Appearing before a judge at the Blair County Court House Dec. 10, Mangione refused to waive extradition and bail was denied, according to NBC News, meaning he'll remain behind bars at State Correctional Institution—Huntingdon in central Pennsylvania for the time being. His lawyers have two weeks to challenge whether his detainment is lawful.
Defense attorney Thomas Dickey told reporters after court that he had seen "zero evidence at this point" that his client was the shooter and that Mangione planned to plead not guilty to all the charges he's facing in New York and Pennsylvania, including criminal weapon possession and possession of a forged document.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said that his office will seek a governor's warrant to get Mangione extradited to New York, the only jurisdiction where he's facing a murder charge.
But as soon as Mangione was arrested Dec. 9, social media erupted with a mixed bag of theories, most expressing relief that a suspect was in custody while some championed the alleged shooter, now able to put a name and face to the person they believed had committed a righteous act.
And authorities are now investigating whether Thompson was the target of a "symbolic takedown," two senior law enforcement official briefed on the matter told NBC News.
"I do apologize for any strife and trauma but it had to be done," read a three-page document, as described by senior law enforcement officials to NBC News, that police said was among Mangione's possessions when he was arrested. "Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming."
Pennsylvania State Police/UPI/Shutterstock
The handwritten pages also, according to officials, criticized UnitedHealthCare, the general state of the U.S. health care industry and large corporations.
The suspect had a black backpack with him in which police also found a firearm known as a ghost gun (so named because it's considered untraceable), a silencer, a laptop, a cell phone and multiple fraudulent IDs, one of which was a fake New Jersey license that matched the one Mangione used to check into a New York City hostel before Thompson was killed, NYPD officials said during a Dec. 9 news conference.
The writings, added NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenney, spoke to the suspect's "motivation and mindset."
But the quest—both officially and in the nether regions of the Internet—to understand the culprit's motivation and mindset began even before police released security footage of a man wearing a surgical-style mask who they deemed a person of interest.
On Dec. 5, the day after Thompson was gunned down in what officials called a targeted attack, the NYPD shared a few images in which the man's mask was lowered, including one in which he was flashing a big smile.
New York City Police Department
Authorities naming Mangione as the man they were looking for only intensified the scramble for details. And, largely owing to his sizable online presence—which ranged from shirtless hiking photos posted on social media and a list of books he wanted to read to his apparent thoughts on Unabomber Ted Kaczynski's notorious writings—quite a bit of information was readily available.
"Initially, Mangione did not seem to fit the profile of a cold-blooded killer," the FBI's former assistant director for counterintelligence Frank Figliuzzisaid Dec. 10 on TODAY. "But as the picture starts to gel and come together, we are seeing what I would call an activist killer."
With the case shifting from a focus on the victim—Thompson, a father of two, was laid to rest Dec. 9 in a private service in Maple Grove, Minn., according to Fox News—to the man accused of killing him, here is what is known about Mangione:
Who is Brian Thompson murder suspect Luigi Mangione?
Those close to—or who were once close to—Mangione have sounded blindsided by the news.
"Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi's arrest," Mangione's family said in a statement posted to X. "We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved."
Jeff Swensen/Getty Images
Mangione grew up in Baltimore, one of local real estate magnate Nicholas Mangione Sr.'s 30 grandchildren, according to CNN.
He was valedictorian of the 2016 graduating class of the Gilman School, an all-boys private high school, before he went on to University of Pennsylvania. While earning his bachelor's and master's degree in computer science (he told a university blog he wanted to design video games), he worked as a head counselor for a pre-college summer program at Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif.
Baltimore Sun / Contributor / GETTY IMAGES
"There was nothing that came off weird about him," fellow Gilman alum Freddie Leatherbury, who graduated with Mangione, told NBC affiliate WBAL-TV. "He had great friends. He had a lot of female friends as well. He was a relatively unassuming kid. He was down to Earth. He was smart, well-adjusted socially."
Leatherbury added, "I can tell you that this is one of the last people you think would do something like this."
Mangione graduated from Penn in 2020, the ceremony program noting that he was a member of Eta Kappa Nu, an academic honor society for students in electrical and computer engineering. He spent more than four years working as a data engineer for the Santa Monica, Calif.-based online car sales company TrueCar, according to LinkedIn. (The company says he hasn't worked there since 2023, per the New York Times.)
Meanwhile, his given location on LinkedIn and X is Honolulu, Hawaii.
"I can make zero sense of it," R.J. Martin, who started a co-living space in Honolulu called Surfbreak where Mangione lived for six months, told CNN in response to the arrest news. "It's unimaginable."
Martin said the residents sometimes talked about politics and health care, but "it wasn’t like he had an ax to grind or he was even upset or angry about a particular issue."
Were there any signs that Luigi Mangione was having personal trouble?
Before his instantaneous ascent to global notoriety (he gained tens of thousands of Instagram followers before his account was taken down and more than 200,000 followers on X), Mangione cut off contact with family and friends over the summer, according to CNN.
"You made commitments to me for my wedding and if you can’t honor them I need to know so I can plan accordingly," an X user posted in July, tagging Mangione's account, per the New York Times.
An October X post tagging Mangione read, per CNN, "Nobody has heard from you in months, and apparently your family is looking for you." Wrote another user, "I don't know if you are okay."
The last apparent activity from Mangione's still-active account are repostings from June, one linking to a podcast episode about smart phones' effect on mental health.
Mangione underwent back surgery in 2022, according to Martin, who told CNN that Mangione texted him an X-ray image "with just giant screws going into his spine," and other friends. A photo fitting that description is atop the suspect's X account, which as of Dec. 10 had more than 342,000 followers.
"His spine was kind of misaligned,” Martin told the NY Times. "He said his lower vertebrae were almost like a half-inch off, and I think it pinched a nerve."
Martin said that, as far as he knew, Mangione left Hawaii in the summer of 2023. They remained in touch over text, Martin told the Times, and they made plans to connect, but Martin said he last heard from his friend on April 15 and subsequent texts inquiring how Mangione was doing went unanswered.
At his arraignment on the Pennsylvania charges Dec. 9, the judge asked Mangione whether he was in contact with his family.
"Until recently," the suspect replied, per the Times.
What sort of views did Luigi Mangione share online?
Mangione shared his take on the Unabomber's manifesto on GoodReads in January.
"It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies," Mangione wrote, per the Times. "But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out."
British writer Gurwinder Bhogal told NBC News in an email that Mangione reiterated his interest in the Unabomber's ideology to him in email correspondence between April and June, but communicated that he "disapproved" of Kaczynski's deadly actions.
"Overall, the impression I got of him, besides his curiosity and kindness," Bhogal wrote, "was a deep concern for the future of humanity, and a determination to improve himself and the world."
Pennsylvania Department of Corrections via AP
Mangione also "complained about how expensive healthcare in the US was," the writer continued, "and expressed envy at the UK’s nationalized health system."
Bhogal expressed his "bewilderment" at Mangione's arrest, telling NBC News, "He was so thoughtful and polite that he seemed like the last person I’d suspect of murdering someone."
In the document Mangione had with him when he was arrested—which, though there were several pages, comprised fewer than 300 words, according to law enforcement officials—the writer appeared to take sole responsibility for killing Thompson.
"To save you a lengthy investigation," the missive read, "I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone."
Officials have since said that it appears Mangione acted alone but they are not ruling out the possibility that others were involved.
Read on for all the details about the Brian Thompson murder investigation leading up to Mangione's arrest:
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