Pod Insights Criminology The Assassination of Insurance CEO; Brian Thompson About this episode 50-year-old Brian Thompson worked his way up to be the CEO of United Healthcare, which is currently the largest private payer of health insurance benefits in the United States. On December 4th, 2024, Brian was gunned down in Manhatten as he was about to enter a hotel for a meeting. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the assassination of Brian Thompson. This case has dominated the headlines as the police searched for the shooter. The case drew even more attention when the authorities arrested 26-year-old Luigi Mangione whom they believe to be the shooter. But many questions remain, including just exactly what the motive behind the shooting was. You can support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production
Transcript 10,465 words · 3 speakers
0:00 Speaker 00 Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised.
0:37 Speaker 01 Hello everyone and welcome to episode 338 of the Criminology Podcast. This is Mike Ferguson.
0:43 Speaker 02 And this is Mike Morford.
0:45 Speaker 01 Mr. Mike Morford, how you doing buddy?
0:47 Speaker 02 Doing good. Had to jump off my last second Christmas shopping and record this episode, but just trying to get some of that out of the way. How you doing?
0:56 Speaker 01 I'm doing great. This is the last week for my girls in college. They're coming home this weekend, so I'm really excited. They're going to be home for a couple of weeks. I mean, for me, that's part of the excitement of Christmas now. It used to be that the kids were here all the time, but now I know they're going to spend an extended period of time.
1:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, and you and I get a little bit of downtime during the holidays too, so it always helps, helps you have a little extra time too to spend with them.
1:28 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah. Love it. All right, let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout outs. We had TJ LaFaber, Lisa Whipple, and Kishla. So a lot of great new support. We really appreciate it.
1:41 Speaker 02 Yeah, thank you so much to everyone that takes the time to support the show. For anyone else that would like to, you can head over to patreon.com/criminology to get started.
1:50 Speaker 01 All right, it's time to jump right into this week's case, and this is a big one that's been dominating news media over the past week. It's one that almost everyone is talking about, and also a case that a couple of listeners suggested we tackle. So here we are doing just that. We're talking about the assassination of insurance CEO Brian Thompson. There's so much to sort out with this case, from the brazenness of the murder in front of witnesses on a New York City street, to the motives of the killer, to the amazing work that law enforcement did to track down the accused shooter. So let's not waste any time and dive right in.
2:33 Speaker 02 Let's start out by talking about the victim in this case, 50-year-old Brian Thompson, the CEO of United Healthcare, which is currently the largest private payer of health insurance benefits in the United States. United Healthcare is a subsidiary of United Health Group, which was the fourth highest earning company in the United States in 2023. Both companies have experienced controversies, investigations, and lawsuits, some of which we'll get into later. According to his obituary in the New York Times, "Brian Thompson, age 50, grew up in a working-class family in Jewel, Iowa. As a teenager, he worked on various farms. At South Hamilton High School, a small school, Brian, a gifted and focused student, rose to
3:17 Speaker 02 the top of his class, graduating valedictorian in 1993. While he was there, Brian managed to juggle getting good grades with extracurricular activities, playing on his high school basketball team and the golf team, and playing trombone in the school's marching band and orchestra. He was homecoming king his senior year and class president. Brian Thompson seemed like a small-town kid with a lot of energy and a lot of determination to excel."
3:44 Speaker 01 After graduating from high school, Brian went on to attend college at the University of Iowa, where he graduated in 1997 with special honors near the top of his class, earning a degree in business administration with a major in accounting. It was at the University of Iowa that Brian met his future wife Paulette Rivez, who was also a student there. The two got married and went on to have two sons. The family made their home in Maple Grove, Minnesota. Living in a $1.5 million home, Brian, along with his wife Paulette, worked hard to give their sons the best life they could.
4:24 Speaker 01 Brian Thompson joined United Healthcare in 2004 and worked his way up the ranks, eventually becoming chief executive of the insurance division, United Healthcare, in April 2021, leading a unit that employs about 140,000 people and reported 281 billion in revenue last year. Under his leadership, the company's profits rose to more than 16 billion last year from 12 billion in 2021. All of this information comes from The New York Times.
4:58 Speaker 02 Brian Thompson was making a lot of money to the tune of $10 million a year in base pay and cash and stock grants. Brian was now at the top of a major company and making a lot of money, but this wasn't an easy job and required a lot of hard work, long hours, and a lot of stress. Along the way, many people, as we'll discuss to some extent, viewed people like Brian Thompson and his company as parasites or leeches, enriching themselves off the pain of others. This added to the stress level for Brian and may have played a role in causing problems in the Thompson marriage. Brian and Paulette had separated and had been living in separate homes about a mile apart for years, but they decided not to divorce and were on good terms for the sake
5:43 Speaker 02 of their children. In his downtime, Brian spent time with his family, taking his sons golfing and attending their lacrosse games. As a high-ranking CEO of a major company, Brian, like many others in his shoes, kept a low profile and stayed pretty much off social media to maintain privacy. Many healthcare companies, including United Healthcare and CVS, began to remove staff pages with any information about executives and officers from their websites. Photos were the first things to be deleted, followed by names, and finally, entire biographies. So how did someone like Brian Thompson, a family man and CEO of a major insurance company with a low profile, end up the focus of a targeted assassination?
6:28 Speaker 02 Let's dive into that.
6:30 Speaker 01 On December 4th, 2024, 50-year-old Brian Thompson had a meeting to attend. The meeting, set to take place at a hotel in Midtown Manhattan, was an investors' conference for United Healthcare's parent group, United Health Group, meaning Thompson and other top brass in the company, would be there to meet with their major investors and biggest shareholders. It was an early meeting, but it would be a quick walk. Thompson was staying at the Marriott Hotel, across the street from the Hilton where the meeting was scheduled. That morning, he woke up, just as he did any other morning, and got ready for the day, he walked out of his hotel and crossed the street.
7:12 Speaker 01 At 6:44 a.m., he approached the entrance of the New York Hilton Midtown on West 54 Street. Other New Yorkers passed him as they were starting their days, but one person had been waiting for Brian Thompson. And when he saw Brian heading to the meeting, the man calmly walked up behind Brian, pulled out a gun, and took aim. This man was completely undeterred by the presence of a bystander standing near the entrance of the hotel. He fired off multiple shots, aimed directly at Brian Thompson. Terrified, the bystander that had been just a few feet away, when the shots rang out, ran away, and an injured Thompson fell to the ground.
7:55 Speaker 01 The shooter calmly walked away and into the maze of the city.
8:00 Speaker 02 At 6:46 a.m., 911 was called. Officers arrived on scene just two minutes later and found Brian Thompson still alive, but suffering from multiple gunshot wounds to the back and leg. He was rushed to Mount Sinai West Hospital, but despite the quick response and transport to the hospital, he could not be saved. His time of death is listed at 7:12 a.m., less than a half hour after he was shot. News of Brian Thompson's murder shocked the professionals he was supposed to meet with that day, and not a big surprise. The investor meeting was canceled and rescheduled as a fully virtual event.
8:36 Speaker 01 And more if we said it right up front, right? This is a case that a lot of people are talking about. First of all, it's a very recent case, but you have a victim in Brian Thompson, who was the CEO of a major company. And this murder, you know, happens in the heart of the city. And you think about, even though it's fairly early, how many people are walking around New York City at any given time? It seems very strange, very brazen compared to a lot of murders that we talk about, right?
9:17 Speaker 01 Most murders are committed in what people believe is secret. I mean, they're trying to get away with it. This person opens fire in a crowded area.
9:30 Speaker 02 And since we have the benefit of being able to watch this video, it's not like an old case where there's no video of it. This is video that's all over the place. You can clearly see that this person, it wasn't that they got into a confrontation with Brian. Brian had his back turned towards the shooter and was just walking, and this person just pulled the gun out and started shooting with no, with no warning. And, you know, it's pretty clear that robbery wasn't a motive. It wasn't anything like that. It wasn't some kind of confrontation. And from what you can see in the video, it just doesn't seem random. It's, it doesn't seem like Brian was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. It seemed like this person wanted to shoot specifically him.
10:16 Speaker 01 Police had their work cut out for them. They had to find a single shooter in a city of 8.2 million people. And it's hard to believe more that there are that many people who live in New York City. I mean, that's almost the entire population of my whole state of Ohio.
10:37 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think at some instances, that can be a help. Like in a case like this, if you need eyewitnesses, there's bound to be more.
10:45 Speaker 01 But it could also make it easier to hide, right? Because there are so many people. Police caught a break when they found out that this attack was captured on cameras in the hotel's surveillance system on the footage, which was released to the public. With various degrees of censorship, you can see the shooter walk up behind Brian, raise his gun and open fire from a few feet away. Although the footage is not overly clear, you can see the shooter appear to clear multiple jams of the gun. He didn't panic. He would clear a jam, then shoot, clear another and shoot again. He didn't stop until he had fired at least three shots.
11:30 Speaker 01 And to this point, police have not confirmed how many shots in total were fired. In the video, the suspect seemed unfazed by the jams and knew to tap the gun and rack the slide to fix the issue. He also seemed to completely ignore the terrified woman standing right next to him, witnessing the shooting. The level of calmness and steadiness, along with the shooter's seeming proficiency with the gun, made some people speculate that the killer was a hired hitman or a professional assassin. He had taken care to wear a hooded sweatshirt and COVID-type mask that obscured his head and face.
12:13 Speaker 01 After he was done shooting, he didn't panic or run, but rather calmly walked away, crossing the street. And I could understand how people might think that this is a professional. Killer. But one of the thoughts that I had morph was, you know, most guns don't jam. I mean, they're made better today than they were in the past. They still do. You can go to the range and have a gun jam on you, but for a gun to jam multiple times. My thought was a professional hitman would know that gun inside and out.
12:53 Speaker 02 Yeah, and I would think that a professional hitman would also want to get, you know, point blank and put the gun to the back of Brian's head and pull the trigger. It seems like that would be more of a efficient method if they were trying to kill him. So I think to me that also points that he's not a professional hitman.
13:13 Speaker 01 And also most likely wouldn't have done it in the middle of Manhattan. You know, could have found a more secluded place where the person would not be caught on video.
13:26 Speaker 02 The one thing that stood out to me was how calm the shooter was, though. That for a moment made me think he could be a professional because he wasn't flinching. He wasn't nervous. There was a witness two feet away from him and he was paying her no mind. Just calmly focused on shooting Brian. And when he was done, he didn't take off running. He just calmly walked away. So, you know, for a moment I thought maybe this guy is a professional hitman. A second video showing the suspect waiting for Brian across the street from the Hilton makes some people think the killer didn't actually plan every single detail perfectly. In the video, the suspect is leaning against a wall as Thompson walks past.
14:10 Speaker 02 A few seconds later, the suspect begins to follow Brian. But this time he's crossing the street, so the suspect stops, doubles back a bit and crosses the street. He walks in between parked cars to get behind Brian Thompson, who gets pretty close to entering the hotel. If he hadn't made it across the street in time, he would have had to follow Brian into the hotel and things may have played out differently.
14:33 Speaker 01 One of the first thoughts on the minds of many people was how does a big time CEO of a major company not have some kind of security detail? According to Philip Klein, who had provided security for Thompson three times on previous occasions in Texas, he wondered the same thing. In an interview with the Long Crime Network, Klein said he should have had a security detail. Klein revealed that staying at a secondary location is one of the things that Thompson did right in terms of a security protocol. This explains why he was staying at the Marriott instead of the Hilton Midtown where the meeting was.
15:15 Speaker 01 Klein also revealed that Thompson was spotted at various bars in the area during the two nights he was there before the meeting, and at those times, he was alone.
15:26 Speaker 02 People began to wonder, how did the shooter know Brian Thompson's schedule? How did he know where he would be able to catch and shoot Brian? It's possible that the suspect ran into him in the area if he was staking out the hotel. But this led to other questions, like how the shooter even knew about the meeting at all. And this led to speculation that the murder was an inside job and that surely someone wanted Brian Thompson dead and enlisted a hitman. But it turns out that the stockholders' meeting event was publicly listed in articles as taking place on December 4th in New York at 8:00 a.m., but none of them listed the location.
16:03 Speaker 01 Whether the killer acted alone or was part of a conspiracy to kill Brian Thompson, he was on the loose and police needed to find him. While they sifted through countless hours of surveillance video from the area, they also focused on the gun the killer used. Although the video, as we mentioned, wasn't the best quality and the lighting was bad, it seemed to many like the gun had a silencer on it, which is rare and not easy to obtain. And there has been a lot of speculation more of that if the gun did have a silencer on it, that was what potentially was causing the gun to jam. Suppressors that you can buy
16:44 Speaker 01 legally will have a muzzle booster called the Nielsen device, which in the most basic terms will allow these pistols with added suppressors to fire properly. If the suspect made his own suppressor, it's possible he didn't bother with a muzzle booster. It didn't take long for reports to trickle out that the gun used to kill Brian Thompson was a modern version of a rare German World War II gun. Sources told the New York Post that detectives focusing on a Connecticut gun shop had zeroed in on a purchase of a BNT VP9 gun. The model is an update on a well-rod pistol developed in the Second World War. We'll
17:27 Speaker 01 talk about the murder weapon a bit more in a bit.
17:31 Speaker 02 Police also focused on the outfit worn by the shooter to see if that could provide any clues. The suspect was wearing a backpack, a black jacket, and a black face covering. That's all you can really see of the shooter in the security video, and it's all anyone knew to be looking for. But investigators were able to track the suspect through the city on multiple cameras. Manhattan has so many taxis, businesses, and public transit stops, they are pretty much guaranteed to be getting picked up by at least one surveillance camera at any time. Unfortunately for police, the shooter has picked up on many. Using the footage to map out the killer's movements after the shooting, they saw that the suspect ran across West 54th Street and down a pedestrian passageway to 55th Street. A witness who
18:16 Speaker 02 had been sitting in one of the parked cars outside the Hilton took a photo of him running down the passageway. Investigators later recovered a cell phone believed to be a burner phone in the pedestrian walkway.
18:28 Speaker 01 At some point, the shooter got on to some kind of e-bike. Lyft has confirmed it was not a city bike, which is like a ride share service that lets you rent a bicycle to get around town. Using the e-bike, he went north towards Central Park. And at 6:48 a.m., as officers arrived at the Hilton Midtown and found Thompson unresponsive, the suspect rode into Central Park using the 60th Street and Center Drive entrance. At 6:56 a.m., eight minutes after he was seen entering the park, he rode the bike out of Central Park at West 77th Street and Central Park West.
19:10 Speaker 01 By this time, he was no longer wearing a backpack. Two minutes later, he rides by 85th Street and Columbus Avenue. And just two minutes after that, he's on foot, walking on 86th Street. At 7:04, after walking just one block, he got into a taxi on 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue. About a half an hour later, he was dropped off at the George Washington Bridge Bus Station in northern Manhattan. There was footage of him going into the station, but none of him coming back out, which led investigators to believe that he fled the city. Buses at the station were destined for multiple states.
19:52 Speaker 01 And the one thing that jumps out at me, Morph, is just how much this guy was tracked, right? This is a breaking case. It just happened. You think about the amount of video surveillance that there is in Manhattan, New York City. Now, I'm sure it took a lot of work to put all of this together, but it sounds like they were able to track his every movement.
20:23 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's reminiscent to me of the Boston Marathon bombings, which, you know, happened back in 2013, I think. But even in that case, they were able to use surveillance to piece together what happened and identify suspects.
20:42 Speaker 02 And that was way back then. So you can imagine how much surveillance capabilities have come along and how much more of it there is in the past decade.
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22:07 Speaker 02 Looking back at the crime scene, a possible motive for the attack was revealed. Three nine millimeter shell casings found at the scene had the words deny, defend, and depose written on them in Sharpie. A total of three spent shell casings in three rounds were found. The words themselves appear to refer to a book called delay, deny, defend. Why insurance companies don't pay claims and what you can do about it. The book is a critique and an explanation of large insurance carriers and the tactics they use to deny claims and make profit. This new development bolstered the idea that the killer had one of their own claims denied, or had a loved one who had passed away or greatly suffered due to a claim denial or loss of coverage.
22:52 Speaker 02 The switch of the first word delay and replacement with the word depose is interesting. There are two meanings to this word. The most obvious to many was the legal meaning, as in to question a party and take a deposition. The second meaning of depose would be more like dethroning a king. These words added to the narrative that the killer was out for revenge. The main speculation became that the killer or someone they loved had been involved in a lawsuit with the company. But again, that didn't really narrow down the list of suspects. And if we're considering anyone that felt screwed over by that insurance company, the suspect pool could be endless.
23:30 Speaker 01 As we mentioned, Brian Thompson worked for United Health Group for 20 years, starting as the director of the group's corporate development team. During his time as CEO, United Healthcare saw their profits rise from 12 billion to 16 billion, an increase of $4 billion or 25%. During the same time, denials of post-acute care increased from 10.9% to 22.7%. Though, to be fair, this upward trend began the year before Brian Thompson took over. Also worth noting, Brian Thompson was being investigated for insider trading
24:13 Speaker 01 after selling $15.1 million worth of shares in February 2016, less than two weeks before the public learned about a federal antitrust probe that would affect the company.
24:27 Speaker 02 In 2021, United Healthcare was set to begin denying payment for any emergency room visits they categorized as non-critical. This drew a lot of negative attention since it would mean that patients who have no medical training would need to be able to accurately judge whether or not something was an emergency and may delay seeking treatment in genuine life or death situations for fear of getting stuck with a large bill. As the chief executive of the American Hospital Association wrote in a letter to Thompson, threatening patients with a financial penalty for making the wrong decision could have a chilling effect on seeking emergency care. That details from APNews.com.
25:09 Speaker 02 Can you imagine for a second having insurance with this company and going to the emergency room for a broken leg or a bad burn or whatever you may need treatment for and being told that your insurance wouldn't cover it because it was non-critical? That would anger a lot of people and due to the backlash, it led to the company delaying this new policy. It's unclear if they ever ended up implementing it or not.
25:31 Speaker 01 According to litigationtracker.law georgetown.edu. In November of last year, the company faced a lawsuit alleging they used a legal deployment of artificial intelligence in place of real medical professionals to wrongfully deny elderly patients' care owed to them under Medicare Advantage plans by overriding their treating physicians' determinations as to medically necessary care based on an AI model that defendants know has a 90% error rate. According to the New York Post, earlier this year, a ransomware attack on the company
26:13 Speaker 01 compromised up to one-third of Americans' private data. To solve the ransomware issue, the company paid the hackers $22 million. Paying the hackers didn't erase the damage done by exposing the private data of millions of people. And then finally, a Senate report released in October named United Healthcare, Humana, and CVS and outlined the skyrocketing prior authorization rate their Medicare Advantage patients had seen. This relates to that November 2023 lawsuit, signaling that the issue had not been solved. So you can see, right, there's no shortage of potential motives that someone could
26:57 Speaker 01 have had with this insurance company and maybe they decided to strike out at the one person who they thought represented them the most, their CEO, Brian Thompson.
27:10 Speaker 01 And more of you know, when you talk about insurance companies, probably most people listening have had a beef with their insurance company at one time or another. I mean, if you look at the insurance company model, there is a benefit for not paying out, right? They make more money. So they have huge departments to analyze claims, to deny claims. And to many of us, oftentimes the denials do not make sense.
27:45 Speaker 02 Yeah, this whole scenario is is kind of reminiscent of a movie from 1997 starring Matt Damon called The Rainmaker, in which insurance companies were instructed by the higher ups to keep denying claims repeatedly as much as possible and hoping that people would just give up and pay it themselves. And I don't know if that was based on a real case or not, but it is interesting to see something like that discussed here.
28:19 Speaker 01 Yeah, that was one of John Grisham's many books. The man has written a lot of great books.
28:26 Speaker 02 According to the New York Post, Brian Thompson's wife, Paulette, said that her husband had received some threats over what she believed to be a lack of coverage, though she said she didn't have any more details. All she really knows is that he said there were some people that had been threatening him. According to apnews.com, New York Police Detective Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny theorized of the shooter, it could possibly be a disgruntled employee or disgruntled client. But as we mentioned, the pool of people who could be considered disgruntled with this insurance company was vast. So police continued to focus on the movements of the shooter instead of sifting through countless people that may be angry with the insurance company. This began an even more intense focus
29:11 Speaker 02 on the killer's movements, both before the shooting and after. And along the way, surveillance cameras and witnesses helped connect the dots and build out a timeline.
29:20 Speaker 01 At 5:41 a.m., the shooter is pacing on 54th Street and 6th Avenue, near the Hilton Hotel. Investigators believed he used a bike to make this trip because he traveled such a far distance in the city so quickly. At 6:15 a.m., he was captured by a security camera as he exited the F train subway stop on 57th Street. It's unclear why he was in the subway station because he had already been to the Hilton Midtown and apparently did not use the subway to get there. It's possible he wanted to look less suspicious, just standing around, or that it was warmer in the subway. After leaving the station,
30:05 Speaker 01 he went to the Starbucks on West 56th Street and Avenue of the Americas and purchased a bottle of water and at least one power bar. There's also surveillance video of the suspect leaning over toward a pile of trash bags on the sidewalk, appearing to place something amongst them. It's believed that this was the water bottle and the power bar wrapper. As authorities stated, they did recover the items they think the suspect purchased at Starbucks. A fingerprint recovered from the water bottle discarded by the suspect was too smudged for analysis. At 6:20 a.m., the suspect was recorded by surveillance cameras
30:48 Speaker 01 as he walked west on West 55th Street. By 6:30, he was back in the area of the Hilton Midtown, within a few hundred yards of the crime scene. At one point, he appears to be talking on the phone as he walks down the street.
31:04 Speaker 02 By 6:44 a.m., the suspect was starting his attack on Brian Thompson. After he stopped firing, he crossed West 54th Street and down a pedestrian passageway to 55th Street. As we mentioned earlier, a witness who had been sitting in one of the parked cars outside of the Hilton took a photo of him running down the passageway. It was in a pedestrian walkway here that police recovered the burner phone they believed to be the suspect's. From there, the suspect hopped on an e-bike and headed into Central Park. There were various witnesses and surveillance footage captures of him riding the e-bike as he tried to get away.
31:40 Speaker 01 Police have been pretty tight lipped about some of their investigative measures, but they began to get a clearer picture of who the killer was despite not having him in custody. Authorities were able to figure out that the killer arrived in Manhattan on a Greyhound bus, which had started its route in Atlanta, Georgia. There was a passenger list for police to work with, but it would only include whatever name the people boarding gave when they purchased the tickets, which could have been a fake name. No ID card or identification verification was required to buy the ticket.
32:20 Speaker 01 There are at least five stops from Atlanta to Manhattan on the nearly 900 mile journey, and investigators weren't sure where the killer got on the bus. Though, there was confirmation that he was on the bus as it passed through the Washington DC area.
32:38 Speaker 02 Police do know that when he got off the Greyhound bus at 10:11 PM on November 24th, the suspect got a taxi and went straight to the Hilton Midtown Manhattan. He stayed there for about a half hour before heading to the High New York City Hostel on Amsterdam Avenue near 104th Street. He got there and checked in at about 11:00 PM. He stayed there several days. On November 29th, the suspect checked out of the hostel. This may have been an automatic checkout because there's a policy at the hostel that if you don't return by a certain time, you lose your spot and get bumped from the check-in list. It's still unclear where he was overnight on the 29th, but he had to check back in on November 30th.
33:22 Speaker 02 At the hostel, he shared a room with two randomly assigned people. Because he kept a medical mask or face covering on at all times, neither of them ever saw his entire face.
33:32 Speaker 01 And I don't know about you, Morph, but this idea of a hostel just doesn't seem like something that I would really be looking forward to. You know, being randomly assigned people to bunk with, maybe that would be okay if you were, you know, traveling internationally and you didn't have a lot of money. You were trying to backpack through Europe or some other country, but it just doesn't seem like for me in my 50s, I, that's something I would be into.
34:09 Speaker 02 Yeah. And I, when I think of hostel, I think more of European countries that have them and maybe over in Europe, they're not as picky or as demanding as maybe we heard here are in the States. And, you know, they don't have the same reservations over there that we have here.
34:29 Speaker 01 There also have been a lot of horror movies made about hostels. So maybe that adds to my reluctance. The day he shot and killed Brian Thompson, the suspect left the hostel around 5:30 a.m. While it was still dark, police know that around this time, the suspect made a phone call or at least appeared to be on the phone with someone. It's not clear if there was a call that police know who it was to or what it was about. But to those who believe the theory that the killer was a hired hitman, this phone call appeared to be the suspect receiving final instructions just minutes before the shooting. It's possible
35:11 Speaker 01 that the suspect was pretending to be on a phone call to seem less suspicious as he was wandering in the area. It's also possible that the suspect was on a real but entirely unrelated phone call. We still don't know anything more about this call as of the time of this recording.
35:31 Speaker 02 Police were still trying to verify what kind of gun the killer had used. With only grainy video footage to go off of, investigators were open to the idea that the suspect used a veterinary pistol designed to quickly quietly euthanize animals. But they were also looking at weapons like the well rod pistol used in World War II. They also zeroed in on the backpack the killer wore. If it was unique enough, perhaps police could pinpoint where it was purchased. The backpack was determined to be a high-end backpack, believed to be from peak design out of San Francisco. They're on the pricey side over $300. And this added to the belief by some that the suspect was a higher professional. By Friday, December 6th, two days after the murder,
36:13 Speaker 02 the reward had been up to a potential $60,000 total, with the FBI adding 50,000 to the NYPD's 10,000.
36:22 Speaker 01 And Morf, we've talked about this a lot throughout the years, but in many investigations, police like to keep things close to the vest, but here they figured it was time to make a public plea for help. A photo of the suspect with his face covering down, smiling, was captured from the hostel surveillance footage. He was apparently flirting with the woman at the front desk during one of his check-ins, and he pulled his face covering down when she asked to see his face. It was this photo from the hostel that police released to the public showing what the suspect's face looked like. To this point, it was the clearest look at the suspect.
37:07 Speaker 02 The same day that the photo of the suspect's face was released, a backpack believed to belong to him was discovered near the Central Park Carousel. Authorities removed it from the scene intact without opening it in an attempt to preserve every piece of forensic evidence possible. Once it was open, the content seemed to be some sort of taunting message. Inside the backpack, there's a Tommy Hilfiger jacket and an undisclosed amount of fake money from the board game Monopoly. The next day, divers searched ponds in Central Park, presumably looking for the murder weapon. Late in the evening on Saturday, two new photos of the suspect were released. This time, he was wearing a medical face mask and a puffy black hooded jacket.
37:52 Speaker 02 One of the photos was of the suspect inside of a taxi. And the other was a photo of him as he walked past one on the sidewalk.
37:59 Speaker 01 One thing that kind of jumped out at me is strange is, you know, here you have this guy with a $300 backpack. He's got a Tommy Hilfiger jacket inside the backpack, but then a bunch of fake money from the Monopoly game. I mean, I think if you're investigators, you're scratching your head over that. What does it even mean?
38:23 Speaker 02 That's definitely a hodgepodge of clues and maybe it is just a case of him thumbing his nose at the police.
38:31 Speaker 01 So by this point, with multiple photos of the suspect, his entire travel route known, and presumably his fingerprints and DNA being in evidence, many began to wonder how he had not been caught. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kinney pushed back, telling APNews.com, this isn't blue bloods. We're not going to solve this in 60 minutes. We're painstakingly going through every bit of evidence that we can come across. Eventually, when an apprehension is made, we will have to present all of these facts to a judge and jury. So we're taking our time, doing it right, and making sure we're going to get justice
39:14 Speaker 01 for this victim and closure for his family.
39:18 Speaker 02 Over the weekend, there was little movement in the case. Brian Thompson's funeral services were set from Monday, December 9th in Minnesota. Understandably, the service wasn't open to the public for fear of violence. That same day, while Brian's family grieved for him, there was breaking news out of Pennsylvania. A man there was being questioned about Brian's murder. Just before 9:00 AM, an Altoona McDonald's employee working their shift was alerted by a customer that they believed that another customer was the killer, whose face they had seen splashed all over TV screens for the last several days. The employee took the customer's tip seriously and called local police and alerted them. And minutes later, two officers arrived and carefully approached the customer that was pointed out to them.
40:03 Speaker 01 When the officer approached the suspect, who was wearing a medical face mask, a beanie and a black hooded puffy jacket, the suspect was apparently caught off guard by the approaching officer and was on his laptop looking at documents. The officer began to question the man and asked him if he had been to New York recently. According to KWTX 10, the man became quiet and started to shake after the officer asked him if he had ever been to New York, which obviously was quite suspicious. So the officer asked for his ID. The man complied and handed the officer a New Jersey ID card bearing the name Mark Rosario.
40:48 Speaker 01 The name Mark Rosario on this ID was the same name used by the suspect when he checked into the hostel in Manhattan. When the officer ran the name on the ID, nothing came back. It was clear that the ID was fake, so the man was taken into custody without incident.
41:07 Speaker 02 At the police station, officers were able to search the man's belongings, including a backpack. This wasn't the same backpack that he had been seen with in surveillance videos, since that one had been recovered by police in Central Park. During the search at the police station, investigators discovered multiple fake IDs, a firearm, a 3D printed silencer, and a few handwritten pages that have been called a manifesto. The document has not been released by police as of the time of this recording, but according to CNN, it reportedly includes the sentence, "These parasites had it coming," as well as an apology of sorts that reads in part, "I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done."
41:48 Speaker 02 United Healthcare has also mentioned my name in this manifesto, but Brian Thompson is not.
41:54 Speaker 01 So I think on the part of police, part of the mystery was over. They believed the man sitting in the Altoona Police Station was clearly the mystery killer of Brian Thompson. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told KWTX 10, "The handwritten document found with the suspect made it clear that the suspect harbored ill will toward corporate America." And NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch added that, "What is in the document speaks to both his motivation and mindset." According to court documents, the gun found with the suspect has been described as a black 3D printed pistol
42:38 Speaker 01 with a metal slide and a plastic handle with a metal threaded barrel. The pistol's Glock magazine contained six 9mm full metal jacket rounds, and there was also one loose 9mm hollow point round found during the search of his belongings. So I think, Morph, the idea of this 3D printed pistol and possibly a 3D printed silencer helps explain some of the things we talked about earlier. Why was he experiencing so many jams? Well, it's because this was not a pistol made in a factory.
43:22 Speaker 01 If this truly was a 3D printed pistol, which is scary, by the way, that someone can make a pistol out of their home. I gotta be honest with you, that scares the bejeebies out of me. But as you can imagine, it's not going to be as reliable as something that is made in a factory with factory specs and inspected and all of that.
43:48 Speaker 02 Yeah, I think they also call these ghost guns and there's no way to trace them. It's, you know, you, you basically make it yourself and you've got a gun and you're right, that is scary, especially if it winds up in the hands of somebody that shouldn't be in possession of a gun. Also found during the search was $8,000 cash, an additional $2,000 cash in foreign currency, and a Faraday bag, which is used to prevent electronic devices from transmitting or receiving signals. Most importantly, the suspect's passport, his real passport, was inside the backpack, which is how authorities were able to finally confirm his true identity. It wasn't long before the authorities made an announcement that they had identified and taken into custody Brian Thompson's killer.
44:33 Speaker 02 They identified the suspect as 26-year-old Luigi Nicholas Mangione. He's been charged with false identification to law enforcement, forgery, tampering with records or identification, possessing instruments of a crime, and possession of firearm without license. These charges were strictly related to the Pennsylvania crimes that he committed and not the murder in New York.
44:56 Speaker 01 So, police believe that they have the right person and that he killed Brian Thompson. But now more questions have flooded in. Who is Luigi Mangione and why did he do what he did? Journalists and internet sleuths alike were quick to dig up his social media profiles and learn all about his past. The Mangione family is very wealthy and notable in their community. Nick Mangione, Luigi's grandfather, was a self-made and very successful real estate developer. He purchased Turf Valley Resort in Ellicott City, Maryland in 1978.
45:36 Speaker 01 And in 1986, the family purchased the Hayfields Country Club in Hunt Valley, Maryland. Nick's wife, Mary Mangione, was a philanthropist and was a trustee for the Baltimore Opera Company. The family has their own nonprofit, the Mangione Family Foundation.
45:56 Speaker 02 The Mangione's donated more than $1 million to the Greater Baltimore Medical Center, where all 37 of their grandchildren were born. The high-risk obstetrics unit at HBMC Is named after the Mangione family and the Aquatic Center at Loyola University is named after the family. The Mangione's also own the radio stations, WCBM, WWLG, and WASA. And Luigi's cousin, Nino, is the Baltimore County Republican Delegate. The scoreboard in the athletic complex at Baltimore's Mercy High School also has the Mangione name prominently displayed. The Mangione family owns Lurian Health Systems,
46:39 Speaker 02 which runs a chain of nursing homes throughout Maryland. Luigi Mangione volunteered there as part of community service requirements at Gilman School in 2014, and then served as their IT technician for one month in 2015. So from everything we see, it seems like Luigi Mangione comes from an upstanding, well-respected family. So how did he wind up on this path?
47:02 Speaker 01 In 2016, Luigi Mangione was valedictorian at Gilman School, an elite independent prep school for boys in Baltimore, Maryland. He went on to study computer engineering at University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He graduated in 2020 with a master's and bachelor's degree in computer science and a minor in mathematics. He belonged to the fraternities Ada Kappa Nu and Phi Kappa Psi. Ada Kappa Nu is a very exclusive honor society for electrical and computer engineering students. Only the top third of the senior
47:42 Speaker 01 class and top quarter of the junior class are invited to join each year. From May to September of 2019, Luigi was a head counselor in the Kappa Alpha House under the pre-collegiate studies program at Stanford University. Shortly after his graduation in 2020, it looks like he took a job as a data engineer at TrueCar, an online car dealership based in Santa Monica, California. He left or was fired. We don't know since TrueCar wouldn't comment on former employees in February 2023.
48:21 Speaker 02 On November 12, 2023, the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources issued Luigi Mangione a citation for trespassing on the closed land at the Nuano Poli lookout in Honolulu. RJ Martin, owner of Surf Break, a private co-living penthouse in Honolulu, confirmed that Mangione did stay there for about six months in 2022. Martin also revealed that Luigi had become bedridden for days by back pain after what Luigi said was a surfing accident. But Martin told the Baltimore Banner it was basically a surf lesson that exacerbated a pre-existing condition of Luigi's. Luigi suffered from spondylolithosis, a condition where one of the bones in your spine, called
49:06 Speaker 02 a vertebrae, slips forward, causing extreme pain.
49:10 Speaker 01 According to RJ Martin in a New York Times article, Luigi knew that dating and being physically intimate with his back condition wasn't possible, and he was afraid of a spinal surgery. He knew he would need to help his condition. Luigi left Hawaii to visit a doctor on the East Coast. He moved back to Honolulu, though not with Surf Break, in October 2022. He finally had that surgery in July 2023. In February 2024, Luigi spent some time in Japan. Mangione maintained a residence in Honolulu until August 2024.
49:51 Speaker 01 He seems to have begun to withdraw from social life by then. RJ Martin texted Luigi in March and then again in June, but never heard back from him. In July, friends of Luigi began to tweet to Mangione on X, formerly Twitter, wondering where he was. They never got any replies from him or his handle @pepmangione. By October 2024, no one had seen Luigi Mangione for months. In late November, friends were just hoping he was well, wherever he was. On November 8- Just weeks before Brian Thompson's murder,
50:35 Speaker 01 Luigi Mangione's mother Kathleen filed a missing persons report in San Francisco for her son. So more if we know this family had some money and it appears Luigi had some too. I mean, he was all over the place, you know, living in Hawaii, Honolulu, which is not cheap, traveling to Japan. I mean, all of that takes money.
51:01 Speaker 02 It was clear that he had money, had access to money and was able to move around all these different areas and do all these activities. News of Luigi Mangione's arrest shocked his family. He had gone from wondering where he was and fearing for his safety to being hit with the news that he was a suspect in a high profile murder that was making headlines. A statement from the family posted by Nino Mangione on X red. We only know what we have read in the media. Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi's arrest. We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved. We are devastated by this news. To those that knew Luigi, the thought that he could do something like he's been accused
51:45 Speaker 02 of is unbelievable. No one who knew him has come forward to say anything negative about him, though plenty have voiced how surprising this all is. There were no signs that Luigi was antisocial. He started clubs in college, joined fraternities, lived in shared housing. He got along with people and never had any run ins with anyone as far as we know.
52:06 Speaker 01 Some people point to online accounts, which indicate what seemed to be the beginnings of Luigi's thought process, leading to the murder. According to CNN, Mangione wrote on Goodreads in a review of Unabomber Ted Kaczynski's 1995 manifesto. It's simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out. He also said Kaczynski was a violent individual who was rightfully in prison.
52:41 Speaker 01 Mangione wrote that violence never solved anything is a statement uttered by cowards and predators. And he seemed to praise Kaczynski for acknowledging that peaceful protest has gotten us absolutely nowhere. And I think more of any time you're siding with Ted Kaczynski, that might be a red flag. I get it if you're doing some type of analysis of his manifesto and you point out that some of his predictions have come true, but there also seems to be some contradictions. He says Kaczynski was a violent individual who was rightfully imprisoned.
53:23 Speaker 01 But then he also goes on to say that violence never solved anything is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.
53:32 Speaker 02 Tuition at Gilman School, which Luigi Mangione attended from at least sixth grade through his graduation is about $40,000 a year. A peak design backpack can cost up to $330, and he had no problem tossing it into Central Park. He paid for much of his movements in cash. So Luigi does not seem like a person who would have to worry about medical debt, or who would concern himself with the struggles of the lower class. While we can theorize about motives and messages, nothing has been confirmed.
54:03 Speaker 01 At his arraignment, when the judge asked whether he wanted the public defendant assigned to him, or if he preferred private counsel, Mangione said he wished to answer that at a future date. He denied that any of the $10,000 in mixed currency found in his possession when he was arrested belonged to him, saying, I don't know where any of that money came from. I'm not sure if it was planted. He also said that the Faraday bag connected to him and commonly used in jamming signals was just a waterproof bag that he liked, adding, I don't know about criminal sophistication. As former FBI Director Andrew McCabe pointed
54:47 Speaker 01 out to CNN, there were thousands of places where he could have gotten rid of those IDs and that pistol as he was making his escape out of New York. And yet he didn't. Had he done so, the case against him would be very different.
55:04 Speaker 02 This being caught with literally all of the evidence that ties you to the crime has some people wondering whether Luigi intended all along to be caught and connected to the murder, or maybe take credit for it and turn himself in. But it could just show that he was a brazen and sloppy criminal who got careless and thought he had outsmarted police. Along with the charges in Pennsylvania, Luigi Mangione has been charged with one count of second degree murder, two counts of second degree criminal possession of a weapon, one count of second degree possession of a forged document, and one count of third degree criminal possession of a weapon in New York. The charge of second degree murder may seem surprising to some people
55:45 Speaker 02 since there seem to be aspects of this crime that show premeditation. But in New York, the law dictates that to be increased to a first degree charge, there needs to be an aggravating factor like torture of a victim or the murder of a police officer.
56:01 Speaker 01 At this time, authorities believe Luigi Mangione acted alone, which he himself apparently indicated in his manifesto, and they are confident that they have the right person. It doesn't seem that he was a hired hitman. Police are still seeking tips from the public to piece together every moment of his time between getting on a bus, fleeing New York, and getting arrested in Altoona. Mangione traveled between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and made several stops, including in Altoona, before he was found there at the McDonald's. As of December 9th, the bike used by the suspect to traverse Central Park had not been recovered.
56:44 Speaker 01 Authorities are also looking to piece together Mangione's life before he made it to New York to see if there are any other clues that can help paint a clearer picture of why this happened.
56:56 Speaker 02 One disturbing trend on social media is that to many, they see Luigi Mangione as a folk hero, like he did a good deed killing the head of a greedy insurance company. There are lots of pro Luigi Mangione posts, and while some don't condone his actions, they don't seem terribly upset that the victim in this case was a wealthy CEO of a powerful insurance company. There have also been a lot of posts praising Luigi Mangione on his looks, almost like a Ted Bundy type of thing. The fact that there's so much support for Luigi, despite the terrible crimes he's accused of, clearly worries the NYPD. According to CNN in an intelligence report, it was stated that this rhetoric may signal an elevated threat facing executives in the near term,
57:41 Speaker 02 with the shooting itself having the capability to inspire a variety of extremist and grievance-driven malicious actors to violence.
57:49 Speaker 01 And morph is just one of the many reasons why I often dislike social media. Now, I get it, a lot of people have problems with insurance companies. Whether they're paying too much for insurance, they've been denied for something they felt was unfair. But to support the murder of someone who just happened to run an insurance company, that blows me away, but it's something you see on social media. I get it, you may not like what someone does for a living, you might not like the company they work for,
58:30 Speaker 01 but as you and I often talk about, you know, none of that means that a person deserves to lose their life.
58:39 Speaker 02 And where does it end? Because I'm sure they're going to put a new CEO in place of Brian Thompson. So it's not like anything changes. I'm sure they're going to carry on and continue down the same path they're going down.
58:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, well, they will, absolutely. But, you know, as it was stated in this intelligence report.
59:00 Speaker 01 I think if you're the head of an insurance company or a high ranking official, you gotta be a little worried that this is going to start a trend, that someone is going to copycat this act. And it's not just memes we're seeing, or simply the threat of future violence. There are real ripple effects happening now. In the wake of Brian Thompson's murder, United Health Group's share price has dropped by 10% and the stock dropped by 10% last week, which is a larger drop than it has seen since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. The company's market value has dropped by $45 billion.
59:45 Speaker 02 In another turn of events, Google actually had to start removing false negative reviews of the McDonald's location in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where Magione was arrested at. Reviews were flooding in talking about a rat problem in the kitchen, meaning the staff. There are many who believe the report of a customer tipping off the McDonald's employee that the Manhattan shooting suspect was in the restaurant is just a cover story and an attempt to protect the employee from the backlash they were bound to receive for calling in the tip. Once the arrest made the news, the location would be public and the employee would be vulnerable. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a former district attorney, praised McDonald's tipster in USA Today, saying,
1:00:29 Speaker 02 "The real hero in the story is the person who called 911 at McDonald's this morning. In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint. It seems that the McDonald's employee may receive the reward in this case."
1:00:45 Speaker 01 And the fact that people are viewing this person, this McDonald's worker, as anything but a hero is shocking to me. I mean, they're calling him a rat? You know, as referenced by these reviews, right? There's a rat problem in the kitchen? And I think it goes back to... This pro Luigi Mangione support, where's it coming from?
1:01:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, there's almost a Robin Hood vibe that he's out doing good deeds and you know, outsmarting the establishment and the people that are trying to catch him.
1:01:22 Speaker 01 At the time of this writing, Luigi Mangione is being held at the State Correctional Institution in Huntington. He is currently scheduled to appear for a preliminary hearing in Pennsylvania on December 23rd. Bail has been denied as he awaits extradition to New York, which he indicated he intends to fight at a hearing on December 10th. According to the New York Times, as he was transported into the courthouse, Luigi yelled at reporters, waiting for a glimpse of him, "That's completely out of touch," and an insult to the intelligence of the American people, as officers wrangled him in through the door. If convicted of all
1:02:05 Speaker 01 charges, Luigi Mangione faces up to life in prison without parole. We'll have to wait and see what details come out during trial, if there is one, and how cooperative Mangione is with the authorities.
1:02:20 Speaker 02 In the latest developments that are not yet completely verified, it's being reported that a bag of bullets found in Central Park may be connected to this case, and that some of the bullets had writing on them. Additionally, ballistics has matched the gun found on Luigi Mangione when he was arrested to the casings found at the scene of Brian Thompson's murder.
1:02:40 Speaker 01 And I would have to think, Morf, that is going to be very damning evidence at a trial against Luigi if it actually takes place. Brian Thompson has been laid to rest in his home state of Minnesota. According to ABC News, his widow Paula said, "Brian was an incredibly loving, generous, talented man who truly lived life to the fullest and touched so many lives. Most importantly, Brian was an incredibly loving father to our two sons and will be greatly missed." So Morph, as we wrap this one up, obviously, this is still an ongoing case.
1:03:22 Speaker 01 And you know, these cases are interesting to do. We don't do them a lot, but it's sometimes fascinating to look at a case that is unfolding right this very minute. Now, there's some drawbacks to that. You're not going to have all the details. Someone listening to this episode next year, two years from now, is going to have the benefit of probably a lot more details than we had at the time that we're recording this episode. But you can see why this case has grabbed the attention of so many people. First of all, you know, we mentioned it, right?
1:04:06 Speaker 01 This murder occurred essentially in broad daylight. I get it was early in the morning, but, and it was in Manhattan. It wasn't in the middle of nowhere. The victim was a very wealthy CEO of a major company. That in and of itself is going to make the news. It's going to grab people's attention. And then the fact that police were able to find their suspect. And it seems like they have some pretty compelling evidence against him. But you know, for me, it's really going to be, will we learn the true motive behind this killing?
1:04:51 Speaker 02 It makes me wonder if Luigi Mangione, who's accused of doing to this point, hasn't been convicted. If he actually has done this, why did he do this? It's clear that he came from a good family with a background, good background. He had a good education. It seems like he could have been almost anything and been successful. And instead, he, for whatever reason, if this is all accurate, then he chose to target the CEO of this insurance company. And we'll have to wait to hopefully find out why that is. And I do get some kind of vibes. Because we mentioned the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski earlier that Luigi had written about him.
1:05:36 Speaker 02 He had some similar things too, that he was successful, he was smart, he was educated. And he could have been a lot of things. And we see the path that he went down. So I wonder if there's some mirroring of that in some ways with Luigi.
1:05:53 Speaker 01 Well, no doubt Luigi Mangione was privileged, right? He came from money. His family had money. I think this manifesto, and they haven't published the whole thing. So we don't know exactly what's in it, but it clearly mentions United Healthcare. So to me, it's kind of hard not to believe that he either had something against that company specifically, or the insurance industry as a whole. But it points to the fact that this wasn't a random shooting. You know, he was waiting around if he in fact committed this murder for Brian Thompson.
1:06:37 Speaker 01 It seems like specifically. But again, hopefully all of the details come out in the coming months, years, who knows how long it will take. But I think we're going to find more out as to the motive, the whys, all of that. But that's it for our episode on the assassination of Brian Thompson and the arrest of Luigi Mangione. If you love the show, but haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, leave us a five star rating. You can leave a review, but also keep telling your friends. That word of mouth about the criminology podcast really helps us out.
1:07:22 Speaker 02 If you want to find us on social media, we're on X with the handle at CriminologyPod. You can also find us on Facebook by going to Facebook.com/criminologypodcast. And you can join our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcast Discussion and Fans.
1:07:38 Speaker 01 So that's it for another episode of Criminology, but Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode. So until then, for Mike
1:07:47 Speaker 02 And Morph.
1:07:48 Speaker 01 We'll talk to you next week.
1:07:49 Speaker 02 Take care, everyone.
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