Man accused in UnitedHealthcare CEO killing faces federal charge that’s eligible for death penalty

Luigi Mangione, center, sits in court reading the federal complaint while wearing orange slip on shoes and his ankles shackled in Manhattan federal court. (Elizabeth Williams/AP)
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Updated 20 December 2024
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Man accused in UnitedHealthcare CEO killing faces federal charge that’s eligible for death penalty

NEW YORK: The man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare’s CEO was whisked back to New York by plane and helicopter Thursday to face new federal charges of stalking and murder, which could bring the death penalty if he’s convicted.
Luigi Mangione was held without bail following a Manhattan federal court appearance, capping a whirlwind day that began in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested last week in the Dec. 4 attack on Brian Thompson.
The 26-year-old Ivy League graduate had been expected to be arraigned Thursday on a state murder indictment in a killing that at once rattled the business community and galvanized some health insurance critics, but the federal charges preempted that appearance. The cases will now proceed on parallel tracks, prosecutors said, with the state charges expected to go to trial first.
Mangione, shackled at the ankles and wearing dress clothes, said little during the 15-minute proceeding as he sat between his lawyers in a packed federal courtroom.
He nodded as a magistrate judge informed him of his rights and the charges against him, occasionally leaning forward to a microphone to tell her he understood.
After the hearing, a federal marshal handed Mangione’s lawyers a bag containing his belongings, including the orange prison jumpsuit he had worn to court in Pennsylvania.
Mangione had been held in Pennsylvania since his Dec. 9 arrest while eating breakfast at a McDonald’s in Altoona, about 233 miles (37 kilometers) west of Manhattan.
At a hearing there Thursday morning, Mangione agreed to be returned to New York and was immediately turned over to at least a dozen New York Police Department officers who took him to an airport and a plane bound for Long Island.
He then was flown to a Manhattan heliport, where he was walked slowly up a pier by a throng of officers with assault rifles — a contingent that included New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
The federal complaint filed Thursday charges Mangione with two counts of stalking and one count each of murder through use of a firearm and a firearms offense. Murder by firearm carries the possibility of the death penalty, though federal prosecutors will determine whether to pursue that path in coming months.
In a state court indictment announced earlier this week, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office charged Mangione with murder as an act of terrorism, which carries a possible sentence of life in prison without parole. New York does not have the death penalty.
Mangione’s lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, said it’s a “highly unusual situation” for a defendant face simultaneous state and federal cases.
“Frankly I’ve never seen anything like what is happening here,” said Friedman Agnifilo, a former top deputy in the Manhattan district attorney’s office.
She reserved the right to seek bail at a later point and declined to comment as she left the courthouse.
Mangione, of Towson, Maryland, is accused of ambushing the 50-year-old Thompson as the executive arrived to a Manhattan hotel for an investor conference.
Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting Thompson from behind. Police say the words “delay,” “deny” and “depose” were scrawled on the ammunition investigators found at the scene, echoing a phrase commonly used to describe insurer tactics to avoid paying claims.
The gunman then pedaled a bicycle through Central Park, took a taxicab to a bus station and then rode the subway to a train station before fleeing to Pennsylvania, authorities said.
There, a McDonald’s customer noticed that Mangione looked like the person in surveillance photos police were circulating of the gunman, prosecutors said.
When he was arrested, they say, Mangione had the gun used to kill Thompson, a passport, fake IDs and about $10,000.
According to the federal complaint, Mangione also had a spiral notebook that included several handwritten pages expressing hostility toward the health insurance industry and wealthy executives. UnitedHealthcare is the largest health insurer in the US, though the insurer said Mangione was never a client.
An August entry said that “the target is insurance” because “it checks every box,” according to the filing. An entry in October “describes an intent to ‘wack’ the CEO of one of the insurance companies at its investor conference,” the document said.
Mangione initially fought attempts to return him to New York. In addition to waiving extradition Thursday, he waived a preliminary hearing on forgery and firearms charges in Pennsylvania.
The killing unleashed an outpouring of stories about resentment toward US health insurance companies while also shaking corporate America after some social media users called the shooting payback.
Mangione, a computer science graduate from a prominent Maryland family, repeatedly posted on social media about how spinal surgery last year had eased his chronic back pain, encouraging people with similar conditions to speak up for themselves if told they just had to live with it.
In a Reddit post in late April, he advised someone with a back problem to seek additional opinions from surgeons and, if necessary, say the pain made it impossible to work.
“We live in a capitalist society,” Mangione wrote. “I’ve found that the medical industry responds to these key words far more urgently than you describing unbearable pain and how it’s impacting your quality of life.”
He apparently cut himself off from family and close friends in recent months. His family reported him missing in San Francisco in November.
Thompson, who grew up on a farm in Iowa, was trained as an accountant. A married father of two high-schoolers, he had worked at UnitedHealth Group for 20 years and became CEO of its insurance arm in 2021.


Putin must stop ‘unnecessary demands’ that prolong war, Zelensky tells EU

Updated 6 sec ago
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Putin must stop ‘unnecessary demands’ that prolong war, Zelensky tells EU

“Sanctions must remain in place until Russia starts withdrawing from our land,” he said

BRUSSELS: Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky said Moscow must stop making “unnecessary demands” that extend the war, calling for sanctions on Russia to remain in place until it begins pulling out of Ukrainian territory.
“Putin must stop making unnecessary demands that only prolong the war and must start fulfilling what he promises the world,” he told EU leaders by video call, according to an official transcript.
“Sanctions must remain in place until Russia starts withdrawing from our land and fully compensates for the damage caused by its aggression.”

UK PM Starmer: We must be ready to react quickly if Ukraine peace deal struck

Updated 8 min 45 sec ago
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UK PM Starmer: We must be ready to react quickly if Ukraine peace deal struck

  • “(Our) plans are focusing on keeping the sky safe, the sea safe and the border safe and secure in Ukraine,” Starmer said

LONDON: British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said on Thursday it was important Britain and its allies were able to react immediately should there be a peace deal struck between Russia and Ukraine.
His comments, made during a visit to a nuclear submarine facility, come on the day military chiefs from dozens of countries meet in Britain to discuss planning for a possible peacekeeping force in Ukraine.
“(Our) plans are focusing on keeping the sky safe, the sea safe and the border safe and secure in Ukraine, and working with the Ukrainians,” Starmer told reporters.
“We’re working at pace because we don’t know if there’ll be a deal. I certainly hope there will be, but if there’s a deal, it’s really important that we’re able to react straight away.”


Georgetown University scholar has been detained by immigration officials, prompting legal fight

Updated 48 min 15 sec ago
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Georgetown University scholar has been detained by immigration officials, prompting legal fight

  • Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral scholar at Georgetown University, was accused of “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media”
  • The deportation effort comes amid legal fights over cases involving a Columbia University international affairs graduate student and a doctor from Lebanon

VIRGINIA: A Georgetown University researcher has been detained by immigration officials, prompting another high-profile legal fight over deportation proceedings against foreign-born visa holders who live in the US
Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral scholar at Georgetown University, was accused of “spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media” and determined to be deportable by the Secretary of State’s office, Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said late Wednesday on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The deportation effort comes amid legal fights over cases involving a Columbia University international affairs graduate student and a doctor from Lebanon.


Politico, which first reported on Suri’s case, said that masked agents arrested him outside his home in Arlington, Virginia, on Monday night and told him his visa had been revoked, citing a legal filing by his lawyer.
His lawyer didn’t immediately respond to an messages seeking further comment Thursday. An online court docket shows that an urgent motion seeking to halt the deportation proceedings was filed Tuesday against the Trump administration.
A Georgetown University webpage identifies Suri as a postdoctoral fellow at Alwaleed Bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at the university. The university said his areas of interest include religion, violence and peace processes in the Middle East and South Asia. The bio said that he earned a doctorate in India while studying efforts to introduce democracy to Afghanistan and Iraq, and he has traveled extensively in conflict zones in several countries.
The university said in a statement Thursday that Suri is an Indian national who was “duly granted a visa to enter the United States to continue his doctoral research on peacebuilding in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
“We are not aware of him engaging in any illegal activity, and we have not received a reason for his detention,” the school said. “We support our community members’ rights to free and open inquiry, deliberation and debate, even if the underlying ideas may be difficult, controversial or objectionable. We expect the legal system to adjudicate this case fairly.”
The US Customs and Immigration Enforcement detainee locator website lists Suri as being in the custody of immigration officials at the Alexandria Staging Facility in Louisiana.
Separately, Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil, a legal US resident with no criminal record, was detained earlier this month over his participation in pro-Palestinian demonstrations and is fighting deportation efforts in federal court. And Dr. Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist who previously worked and lived in Rhode Island, was deported over the weekend despite having a US visa.


Ukraine, US teams ready to meet in Saudi Arabia in ‘coming days’: Zelensky

Updated 20 March 2025
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Ukraine, US teams ready to meet in Saudi Arabia in ‘coming days’: Zelensky

Kyiv, Ukraine: Officials from Ukraine and the United States could meet in Saudi Arabia in the coming days for a second round of peace talks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Wednesday.
“Ukrainian and American teams are ready to meet in Saudi Arabia in the coming days to continue coordinating steps toward peace,” Zelensky wrote on X.

 

 


One person dies as migrants aim to cross English Channel

Updated 20 March 2025
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One person dies as migrants aim to cross English Channel

  • Both the British and French governments have made tackling migrants crossing the English Channel illegally a high priority

PARIS: One person has died after a boat carrying migrants trying to cross the English Channel from France got into difficulties overnight, said a local French authority on Thursday.
The French local authority responsible for the North Sea and English Channel regions said 15 people had been rescued and brought back to shore at the port of Gravelines, near Dunkirk.
Both the British and French governments have made tackling migrants crossing the English Channel illegally – often in perilous conditions as they travel in dinghies or small boats – a high priority.
Data in January showed Britain’s Labour government had removed 16,400 illegal migrants since coming to power last July, marking the highest rate of such removals since 2018, although Labour’s political opponents say the government needs to do more.