‘What do you do? You wack the CEO,’ Mangione’s notebook reportedly says

Altoona, Pennsylvania: Authorities are analysing a fingerprint on a phone found after the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, as the suspect in the case, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione, continues to fight being sent from a Pennsylvania jail to New York to face a murder charge.

The New York Police Department’s top detective, Joseph Kenny, told CBS New York on Tuesday that no prints were found on bullets that killed Brian Thompson, but one fingerprint on a mobile phone was recovered.

Luigi Mangione, a suspect in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, in Honolulu in 2023.Credit: AP

He said the evidence was being processed and didn’t say whether it appeared to match Mangione, who was charged in the shooting that took place last week in midtown Manhattan.

Authorities have said that writings found in Mangione’s possession hinted at a hatred of corporate greed.

They have recovered a spiral notebook that Mangione kept, along with a three-page handwritten letter, found when he was arrested, a law enforcement official said on Wednesday (local time).

The notebook described going to a conference to kill an executive, officials said, according to a New York Times report.

“What do you do? You wack [sic] the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents,” was one passage written in the notebook, officials told the Times.

The separate letter, found when Mangione was arrested on Monday in Altoona, Pennsylvania, teased the possibility that clues to the attack – “some straggling notes and to-do lists that illuminate the gist of it” – could be found in the notebook, the law enforcement official said.

A law enforcement bulletin obtained by the AP earlier this week said the letter expressed anger with health insurance companies and a disdain for corporate greed and power.

“Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming,” Mangione wrote. He contrasted the high cost of US healthcare with the country’s declining life expectancy rates, and incorrectly referred to UnitedHealth as the fourth-largest company by market capitalisation. (Before the shooting, the company was 14th-largest on the S&P 500 index.)

“It has grown and grown, but has our life expectancy?” he wrote. “Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.” He added that he acted alone.

Kenny told CBS New York that the motive might have been related to an accident that sent Mangione to an emergency room on July 4, 2023.

Luigi Mangione’s mugshot.Credit: AP

In his first public words since his arrest, Mangione emerged from a patrol car Tuesday shouting about an “insult to the intelligence of the American people” while deputies pushed him into a courthouse. Mangione remained jailed without bail in Pennsylvania, where he was initially charged with gun and forgery offences.

Manhattan prosecutors were working to bring Mangione to New York. At a brief hearing on Tuesday in Pennsylvania, defence lawyer Thomas Dickey said Mangione will not waive extradition and instead wants a hearing on the issue.

“If you’re an American, you believe in the American criminal justice system, you have to presume him to be innocent,” said Dickey outside the courthouse on Tuesday in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania. “None of us would want anything other than that.”

Mangione was arrested in Altoona, about 370 kilometres west of New York City, after a McDonald’s customer recognised him and notified an employee, authorities said.

New York police officials have said Mangione was carrying a gun like the one used to kill Thompson and the same fake ID the suspected shooter had used to check into a New York hostel, along with a passport and other fraudulent IDs.

Thompson, 50, was killed on December 4 as he walked alone to a Manhattan hotel for an investor conference. From surveillance video, New York investigators determined the shooter quickly fled the city, probably by bus.

Altoona Deputy Police Chief Derek Swope said Pennsylvania police were receiving threats.Credit: AP

His movements afterwards are unclear, but authorities believe he took steps to stay off the radar. Prosecutors said at his Pennsylvania hearing on Tuesday that when arrested he had bags for his cellphone and laptop that prevent such devices from transmitting signals that authorities can use to track.

Mangione, a grandson of a well-known Maryland real estate developer and philanthropist, had a graduate degree in computer science and worked for a time at a car-buying website. During the first half of 2022, he bunked at a “co-living” space in Hawaii, where those who knew him said he suffered from severe and sometimes debilitating back pain.

His relatives have said in a statement that they are “shocked and devastated” at his arrest.

Luigi Nicholas Mangione is escorted into Blair County Courthouse in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania.Credit: AP

At a news conference on Tuesday, Altoona Deputy Police Chief Derek Swope said: “This is clearly a very polarised case. We have received some threats against our officers in the building here. We’ve started investigating some threats against some citizens in our community.”

On Monday night, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro railed against those who “have looked to celebrate” instead of condemning Thompson’s killer.

“In some dark corners this killer is being hailed as a hero,” the governor said. “Hear me on this, he is no hero.”

United Healthcare chief executive Brian Thompson.Credit: AP

Healthcare companies, meanwhile, say they are trying to better understand patients’ experiences after Thompson was murdered last week, executives from drugmaker Pfizer and Amazon.com said at a panel at the Reuters NEXT conference in New York on Wednesday.

“Our health system needs to be better … There’s a lot of things that should cause a lot of outrage,” Amazon Pharmacy Chief Medical Officer Vin Gupta said. “It’s also true that [the shooting of Thompson] should not have happened. There cannot be this false moral equivalence in our discourse.”

AP, Reuters, Bloomberg

Get a note directly from our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world. Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here.