New Information On Healthcare CEO Assassin Found SFPD Identified Shooter Days Before Arrest

According to new information given by the San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) on Friday, the SFPD identified the assassin of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Luigi Mangione, only a day following the act on December 5th, several days before he was finally caught in a Pennsylvania McDonalds on December 9th.

Prior to the assassination, Mangione had several previous ties to California. He lived and worked at Stanford University in the summer of 2019, where he was a head counselor under the Stanford Pre-Collegiate Studies program. This was confirmed by the University in a statement, saying, “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.”

Mangione was employed by the Santa Monica-based Truecar company, which gives pricing information to potential car buyers. However, he worked remotely for them, and it is unknown if he ever visited the company headquarters.

Mangione was also thought to have been living in San Francisco by his mother. Kathleen Mangione had made a missing persons report to the San Francisco Police on November 18th, a week before his next known whereabouts in New York. She thought he was working for the Truecar offices there, but the SFPD had found that those offices had closed. Nonetheless, the SFPD was given a picture of Mangione and was known as a possible missing person in the city.

Currently Mangione is suspected of having to traveled by bus to New York City in late November and staying in a Manhattan hostel. The day after checking out on December 3rd, he allegedly shot Thompson outside the New York Hilton Midtown Hotel with a suppressed 3D pistol, then fled by bike through the city to a bus station. After that, his whereabout were unknown until Monday when an Altoona, Pennsylvania McDonald’s employee called the police on him, leading to his arrest. He was found with not only the murder weapon on him, but also a manifesto and confession. He was charged on five counts of carrying a gun without a license, forgery, falsely identifying himself to the authorities, possessing “instruments of crime” that night, with New York also charging him with another 5 counts, including second-degree murder, which will likely be upgraded as investigations continue.

As of Friday, Mangione is in a Pennsylvania jail awaiting extradition to New York to stand trial for murder there.

However the new details from the SFPD revealed they were the first in the nation to know the identity of the shooter. As pictures of the possible suspect were released on December 4th, the photos reached San Francisco where police quickly matched the photos taken from New York to the missing persons photo of Mangione. They relayed the match and the possible identity of the suspect to the FBI.

“We can confirm that a tip was received from the San Francisco Police Department regarding the possible identity of the suspect,” the New York FBI Field Office said in a confirmatory statement on Friday.

While the match by the SFPD was not announced to the public, the San Francisco tip was acknowledged by the FBI as a main lead that assisted in the investigation. This helped provide the best photos of the suspect, which led to Mangione’s identification  by a citizen in Pennsylvania.

“This is a great example of post-9/11 inter-law enforcement agency information sharing,” Bay Area Security consultant and former policeman Frank Ma told the Globe Friday. “It might seem a little incredulous that the FBI didn’t release his name following the SFPD confirming it, but remember, there were hundreds of tips and they needed to be confirmed by others first.

“Still, it did ultimately help by giving a name and helping narrow down possible suspects. As anyone in law enforcement knows, tips like these come from the strangest places. In this case, it actually started with his mom trying to find her missing son in the city. They got the photo and information, and just a few weeks later, the SFPD used that to help the FBI nab and identify him.”

More details surrounding Mangione’s connections, including possibly returning from Hawaii through California, are expected to be released soon.