After CEO killing, police used high-tech tools. But a civilian cinched the dragnet.
-
Patrik Jonsson Staff writer
The plot to get away with the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was not only laid with care, but also could have succeeded as the shooter disappeared into New York City’s holiday crowds, law enforcement experts say.
But on Monday, police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, took a suspect into custody fitting the shooter’s description. Experts say the man – an Ivy League graduate in his mid-20s – may have underestimated a more profound respect in the United States for the common good.
Why We Wrote This
After a health insurance CEO was killed, a tribal public response suggested that some Americans accepted the violence as justified. But a coordinated police response, helped by a citizen-led arrest, highlighted cooperation and shared values.
The man, Luigi Mangione, a prep school valedictorian from Baltimore, has now been charged with murder.
While many expressed relief at his capture, sympathy for the shooter also spilled into the public conversation as his written complaints touched on concerns for many Americans: a medical establishment – and insurers – that can seem dehumanizing.
The search involved a massive effort by the New York Police Department, the FBI, and other agencies. It took an observant McDonald’s worker to notice the man at the back of the restaurant. Officers answering the 911 call recognized the man’s face from distributed images.
“We should never underestimate the power of the public to be our eyes and our ears in these investigations,” said NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.
An untraceable ghost gun fitted with a silencer. Subsonic rounds with casings etched with a possible motive. Cash instead of trackable cards. A daring escape route out of New York City.
The plot to get away with the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was not only laid with care and intelligence, but also could well have succeeded as the shooter disappeared into New York’s holiday crowds and Central Park, law enforcement experts say.
But on Monday, after a five-day manhunt, police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, took a suspect into custody fitting the description of that shooter. Experts say the man – a mid-20s, former-Ivy League engineering graduate student – may have underestimated a more profound respect in the United States for the common good.
Why We Wrote This
After a health insurance CEO was killed, a tribal public response suggested that some Americans accepted the violence as justified. But a coordinated police response, helped by a citizen-led arrest, highlighted cooperation and shared values.
Even in a country riven with class and political divides, the citizen-led capture underscores that a core group of Americans don’t see turning an eye from violence as a solution to social ills.
The man, Luigi Mangione, has been arrested and denied bail on several charges in Pennsylvania, and New York prosecutors filed a murder charge against him on Monday night. He will have to be extradited to New York.
“My initial reaction was that the guy was a pro,” says Thomas Mockaitis, author of “Violent Extremists: Understanding the Domestic and International Terrorist Threat,” noting he doesn’t condone the acts.
Instead, Mr. Mangione is described by police and others as a prep school valedictorian from an affluent Baltimore family who had moved to Hawaii with a remote job and who may have suffered from chronic back pain. Online posts suggest he had lost contact with friends and family over the past year.
“He was extremely methodical. He unjammed the gun, made sure the guy was dead, and had a pretty good escape plan,” says Dr. Mockaitis. “His only real mistakes were allowing his face to be seen and not recognizing the degree to which law enforcement put together a response.”
Video, fingerprints, and database clues
The manhunt involved a massive effort by the New York Police Department and the FBI, as well as other jurisdictions. Investigators combed through thousands of hours of video, processed evidence, including DNA and fingerprints, dug through databases of photographs, and followed up on myriad leads.
Yet, as time passed, none of that work yielded a suspect’s name. Police say it took an observant McDonald’s worker to raise an eyebrow at a young man who ordered breakfast and sat alone in the back of the restaurant. Officers who answered the 911 call asked him to remove his mask and instantly recognized the face from widely distributed still images. The McDonald’s employee may be eligible for an offered $50,000 FBI reward, depending on an interagency review that will determine the total award amount after any conviction.
“We should never underestimate the power of the public to be our eyes and our ears in these investigations,” NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said after the arrest, also praising U.S. media for its wide distribution of still and video images of the suspect.
Yet the shooting also divided the American public in ways that many found disturbing, including a yawning lack of empathy for the victim and even cheering for the shooter.
Mr. Mangione, the man arrested in connection with the shooting, was carrying a three-page, handwritten paper complaining about corporate greed, particularly of UnitedHealthcare. Police have also linked him to online writings that address deeper cultural complaints about the dehumanizing impacts of corporate profiteering.
The shooting came as law enforcement, for years, has been warning of a growing risk of political violence, some rooted in online radicalization and conspiracy theories.
Incivility strikes a dissonant chord
Yet unexpected – and unsettling – sympathy for the shooter also spilled over into the public conversation more broadly as his complaints touched on common concerns for many Americans: a medical establishment, including private health insurance, that can seem byzantine, increasingly expensive, and dehumanizing.
While some have blamed rising health care costs on medical providers or hospitals, insurers are not faultless.
One estimate states that UnitedHealthcare denied nearly 30% of claims under Mr. Thompson’s leadership, more than any other insurer. Meanwhile, its earnings grew at a double-digit rate between 2022 and 2023.
The shooter’s complaints placed him in a gray area between ideological terrorism and idiosyncratic lone-wolf extremism, experts say.
After the shooting, many anonymously rooted for the killer, defended his actions, and noted his appearance. But some went further, urging people to actively undermine the investigation. Some digital sleuths who have assisted police in previous manhunts refused to cooperate to find the New York shooter.
“He touched into popular anger,” says Dr. Mockaitis, a history professor at DePaul University in Chicago. But in the end, “the same social media that has gotten him praise from a certain segment of the population also made it easier to catch him.”
That some people seemed to sympathize with the suspect clearly rattled police, says former Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis. Would they help the investigation? Or hinder it?
It was a far different response than what followed the Boston marathon bombing in 2013. That manhunt ended in the death of one of the suspects and the arrest of the other after a resident alerted police to a suspicious person in his backyard.
Mr. Davis led that search. But apparent in the aftermath of Mr. Thompson’s killing, he says, was a tribal response that suggests Americans have grown more comfortable with the notion of violence as acceptable political speech.
While most Americans consider such attacks un-American, one in five told an April PBS Newshour/NPR/Marist poll that violence may be acceptable “to get the country back on track.”
“It’s almost like a gangster mentality when you sign into something like that,” says Mr. Davis, who now runs a private security firm in Boston.
“You’re basically throwing away the rule of law and the justice system, and chaos reigns.” The response to Mr. Thompson’s death and the capture of a suspect “speaks to who we are and also points where we have to go to correct it.”
