NY - UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson fatally shot in Midtown. #10 *Arrest*

[DancingMuse]

I wonder where he practiced firing the ghost gun. Did he leave San Francisco and go somewhere remote so that he could practice shooting with his ghost gun over time to be sure it worked well and he had command of it?

Couldn't agree with you more, Sundog.

Many Sleuths are wondering why Altoona? Where is there (possibly) a remote location further out in western Pennsylvania where LM based himself for the last couple months? Did he rent a house, and pay cash for it?

LM practiced firing the ghost gun there. He ordered the steel alloy gun components to be sent there (or a post office box nearby). The 3d printer was at that location. He did all his internet research at this location.

The reason he was traveling through Altoona was to return to this "home base".

Technical questions: If LM refuses to admit where he was located all those months he had cut off communication with family, Can LE eventually use his confiscated laptop/IP address, and determine where he was living all that time? Or, does the use of the Faraday bag prevent any tracing of his internet usage?

(Pure speculation.MOO)

 

[CrimeDawg123]

I read the mom had actually called police and said the killer they were looking for my be her son.

Can you link a source please?

 

[Tiff23fr]

Here is a write up with more information specific to the Horseshoe Curve Lodge:

“I told him that he wouldn’t be able to get one right now, that our housekeeper hadn’t cleaned the rooms yet, that he had to come back at one o’clock. He asked if he could wait here. I told him no, because at the time, I didn’t know that I could just allow him to wait for, you know, half the day. And he said, ‘OK.’ And he turned around and just left. Didn’t say nothing. Never took his mask down,” Kuklis told ABC News.

Luigi Mangione tried to book Altoona hotel room hours before arrest

The front desk worker said Mangione acted skittish and "cagey" when the suspected CEO killer tried to book a room less than a mile from where he later was arrested.

www.pennlive.com

 

[detective.moon]

I think it’s really too early to tell.

i agree! reading all the stories, i really hope at least something good will come out of this for americans who are disabled and ill and struggling with the system as it is, but it’s hard to predict. there seems to be some momentum for people who want change, but how does that translate into real life change? would it even be possible to change this system? i think it’s one of the most interesting things about this case! it makes it about something much bigger then just BT, LM and those close to them. but then again, maybe nothing will change besides two families now being broken and hurt.

 

[mrstfs]

People were asking what “last sync” means on the CheaterBuster app screenshot of his Tinder. An explanation is on their website FAQ under “Search and Results”

https://www.cheaterbuster.net/faq/

 

[thefragile7393]

i agree! reading all the stories, i really hope at least something good will come out of this for americans who are disabled and ill and struggling with the system as it is, but it’s hard to predict. there seems to be some momentum for people who want change, but how does that translate into real life change? would it even be possible to change this system? i think it’s one of the most interesting things about this case! it makes it about something much bigger then just BT, LM and those close to them. but then again, maybe nothing will change besides two families now being broken and hurt.

Only thing that will change is admins and higher ups will hire security for themselves and we as the premium payers for health insurance will see that in the form of increased premiums

 

[10ofRods]

<modsnip: Quoted post was removed>

It remains my opinion that LM is not a normal person. In my view. It's not too early for me to say that and so I did. We will never have an absolute or objective viewpoint into a human mind - but it's not too soon to draw a few simple conclusions.

LM is in custody for cold-blooded murder, which he performed in a statement-making and fairly unique manner. He's not a "normal person" as I use the phrase. Indeed, he is apparently quite gifted (probably a 1%er in terms of IQ, given his valedictory status and extremely high performance at an Ivy.) Just that, alone makes him not typical Unusual. Highly unusual.

The fact that he performed such a heinous anti-social act makes him decidedly not normal, in my book. He intertwined a bunch of other antisocial behaviors into this murder (printing out an unregistered gun; being in possession of loaded gun on NYC streets; fake ID's/identity theft). He ran into trouble with the law. Pretty much textbook anti-social behavior.

IMO.

 

[Sundog]

I hadn't seen it reported before that LM participated in wrestling while at his high school academy in Baltimore.

He graduated in 2016 as valedictorian of the Gillman School, a prestigious boy’s academy in Baltimore. His high school yearbook said he’d participated in wrestling, robotics club and model U.N.

Who is Luigi Mangione? What we know about the CEO killing suspect

Luigi Nicholas Mangione, 26, a Maryland native with Pennsylvania ties, has been charged with murder in the killing of a healthcare company CEO in New York.

www.pennlive.com

 

[CrimeDawg123]

i agree! reading all the stories, i really hope at least something good will come out of this for americans who are disabled and ill and struggling with the system as it is, but it’s hard to predict. there seems to be some momentum for people who want change, but how does that translate into real life change? would it even be possible to change this system? i think it’s one of the most interesting things about this case! it makes it about something much bigger then just BT, LM and those close to them. but then again, maybe nothing will change besides two families now being broken and hurt.

I have to say I am pessimistic. I think LM's actions will cause a conversation in the short term, but nothing will come of it. We seem to be stuck - one side believes healthcare should be a fundamental right and the other very strongly disagrees preferring the profit-driven system we have today. We don't seem to be at a place where compromise can happen that could bring positive change. I think LM's actions are the result of a confused young man not able to cope, and sadly an innocent man lost his life in the turmoil.

 

[Tiff23fr]

.

Here is a write up with more information specific to the Horseshoe Curve Lodge:

“I told him that he wouldn’t be able to get one right now, that our housekeeper hadn’t cleaned the rooms yet, that he had to come back at one o’clock. He asked if he could wait here. I told him no, because at the time, I didn’t know that I could just allow him to wait for, you know, half the day. And he said, ‘OK.’ And he turned around and just left. Didn’t say nothing. Never took his mask down,” Kuklis told ABC News.

Luigi Mangione tried to book Altoona hotel room hours before arrest

The front desk worker said Mangione acted skittish and "cagey" when the suspected CEO killer tried to book a room less than a mile from where he later was arrested.

www.pennlive.com

Altoona
Hmmm - Options:

The Railroads and Anti-Trust Laws?
He was intelligent yes, as educated as they come on the books, but to think a 26 year old acting on book smarts alone put all these things together and then acted by going straight to murder…

Something isn’t passing the sniff test. IMO IMO IMO I can’t quite place my finger on it.

Anyone who has personal experience working with both audiences (fresh grads/tenure life experienced) will understand the difference in how the two groups connect information.

Under current law, the railroad industry is exempted from
antitrust law in most respects. Virtually no other industry--
with the possible exception of the insurance industry--enjoys
such a broad exemption from the antitrust laws.

https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/110th-congress/senate-report/252/1

 

[10ofRods]

"Too early to tell what ?"

My response was to the @girlhasnoname post that was with my post /not yours - apologies if not clear

"I don't think LM has changed the dialogue or achieved his goal about HealthCare at all. I see the conversations as being knee jerk reactions more about LM personally (for/or against his actions) instead of addressing the very broken Healthcare system and how to fix it".

I think its to EARLY to tell if the dialogue has changed or will continue and maybe even help effectuate change.

JMO

Oh - very true. The trial itself (if it occurs) will be like litmus paper for this.

I do think LM's actions have already changed the dialogue, at least in the part of the internet where I dwell. There's way more discussion of healthcare and its failings. For one thing, this story has developed legs of its own and still hits the top of news.google every day.

I think LM's goal was to bring intense scrutiny to the US for-profit insurance system, and he probably felt he had accomplished that if he was at all following MSM during the days before his arrest. Now that he's hiring a private attorney, he has "supporters" who want to help pay for that:

https://www.newsnationnow.com/crime/luigi-mangione-supporters-raise-over-110k-for-legal-defense-fund/

As GoFundMe pulls Luigi Mangione fundraisers, another platform is featuring one on its front page

Mangione has seen a wave of support online after it was announced that he was the primary suspect in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thomas.

www.nbcnews.com

I'm not sure how we can ever measure change in dialogue. Conversations are, in my view, always evolving and changing. Will the healthcare system change? I'm not sure that was LM's immediate goal - I think he wants to help solidify a certain type of anti-Big Profits for Healthcare movement. I've been very surprised to see how broadly unifying this message is across several age groups, although clearly, the 20-somethings and 30-somethings are paying attention (which, from my POV as a teacher of that age group, is really unusual and interesting).

IMO.

 

[GRT]

"Too early to tell what ?"

My response was to the @girlhasnoname post that was with my post /not yours - apologies if not clear

"I don't think LM has changed the dialogue or achieved his goal about HealthCare at all. I see the conversations as being knee jerk reactions more about LM personally (for/or against his actions) instead of addressing the very broken Healthcare system and how to fix it".

I think its to EARLY to tell if the dialogue has changed or will continue and maybe even help effectuate change.

JMO

I think that's true. I haven't seen bills introduced to reform the insurance industry. At least not yet. What I am seeing is slightly disturbing in that LM is being glorified to an extent, and I'm not sure those who are glorifying him know why they're doing that.

But, I'm hearing a lot of backhanded justification. The person always starts with "I don't condone murder..." and then morphs into, "...but something had to be done."

 

[Sundog]

If he participated in wrestling in high school, it is likely he didn't have back issues at the time.

 

[Charlot123]

I do think he drove himself unusually hard in school. He sometimes described himself as struggling and in over his head (paraphrasing), yet he was his high school class’ valedictorian, earned two degrees in four years at Penn and graduated with distinction.

He graduated in May 2020. This was during Covid lockdown. I would imagine interview opportunities were limited during that time, especially for folks with little work experience and business contacts/referrals. TrueCar would not have been the hottest possible choice but still respectable.

He began working as a Data Engineer at TrueCar in November 2020. He likely worked remotely as was the norm at that time. He received two promotions; one in October 2021 (Data Engineer 2) and another in October 2022 (Data Engineer 3). This indicates to me that he was meeting or exceeding expectations for at least two years. I would expect he was compensated well.

I don’t know if he was caught up in the layoff in June 2023 or if he left earlier that year, but a lot of tech companies were laying folks off at that time and the market was tight. In any case, he underwent back surgery in July and there was a post-op recovery period. If he actually left before the layoff, perhaps burnout was an element with his on/off back/nerve pain being a contributing element.

None of those actions or outcomes seem unusual to me. I might have expected an ambitious young person to put in two years at TrueCar and then move to a hotter company or an interesting start-up, but he was preoccupied with his injury at that point and he was at least advancing at TrueCar.

The backpacking trip in early 2024 is the first time I see him deviating from what might be expected of a 25 year old unemployed overachiever who has presumably completed surgery recovery. That is when most people would expect a person like him to focus on securing his next job. The fact that he wrote a review semi-praising Ted Kaczynski in Jan 2024 makes me wonder if he was beginning to derail at that time and the subsequent backpacking trip was part of reevaluating his path forward.

LM’s final post on reddit in May 2024 was a re-post of someone else’s video with a theme of people being so immersed in technology, they aren’t engaging in real life. Perhaps he was even questioning being involved in the tech industry at all. Of course this change of heart might also have been ego driven if he felt he was falling behind and hadn’t achieved as much as he expected of himself or as much as he thought others might have expected of him. That would be an unfortunate mindset at 25. A lot of people are just getting started then.

MOO.

Thank you for your analysis. COVID was leaving people in isolation, indeed. About Ted Kazcynski - he was a much more obvious example of the detrimental effects of social isolation. His problems started when he transferred schools, and, due to high IQ, was pushed to skipp grades. He was managing well academically, but bullied and horribly immature when he entered Harvard at sixteen. (And how could love to mankind even develop if he was bullied?). So it would seem that gap between academic and social achievement can't be left unclosed.

I think that trips to Asia could be very eye-opening, but if they happened when he was 25, unemployed, alone and just in the process of discovering thought-provoking books, he might have felt overwhelmed.

 

[otto]

I disagree with you. Motive is often relevant and instrumental in prosecuting a case. Mangione has every right to testify in his own defense. The judge will keep proceedings on point and civil.

Some states require that a motive is presented during murder prosecution, others do not.

Per discussions upthread, NY does not require that a motive is presented by the prosecution during trial (presented, not proven). On that basis, the prosecution may avoid all discussion of motive. The objective is to prove intent, and if that can be done without mentioning motive, I think it strengthens the prosecution argument.

Intent might be proven based on Mangione stalking Thompson's hotel, there might be a digital trail where he studied Brian Thompson's conference plans, there's DNA, preparing the 3D print weapon ... not sure. Mangione made a plan to shoot a stranger in the back. I don't think his reasons matter.

 

[Marantz4250b]

I wonder where he practiced firing the ghost gun. Did he leave San Francisco and go somewhere remote so that he could practice shooting with his ghost gun over time to be sure it worked well and he had command of it?

He was into hiking and suchlike so would have been very comfortable just disappearing for hours or days to shoot guns, I think.

Also, imo, he wasn't a novice using firearms. The video of the shooting makes that very clear that this wasn't the first time hed shot a semi-auto pistol. Obviously with all due respect to the fact that he is not yet convicted of anything and it may not have have been the person in the video.

 

[mrstfs]

Obviously people change from High School but I thought this was interesting “In a Reddit post earlier this year verified by USA TODAY, the 26-year-old accused in the fatal shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson wrote that he was fascinated in high school by the concept of being able to “survive in the wild using nothing more than a survival kit small enough to fit in an Altoids can.”

'Nothing more, nothing less': Writings show wandering path across the globe for Luigi Mangione

From Maryland to Asia, murder suspect Luigi Mangione traversed the globe before CEO Brian Thompson was killed. His travels shed light on him.

www.usatoday.com

 

[MelmothTheLost]

I wonder if UHC (and/or other insurance companies) cover Polymeric Hydrogels or is it denied as either being experimental or as being a more expensive treatment that “can be treated less expensively” with traditional fusion surgery with hardware?

I would guess (and it is a guess) that that treatment is not widely available (if at all) in the US because the US seems to be generally culturally resistant to anything which derives from outside the US.

 

[MassGuy]

Obviously people change from High School but I thought this was interesting “In a Reddit post earlier this year verified by USA TODAY, the 26-year-old accused in the fatal shooting of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson wrote that he was fascinated in high school by the concept of being able to “survive in the wild using nothing more than a survival kit small enough to fit in an Altoids can.”

'Nothing more, nothing less': Writings show wandering path across the globe for Luigi Mangione

From Maryland to Asia, murder suspect Luigi Mangione traversed the globe before CEO Brian Thompson was killed. His travels shed light on him.

www.usatoday.com

O’Toole said it’s understandable that a person in their mid-20s might pull away from family to gain some independence, "but cutting off contact with loved ones and traveling abroad alone after leaving his job and suffering health issues is a cause for concern."

“It's not a singular track. It has to be many influences coming together to affect one person,” she said, like depression or other mental health issues.

 

[Charlot123]

I think that's true. I haven't seen bills introduced to reform the insurance industry. At least not yet. What I am seeing is slightly disturbing in that LM is being glorified to an extent, and I'm not sure those who are glorifying him know why they're doing that.

But, I'm hearing a lot of backhanded justification. The person always starts with "I don't condone murder..." and then morphs into, "...but something had to be done."

MOO: there is no way of going back to two humans. In political murders, the victims and assassins are always symbolic, representing either classes, or ideas, in either way, something more than themselves. We just don't see that many politically-driven assassinations.

The first "CEO killed in NYC" heading immediately set the tone for the story. That eerie morning light, the figure walking away down the passageway, and the masked assassin who immediately received a name, "the Adjustor". All in silence; for days, we viewed only grainly videos and poor photos. The first "sound" in the story was linked to Luigi's words, several days into the manhunt, and he didn't speak about himself.

Nothing personal sticks to the participants of this drama, including Luigi. The glorification is akin to religious veneration. I think it will carry on like this, merely because the situation hit a certain painful nerve.