said, "I do apologize for any strife or traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming." Luigi Mangione is one of 37 grandchildren of Nick Mangione Sr., according to a 2008 obituary. Mangione Sr. grew up poor in Baltimore’s Little Italy and rose after his World War II naval service to become a millionaire real estate developer and philanthropist, according to a 1995 profile by the Baltimore Sun. He and his wife Mary Cuba Mangione, who died in 2023, directed their philanthropy through the Mangione Family Foundation, according to a statement from Loyola University commemorating her death. They donated to a variety of causes, ranging from Catholic organizations to higher education, to the arts. Mangione Sr. was known for Turf Valley Resort, a sprawling luxury retreat and conference center outside Baltimore that he purchased in 1978. The father of 10 children, Nick Mangione Sr. prepared his five sons — including Luigi Mangione’s father, Louis Mangione — to help manage the family business, according to a 2003 Washington Post report. The Mangione family also purchased Hayfields Country Club north of Baltimore in 1986. On the Monday afternoon following Mangione’s arrest, Baltimore County police officers had blocked off an entrance to the property, which public records link to Luigi Mangione’s parents. A swarm of reporters and photographers gathered outside the entrance. Luigi’s parents are Louis and Kathleen Mangione. The New York Times reported his father Louis still works for the family business and his mother Kathleen runs a boutique travel company. The paper reported Kathleen is from a Maryland family as well; her father Joseph N. Cannino Jr., founded a funeral home in East Baltimore.
