Police analyze fingerprint on cellphone as UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting suspect remains jailed

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and MARK SCOLFORO, Associated Press

ALTOONA, Pa. (AP) — Authorities were analyzing a fingerprint on a cellphone found after the killing of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO as suspect Luigi Mangione fought 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 cellphone was recovered. He said the evidence was being processed and didn’t say whether it appeared to match Mangione, the 26-year-old charged in the shooting last week in midtown Manhattan.

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

They’ve recovered a spiral notebook that Mangione kept, along with a three-page handwritten letter found when he was arrested, a law enforcement official said Wednesday. Police have not disclosed what was in the notebook.

The letter, found when Mangione was arrested 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. The official wasn’t authorized to disclose information about the investigation and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

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.

A law enforcement bulletin obtained by the AP earlier this week said the letter expressed anger with what Mangione called “parasitic” health insurance companies and a disdain for corporate greed and power. The prep school and Ivy League graduate wrote that the U.S. has the most expensive health care system in the world and that profits of major corporations continue to rise while life expectancy doesn’t, according to the bulletin.

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 offenses.

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

“You can’t rush to judgment in this case or any case,” Dickey said afterward. “He’s presumed innocent. Let’s not forget that.”

Mangione was arrested in Altoona, about 230 miles west of New York City, after a McDonald’s customer recognized him and notified an employee, authorities said.