Luigi Mangione, the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, will face federal murder and stalking charges in addition to those he is currently contesting in New York and Pennsylvania.
Mangione, 26, was already facing a potential maximum sentence of life in prison for the state charges, which include first- and second-degree murder as an act of terrorism, criminal possession of a weapon, and criminal possession of a forged instrument. He has also been indicted on gun charges in Pennsylvania.
The federal charges, which include a firearms offense, make him eligible for the death penalty—a sentence New York outlawed in 2004. Prosecutors have not said whether they will pursue that punishment.
Investigators said they later recovered from the scene two shell casings and a bullet with the words “deny,” “delay,” and “depose” on them.
Other pictures in the complaint included stills from the suspect’s exchange with the desk clerk at the hostel he allegedly stayed at and a New Jersey driver’s license featuring Mangione’s picture and the name Mark Rosario.
Mangione was arrested on Dec. 9 at an Altoona, Pennsylvania, McDonald’s. The complaint notes that several items were found in his possession, including a 9-millimeter pistol and silencer, several thousand dollars in cash, a letter addressed “To the Feds,” and a notebook that contained “several handwritten pages that express hostility towards the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular.”
According to the complaint, one passage in the notebook described Mangione’s “intent to ‘wack’” the CEO of one of the insurance companies attending UnitedHealth Group’s investor conference, which Thompson had traveled to New York to attend.
In the letter to federal investigators, Mangione allegedly wrote that he “wasn’t working with anyone.”
“This was fairly trivial: Some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience,” prosecutors quoted from the letter, suggesting that “CAD” could stand for “computer-aided design.”
Mangione earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania.
He also purportedly wrote: “P.S. you can check serial numbers to verify this is all self-funded. My own ATM withdrawals.”
The federal complaint’s unsealing on Dec. 19 came hours after Mangione appeared in a Pennsylvania court, where he waived his right to an extradition hearing. He was then flown via helicopter to lower Manhattan and transported to a courthouse.
