By Benjamin Weiser
Federal prosecutors in Manhattan on Thursday leveled four charges against the suspect in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO, including a count of murder that could bring the death penalty.
The federal charges also include two stalking counts and a firearms offense. They come two days after the office of the Manhattan district attorney filed state murder charges against the suspect, Luigi Mangione, 26, in the killing of the executive, Brian Thompson. Thompson, 50, was gunned down on a Manhattan sidewalk this month.
The highest penalty Mangione could face if convicted in state court would be life in prison without parole. A spokesperson for the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, said Wednesday the state case would proceed in parallel with any federal prosecution.
The federal complaint accuses Mangione of traveling across state lines — from Atlanta to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York, where he arrived shortly after 10 p.m. on Nov. 24 — to stalk and ultimately kill Thompson, which would give the federal government jurisdiction to prosecute him.
Mangione was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday afternoon before a federal magistrate in Manhattan.
The new charges came just over two weeks after the predawn killing of Thompson on Dec. 4.
Surveillance footage showed an assailant approaching Thompson from behind outside a Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan, lifting a handgun fitted with a suppressor, often referred to as a silencer, and firing at him several times before fleeing.
Authorities have said the suspect then fled uptown on an e-bike and soon left New York.
Mangione was arrested days later in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, as he was eating hash browns and looking at his laptop. A fellow customer had told a friend that he resembled the person in photos that police had shared widely, and an employee, overhearing the conversation, called police.
Thursday’s federal criminal complaint charging Mangione provides new details about a notebook found with him when he was arrested. The notebook, separate from a short note addressed to “feds” that authorities later described as a manifesto, expressed “hostility towards the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular” across several handwritten pages, the complaint said.
In an entry marked “8/15” — apparently written in August, months before the shooting — a notebook entry said “the details are finally coming together,” adding that the writer was glad to have procrastinated because it had left time to learn more about UnitedHealthcare, according to the complaint.
Two months later, on Oct. 22, another notebook entry described an upcoming investor conference as “a true windfall” — and went on to describe an intent to “wack” the CEO of an insurance company. The description in the entry corresponds with the date of the UnitedHealthcare investor meeting near which Thompson was killed.
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