And to completely out-touch and insult the intelligence of the American people and the life experience. As the investigation into the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson continues, authorities are zeroing in on... pieces of evidence that they say strongly implicates the suspect, 26-year-old Luigi Mangione.
From surveillance footage to a forged ID, a 3D printed firearm, we are going to take a look at the key evidence that led to Mangione's arrest and explore how it ties him to this deadly shooting. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law & Crime. I'm Jesse Weber.
The shocking murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare in Manhattan last Wednesday, just sent ripples through the corporate world, leading authorities on a cross-country manhunt. Thompson was gunned down outside of the Hilton Hotel in New York City, where he was approached from behind by a man who fired multiple shots at him before fleeing the scene. It was just absolutely shocking.
And after a brief investigation, authorities identified the suspect as Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old... Ivy League graduate from Maryland. Totally unexpected.
Now, as investigators piece together the evidence linking Mangione to the crime or allegedly linking him to the crime, there are key details that have been emerging that paint what is a very chilling portrait of the suspect, his motives, the series of events leading up to his arrest. And what we're going to do is break down for you the key pieces of evidence that point to Mangione's alleged involvement in Thompson's death. But before we dive into the evidence, I got to catch up to speed on the latest following Mangione's arrest. This is a rapidly developing situation. So after he was captured in Altoona, Pennsylvania, of all places, Mangione was officially charged in New York with murder, weapons possession charges and a forgery charge.
Now, I will tell you, these are just charges. He hasn't been indicted by a grand jury yet. That will happen at a later date.
Now, yesterday he appeared in court for it. extradition hearing out in Pennsylvania. The idea being how and when will he be brought back to New York to face those charges? And by the way, he's already facing firearms charges and related charges in Pennsylvania. There were a way for him to actually be caught, held in custody.
His bail has been denied. So he's facing charges in Pennsylvania. And we'll talk about that in a minute. But as he was being led into that courthouse by officers, he had some kind of outburst.
Now, we can't make out 100% of what he said in full, particularly at the very beginning, but he appears to have uttered, this is completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience. Don't really know what that means, but I will say at that hearing. Based on our reporter, Sierra Gillespie, apparently he also tried to say something in court but was shut down by his defense counsel. A bit of an odd take on that.
Maybe we'll get to explore that at another time. But at that hearing, Mangione was denied bail, meaning he will remain in the Blair County Jail, the prison, while awaiting extradition. Though he has 14 days, or his attorney has 14 days, to file a formal opposition to extradition, and then a hearing could be scheduled on that. So he appears to be wanting to fight extradition back to New York.
Meanwhile, prosecutors have exactly one month to seek a governor's warrant out of New York, which would expedite Mangione's return. It's believed that Governor Kathy Hochul is already working on this warrant and working with Manhattan District Attorney in order to get Mangione back there to face this murder charge. All right, so let's jump into what we know about this evidence.
And to help me break all this down, I want to bring back on somebody here on Sidebar who I haven't seen in quite some time. Professor of Law at Temple University Beasley School of Law, Professor Jules Epstein. Jules, it's been a minute. I know you've been very busy.
You're a very, very busy special man, but thank you for taking the time to come back here on Sidebar. We always appreciate it. Good seeing you.
Good to see you. I'm honored to be here. So real quick before we get into the evidence, if you have any just initial thoughts about the extradition issue.
It seems like Mangione is going to be contesting, or at least that's based on what his attorney has been suggesting. Where do you see that going? Real quick.
I see that as slowing the train down, but not stopping it. If I'm arrested in Pennsylvania, but I'm wanted in New York, New York's governor sends a document to the Pennsylvania governor saying, please send this person back. And unless the Pennsylvania governor says no, it goes to the courts.
He has a technical right, and it's an important right, to challenge, is there proof that there was a crime in New York? Is there proof that I'm likely the person? But it's not proof beyond a reasonable doubt. It's not a hard standard for the Pennsylvania prosecutor to meet.
So, absent something extraordinary, I imagine this fellow will be back in New York in the next month or two. Okay, good. Good to know that.
Okay, so now I want to jump into the evidence with you. This is what we really wanted to talk about. And I want to start by looking at what investigators obtained from and around the scene of the shooting. So, after spending hours reviewing this surveillance footage, and there's probably a lot more that we haven't seen yet.
Investigators landed on their first critical piece of evidence in this case, and that was surveillance footage from outside the Hilton Hotel. And it shows this man wearing a winter jacket, beanie, a medical mask. And because of this footage, investigators were then able to link the shooter to more surveillance footage that was uncovered. So there's this footage from a Starbucks nearby where the suspected shooter visited.
This was right near the hotel, still with his mask on. But then... There was a rare moment inside the hostel where the suspected shooter can be seen showing his face. This was huge. This was critical.
This was at the hostel that he apparently checked into a few days before Thanksgiving. And reports say that the shooter lowered his mask because he was interacting with or flirting with this hostile employee. That was critical, seeing his face there.
And when the NYPD released the surveillance images to the public, it seems like this slip up would end up being pivotal. And there was other footage too, like from a taxi cab and also from a bus depot. So Jules, I want to bring you on on this. So knowing that police were able to positively identify Mangione seemingly from this surveillance, how strong do you think that evidence is? So until a jury gets to look at it, right, look at the visual on the video and look at his face.
Sorry, there we go. And do the match. That's the jury's call. The closer he looks to that, the better.
The grainier or fuzzier those images are, the worse. But it doesn't have to be the home run in and of itself. In other words, let's suppose the face is blurry, but it's his race, his height, his eye color.
All of that is incredibly important circumstantial evidence that they can link together with other proof later. I'm still waiting to hear, you know, DNA results from your backpack, things like that. So incredibly important. And if they can show a continual or reasonably continual chain from video one to video two to oops, video three face exposed. and say this is that person legally if the jury looked and it said damn that's him and they have the video with him shooting that alone can be proof beyond a reasonable doubt hey everybody so i want to thank morgan and morgan for sponsoring this episode of sidebar always love talking about them now here is the incredible thing about morgan and morgan and one of the reasons why i like talking about them so much hey say something about our big wins uh That's supposed to come on camera.
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It hurt me a little bit. I'm probably actually going to have to hire you guys now, but that was well said. That was well said. That's one of the questions why you wonder why a killing like this would happen in a metropolitan city where there's surveillance cameras everywhere. Now I should tell you that there was this warrant, a felony arrest warrant from New York, where the detective who signed it states that the man who shot...
Thompson, in his belief, is the same man from the hostel leaving and checking in based on the surveillance footage. And I'm going to talk a little bit more about the McDonald's eyewitness identification based on that surveillance footage. But by the time police uncover this surveillance footage and send it out to the public, Mangione, he had already fled the scene first by bike, then by taxi, then by bus that took him out of the city.
That's what investigators seem to believe at this point. And there were some items that Mangione allegedly ditched along the way. So apparently this water bottle that was purchased at a Starbucks nearby, the energy bar wrapper, a burner phone or some type of phone, and a backpack full of Monopoly money that was actually found in Central Park. But what the reporting seems to suggest, Jules, is that did very little to help police because the reporting indicates that initial DNA and fingerprint analysis didn't turn up any matches to anyone in their databases, at least with respect to the phone and the water bottle and the candy wrapper.
So, A, talk to us about that, that there were no matches to their database. But B, maybe this is the more important question, now that he is in custody, can they better compare the forensics? Because I think under Pennsylvania law, they can take a swab of him while he's in custody, maybe match it up to these other items? Absolutely. So the.
DNA is incredibly powerful. DNA is only as good as who else's DNA is around to compare it to. I'm not, I think, currently in a DNA database.
So when I commit my first crime, which I will never do, right, DNA is not going to be helpful until I am caught. Once I am caught, whether you get it by a statute. by a warrant, or you just wait till I drink out of a cup and I put it down and then they grab the cup.
There you have a comparison. So if they collected this stuff carefully, they didn't risk contamination by, you know, not wearing gloves and stuff like that. They've preserved it and then they test his DNA and it is. corresponding.
In other words, at the multiple loci that they are the same. It's incredibly powerful evidence. And real quick, what would be a way defense attorneys can challenge that evidence?
So the basics of DNA science are so rock solid. It's hard to challenge that. It's sort of a meaningless challenge. Your other challenges are going to be...
A, contamination. B, which I hope no one would raise unless they had a good faith basis, is a plant. Someone phoned me dead.
C is, yeah, it's mine. I was in New York that day, but I'm not the shooter. Why, you know, if this is a carefully planned out shooting, why discard or seemingly discard all these items like this as you're fleeing the scene? And also the monopoly money found in the back. There are aspects of this crime when we didn't know who committed this or allegedly committed this that we thought, was this a professional hit?
And then there were other aspects of it that looked very, very weird and also amateurish. What do you think? So I've been engaged in criminal law and criminal defense, although now primarily teaching, for 45 years, three months and five days.
And six seconds and seven seconds and eight seconds. Thereabouts, thereabouts. Come nine o'clock this morning, it'll be complete. Even really smart people, and this person, if he's the one, certainly is well-educated.
Yes. Don't do things perfectly. People slip up all the time, there's a panic. Maybe the water bottle fell out of a pocket.
In other words, it's just a miss. Who knows? But I've learned not to expect perfection from people who commit crimes.
I think that's fair. I think that is a very fair assessment and consistent with what we've seen. But look, you know, the monopoly money is interesting because what do we also know? We know that maybe these items right now maybe don't tie so much back to Mangione yet, but they did pick up these bullet casings.
And it's been reported that the bullet casings have the words deny, defend, and depose on them. And those words are very eerily similar. to the 2010 book, Delay, Deny, Defend, why insurance companies don't pay claims and what you can do about it.
I mean, we're talking about the death of a CEO of one of the largest health insurance companies in the country. And, you know, it might point to a motive, maybe some sort of disagreement with the insurance companies. And we'll get to this manifesto in a minute.
But the bullet casings themselves, how significant are they? Well, they're, first of all, they're significant because they are the casings at the scene. So they are the casings for the bullets that were fired at this person.
It's just generally proof of caliber. It's proof of intent, multiple shots. We've got that from the location of the head.
The words on it are significant because most bullets don't hurt, right? Shells don't have words on it. So somebody was sending a message. It's not random.
So that's important, again, to the argument that this is intentional and premeditated. And again, if that links to him and his manifesto, it's just icing on the cake. It just ties it all together again.
Let's talk about this. And by the way, yes, he's charged with second degree murder in New York, which is the intentional killing of another human being. So with that in mind. And arguably one of the most chilling pieces of information or evidence in this case is that during the arrest, police find this what is a three-page handwritten document that is now being called a manifesto.
And it brings me back to this idea of motive, right? And we know that you don't have to prove motive, but it's really going to be helpful to tell a story here and try to understand what happened. So in this document, Mangione appeared to express what is a deep disdain for corporate America and the health insurance industry, which he described.
as parasites. And we've talked about it before. We've reported on snippets of what it said. This was as confirmed by law enforcement. But just yesterday, it appears that an independent journalist by the name of Ken Klippenstein released the full text.
And according to TMZ and Newsweek, law enforcement sources confirmed to them that this is the real text. So here are some of the highlights in it. First, if this is true, he starts off with an indication of who else may or may not be involved in this killing. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. Now, early on in the manhunt, there were all kinds of speculation that this was possibly a hitman conspiracy or that there had to have been more than one person involved in this.
But if this is believed to be an actual admission of the crime, then authorities know that Mangione allegedly acted solo. And then there's even something more significant in this letter because there's the criticism of the health care industry, particularly United. It says, as a reminder, the U.S. has the number one most expensive health care system in the world. Yet we rank roughly number 42 in life expectancy. United is the, and it's hard to make out that word, largest company in the U.S. by market cap.
The reality is these, again, can't make out the word, simply have gotten too powerful and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit. Now this document right here kind of offers a glimpse into a very troubling worldview, but perhaps maybe Mangione was planning something extreme here. And an internal NYPD report obtained by the New York Times revealed, what the department's intelligence and counterterrorism viewer thought about the letter, because as they said, the suspect appeared to view the targeted killing of the company's highest ranking representative as a symbolic takedown and a direct challenge to its alleged corruption and power games, asserting in his note that he is the first to face it with such brutal honesty.
And the report also added that the suspect likely views himself as a hero of sorts who has finally decided to act upon injustices. So Jules, turn it over to you now. What do you make of this?
And would this be admissible in court? So what I make of it first is just if you start with the very first sentence, I acted alone. Forget that it excludes others.
It includes him. I did this thing or I did something. Anything a defendant said or wrote, if it can be properly proved that they said it or they wrote it.
is admissible. It's admissible as what's called a statement of a party opponent. So the government simply has to prove, if they can, that it's his handwriting. or if it's type, he possessed it, right? So presumably, if I have a note in my wallet, I wrote it.
I've got notes here on my desk reminding me to do stuff. It's my words. They have to be able to show they're his words. And if he said, I didn't write it, you know, I picked it up.
Okay. Well, what are you doing walking around with this thing? First of all, no one has to believe that. But as long as they can show It came from him.
It's his words. It comes in. Yeah, it's incredibly, incredibly damaged. So so yeah, that it is it is. And then we have we can't forget that after Mangione takes off or allegedly takes off six days go by before McDonald's incident happens that there has been mixed reporting on this.
But some say an employee at the restaurant overheard customers pointing out Mangione talking that it might be the. suspect, again, based on the surveillance footage that was released. Others say it was reported directly to an employee. A man spoke with reporters Tuesday saying he was one of the people joking about it, whether it could be the shooter inside of the McDonald's. And then when Mangione was asked if he had been to New York recently, when police show up there and ask him, they say his body language was a very visual tell because he seemed to be very quiet, they say, and then started to shake.
And he didn't even really answer their question. Now, those initial impressions, Jules, I'll throw it to you. Again, potentially eyewitness identification based on that surveillance photo and also the impressions of officers. I think both are significant, right? Right.
So I'm not sure if anybody cares when we get to a trial that a customer thought, oh, that's the guy. That's sort of background. The officer's take on what you call the tell.
is what we call lay opinion testimony. So if I'm talking to you right now, and then I asked you a question, and all of a sudden you looked embarrassed or upset or freaked out, I'm allowed to say at question 12, you looked embarrassed or shaken or freaked out because normal people can draw those conclusions. So unless a judge said, People get freaked out for too many reasons. I find that ambiguous and therefore maybe misleading. The body reaction, someone looked away, someone did this, is again potentially useful information.
I don't think that there's any Fifth Amendment problem there because he didn't say, I don't want to answer. He just... look freaked. And so again, we're always looking for how people behave. There's some stereotypes.
Sometimes we take how someone behaves and it actually has nothing to do with guilt. Sure. In this case, it certainly seems that most judges would let this in without a hesitation.
And the fact that the... witnesses or however it went down in that McDonald's, looked at that surveillance footage of those photos and matched them up, shows you how important that piece of evidence is. Now, I am, I want to get into a few more pieces of evidence before we have to sign off because when police apprehended Mangione, they discovered this ghost gun and this ghost gun on him was consistent with the weapon that the shooter can be seen using in that surveillance footage from outside the Hilton Hotel.
And this type of weapon is very unique because it's usually sold, our understanding, as in a kit that you can build yourself. It doesn't have a serial number attached to it. It's not really traceable. How significant is that, Jules? And by the way, there was a silencer as well they found.
Every piece of evidence that looks like what's on the video is incredibly significant. What the police will be doing is getting their best ballistics experts to now test fire that gun. What they do is they take new bullets, put it in the gun, shoot them into a big jar of like jello or water so that nothing can mark the bullet other than the gun.
Because when a bullet travels down the barrel, it picks up markings. And then they're going to look at that. under a microscope and compare it to the markings on the bullet or bullets recovered at the scene or from the the CEO's body and then they're going to say different Or similar slash same.
Right. The reason I say similar slash same is within the ballistics community. They believe that they can say this bullet came from this gun and no other gun in the universe. Now, an independent journalist named Ken Klippenstein released this manifesto, which was later confirmed to be the.
actual writings of Mangione by law enforcement. They confirmed it. This is according to outlets like TMZ and Newsweek. Now, Klippenstein titled it Exclusive Luigi's Manifesto with the subheadline Read the Manifesto the Media Refused to Publish. Now, Klippenstein says in the post that this is the real one, not the forgery circulating online.
Now, to be clear, there are parts of this handwritten manifesto that are ineligible. They're kind of hard to make out. This is according to Klippenstein. But we want to go through this document and it says. The following to the feds.
I'll keep this short because I do respect what you do for our country to save you a lengthy investigation. I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial. Some elementary social engineering, a basic CAD, a lot of patients.
The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and to do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering, so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife or traumas, but it had to be done.
Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder, the U.S. has the number one most expensive health care system in the world, yet we rank roughly number 42 in life expectancy. United is the largest company in the U.S. by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but has our life expectancy?
No. The reality is these, and then a word is kind of indecipherable there, have simply gotten too powerful. And they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it. Obviously, the problem is more complex, but I do not have space.
And frankly, I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed examples Rosenthal Moore decades ago, and the problem simply remained. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently, I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty. So essentially, this could be interpreted as an admission.
It could potentially be used against him at trial. We actually dedicated a whole sidebar episode with Professor of Law Jules Epstein going over all the evidence in this case, particularly these writings, their potential value and admissibility at trial. So I encourage everybody to check that out.
It is interesting to note that he says he acted alone, which was a central question we all had before his arrest. Questions about how just a seemingly random member of the public might have had information about Thompson, where he was going, when he was going at that exact moment. Yes, we knew there was an investors conference, but how exactly he knew he'd be walking on that street at that time.
And also there was this question about, was it a contract killing? Was there a professional hit? He is saying he acted alone. So taking it as true. That's a definitely big insight that we wanted to have.
The New York Times reports that a spiral notebook, which was what he seemed to reference, was also found. And it included a to-do list. Now, CNN says the writing inside the notebook referred to the possibility of using a bomb to presumably kill Thompson. But the writer, again presuming this is Mangione, reportedly decided against it because it could, quote, kill innocents. And CNN also reports that.
The writer mused that it couldn't get any better than to, quote, kill the CEO at his own bean counting conference, seemingly in reference to the fact that Thompson was on his way to the company's annual investors conference when he was killed. By the way, talking bombs, it's being reported that there is one section there, this is being reported by CNN, where he talks about Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. Now, that might not be entirely surprising because according to his social media activity, more specifically this.
Goodreads account that has been reportedly linked to him, which has since been made private. It reportedly revealed that he had recently read and rated a manifesto written by Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, titled Industrial Society and Its Future. In that review, he praises the manifesto. saying, clearly written by a mathematics prodigy, it's simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.
There's also this internal police report that was obtained by the New York Times that also gives us a little more insight into this as well, because according to the Times, Mangione appeared to view the targeted killing of the company's highest ranking representative as a symbolic takedown and a direct challenge to its alleged corruption and power games, and that He vows himself as a hero of sorts, who has finally decided to act upon such injustices. And I want you to keep all this in mind. Why?
Because Mangione faced a Pennsylvania judge at the Blair County Courthouse on Tuesday. And as he was taken out of a police car to be led inside the courthouse, he turns to reporters and appears to shout, this is completely unjust and an insult to the intelligence of the American people. I'm completely unjust. And the insult to the intelligence of the American people and the life experience.
Not really sure what that was in reference to, but you know what's also weird? Cameras weren't allowed inside the courthouse, but our very own Sierra Gillespie was there. And she told us yesterday during her live hit that when she was in that courtroom, Mangione seemed to want to say something in open court or was trying to say something, but was shot down by his lawyer.
And speaking of that, by the way. During that quick hearing, it was revealed that Mangione plans to challenge the extradition from Pennsylvania to New York, where he is going to be facing a second-degree murder charge as well as weapon possession and forgery charges. Thomas Dickey, Mangione's attorney, says he wants a hearing on the extradition issue, and the judge ordered both sides to work on this, to work on some motions.
There's also going to be an effort, I believe, by the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, to file the appropriate paperwork so that Mangione can be extradited. Back to New York. Dickey actually spoke on Good Morning America on Wednesday morning and said, I have not been made aware of any evidence that links the gun that was found on his person to the crime.
So these are things that we're looking to see. The problem is, is that CNN reported later on in the day after his GMA appearance that law enforcement officials say fingerprints from the crime scene are now a positive match to Mangione. If that is true, that is a major piece of evidence in this case, because as CNN notes, this is the first big forensic link between Mangione and the shooting.
Now, before this happened, when questioned by reporters outside of the courthouse yesterday, Dickey reminded everyone that Mangione, like every other defendant, is innocent until proven guilty. If you're an American, you believe in the American criminal justice system, you have to presume him to be innocent, and none of us would want anything other than that. I was in no shoes and so I'm glad he had some support.
You just said a moment ago that that's what lawyers do when telling their clients to be quiet. What did you mean by that? No, I mean because I'm gonna do all the talking.
You have the right to remain silent and I believe in that right. We did not waive extradition, we're contesting extradition. We're gonna fight this along the rules and with the constitutional protections that my client has.
And that's what we're gonna do. So for now, Mangione was denied bail. He's going to be staying in a Pennsylvania jail.
And his attorney said he is pleading not guilty to the forgery and gun charges that he faces in Pennsylvania and that he doesn't have enough information about the charges in New York to comment. But Mangione, who grew up in Baltimore, was valedictorian at his elite high school. He attended the University of Pennsylvania for both bachelor's and master's degrees. He has been described by people who knew him as someone who was incredibly smart and kind. Pretty much everyone who has spoken to the media so far about his arrest has said that they were shocked that this came out of nowhere, that they never could imagine Mangione could do something so horrific and drastic.
In fact, one of his former roommates echoed those same feelings when we spoke with him on Tuesday, RJ Martin. He started this small co-living space in Hawaii during COVID and says that Mangione applied to be a member. He never once mentioned guns or violence.
He wasn't even into MMA. Wasn't really a big watcher of sports even. From all I believe, he had no prior knowledge in that field. And I think what makes this really hard is that, you know, he was one of the smartest, one of the most compassionate, one of the most present people I knew, such a great listener, had natural, you know, leadership by leading by example and because people knew he was genuine.
It's, I think part of what's so heartbreaking is knowing the potential he had. And to know that, you know, now that's lost, you know, he really. had everything going for him.
You know, people loved him. He had a great, well-paying job. He was one of those people that I think we would look forward, look towards to help make, in effect, change in the right direction to help others.
So I think that's part of what makes this so heartbreaking and so difficult to process. He really was among the best and the brightest that we have in his generation. We asked Martin about this alleged back injury that Mangione was reportedly dealing with that caused him a lot of pain.
In fact, Mangione had previously posted a photo of this spinal x-ray on his social media, but we weren't able to verify if that's actually Mangione's x-ray. But his friends said that he had become withdrawn in recent months. And if we're talking about him allegedly killing a health insurance CEO talking about a surgery, something to think about.
My understanding is it was either an injury or some sort of pre-existing condition that he'd had before he moved to Hawaii and that his spine had a misalignment, like forward and back. And I think he'd showed me the x-rays of that too. So his nervous cord was being pressed and believe his discs.
It was one of those interesting injuries where, you know, one day he could... perhaps be athletic and do something. And then the next day, just immobile and stuck in bed, you know, which, you know, thank God he had healthy days, right? After we spoke about the surgery and his recovery via text, I followed up, I think it was like March, April, May, each month, just a text message checking in saying, hey, bro, how you doing?
What's going on? And didn't hear from him. So the last you know, communication that I had from him was last spring, was this spring, excuse me. So, and I didn't take it as odd that he wasn't following up.
I just assumed maybe he had permanently moved back to the East Coast. Maybe he'd started a new job. You know, I just knew that when we were back in the same location, the same sphere, we'd meet up, our, you know, our friendship, we'd go to the park and do a workout or... you know, do something fun we enjoy doing together, you know, when he was back on Oahu. Again, trying to get some understanding of Mangione's background and if these allegations are true, his motivations.
Now, the attorneys in Mangione's Pennsylvania case, they were given deadlines to file their paperwork for the extradition hearing. Yet as investigators piece together the details of this crime, there are numerous unsettling questions that remain unanswered. What drove?
Mangione to allegedly murder a powerful corporate executive out of nowhere? And why, after such a what seems to be calculated attack, did he seemingly take such reckless steps in his escape? We're going to examine some of the more unanswered questions in this story.
But before we even get into this, just a quick refresher on the case. So on the morning of December 4th, UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, a well-known figure in the healthcare industry, was shot and killed outside of the New York Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan. And the suspect, later identified as Luigi Mangione, allegedly planned this attack, targeting Thompson in what appeared to be some sort of act of vengeance, maybe, against corporate America. On Monday, Mangione was apprehended in Altoona, Pennsylvania, after evading authorities for several days.
Surveillance footage revealed that he had traveled by bus from New York City to Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and then Altoona, This is according to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, and police found him in a McDonald's where he was arrested without any kind of incident. When taken into custody, Mangione was found with multiple forms of identification, this 3D printed gun or silencer, this ghost gun, and written admissions about the crime, or that's what it appears to be. At his first court appearance in Blair County, Pennsylvania, Mangione's attorney told reporters that he and his client planned to contest to fight the extradition to New York City. where he faces charges of second-degree murder, weapons possessions, and forgery charges.
Mangione was actually denied bail at that arraignment hearing in Pennsylvania because he's facing charges there, too, for having possession of the weapon and other related items. But he appeared at this extradition hearing to address his decision to fight it. Now, as these court proceedings continue, the investigation is continuing, too, into Mangione's motives, his background. Everybody's looking into it.
And there are these unanswered questions about, again, what drove this otherwise successful young man who had all these opportunities to allegedly commit such a brutal act of violence. So to help me break it down and go into all of these unanswered questions, I want to bring on special guest, retired NYPD detective Tom Verney to talk more about this. Tom, thanks so much for coming on.
Really appreciate it. Of course. Thank you for having me.
Okay, so I want to get into this, and I want to start with the victim in this case, because, you know, when you think about it, why Brian Thompson? And according to police reports and what we know from this apparent three-page handwritten document that was found with Mangione when he was arrested, the killing was really no spur-of-the-moment kind of attack. The NYPD has confirmed that this shooting was targeted, and there's this three-page document. It's being referred to as a manifesto, and it shows us...
Some of the what seems to be alleged planning that went into this because as part of it it says the spiral notebook if present has some straggling notes and to do lists that illuminate the gist of it. And in another part of the manifesto United Health Care is mentioned specifically where it says United is the and it says indecipherable we can't really make out that word but United is the largest company in the U.S. by market cap behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown but has our life expectancy? No. The reality is.
These, again, indecipherable words, have simply gotten too powerful. Now, before I toss this to you, Tom, I just want to mention one more thing. So NBC confirmed that Mangione was not a client of United. This came out yesterday, and that reporting was actually supported by the outlet The Hill because they're a senior NYPD detective reportedly revealed to them that Luigi Mangione, again, was never a client of United. So that theory that he may have been denied coverage by them in the past.
seems to be off the table. Tom, what's your take? Thanks for having me. So this is a very interesting case in that we clearly have someone here who was very methodical about what they were doing.
The act was also, it seems to be very clearly documented that it was premeditated as far as the murder is concerned. And he took great steps to conceal his identity, to evade the authorities for days and days and days, right? So You know, the fact that he shot and killed the head of United Healthcare, you know, the thought was, okay, well, he must have had a real bad grievance with them, right? He must have been covered by them, and then they weren't covering his back surgery or denied coverage, and then just sort of went out on this rampage against that specific company. But now it seems that we're finding out that that isn't necessarily the case, and that Brian Thompson just happened to be sort of the figurehead.
and the focus of Mr. Mangione's ire, right? And he represents an entire industry that many people have problems with. But to go to this extent of hunting down a CEO or someone from the C-suite of one of these insurance companies and killing them is not the answer. Clearly, we've identified that there are some issues with that industry that need to be addressed, but they are much...
better ways to go about solving those issues than just cold blooded murder on a New York street. I mean, do you think it's more symbolic or was it something about him personally? I mean, when you look at the shell casings, and we've talked about this before, the words that were apparently written on these shells casings matching a book that was critical of the healthcare industry.
It was also confirmed by authorities that his gun seems to match up to those shell casings at the scene. And then if you even go back to the manifesto, what what might be going on here, it says, frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. So if you look at that, it makes you wonder, was this just Thompson?
Was this to go after the heads of every health insurance company? And maybe it's just he started with Thompson. Maybe he was an easier target because he knew he'd be out in the open. But what do you think about that?
Was it specifically about Thompson? Maybe it was a larger kind of issue here. Yeah, exactly.
And that's, so that's what the investigators are currently still looking to find out, right? So they're pouring through all of this, you know, first we had some circumstantial evidence. Now we have actual physical evidence to go through. And this, you know, this investigation is not over. There's, you know, because this act occurred in the streets of New York City.
But as we know, you know, he traveled from on a bus that originated in Atlanta, came to New York City, committed this act. and disappeared for days, wound up in Pennsylvania. So we have a multi-state investigation.
So there are gobs and gobs of piles of evidence that need to be poured through to track where he started, how he got to New York City and did what he did, and then where he went and whatever he did after that until he was found in Altoona. You know, Brian Thompson, again, is a representation of someone from an industry. that has caused a number of people great grief right and angst so you know i think Mangione maybe thinks of himself as some sort of a hero or martyr, and there are a number of people on social media sort of painting him with that brush, as we've seen so far. We'll get to that, but leaving the shell casings with those words, that feels deliberate, right? Allegedly writing a manifesto, seemingly knowing someone would pick it up, whether it was authorities, and basically confessing to the crime, saying, you know, I'm letting you know I essentially did this, how I planned it, I acted alone.
That seems, again, not only deliberate, but maybe he wanted or expected that he was going to get caught. Am I looking at it the wrong way? Well, again, the messages on the shell casings were clearly meant to tell people that there was some sort of methodology as to why this particular person was shot.
And the fact that when you see the video, there's someone standing within a few feet of Mangione. He hasn't shoot at them. So the fact that there's someone standing there, there's someone sitting in a park to actually view off to his left.
And neither one of those people were in any immediate threat at the time, as he just only shot Brian Thompson and then left the scene. Showed that he wasn't an immediate public threat. He was targeting one specific person and then left the scene.
The bullet casings are showing us initially that there's some sort of meaning as to why this person was shot. Right. And then that goes to a larger issue as to, you know, what what the insurance district.
has been deemed as consistently and meaningfully denying people their claims. So to write those messages on the bullets themselves was certainly meant to make people aware, like, okay, I shot this guy. Here's some words to describe initially potentially why I shot him and who he represents or what he represents in America and what's causing people so much angst. And let me just couple that with one other thing. You talked about him not, or if it is him, not killing the bystander who was right there.
In these writings, there's a fact that, or consideration about using a bomb to potentially commit this crime, but was worried about killing innocents, that this was not about a mass casualty event. This was very targeted and deliberate. Now, there is this other key factor that we have to talk about that begs the question about potential more targets here, is the fake IDs.
So Mangione... He was found with these IDs when he was arrested. And according to the police report, when he checked into the hostel in Manhattan a few days before the murder, he apparently handed over a fake New Jersey ID with the name Mark Rosario on it.
And this was the same ID that he presented at the time of his arrest when he was confronted by officers in the McDonald's. And according to police, they found multiple fake IDs in his bag and a passport. So why do you think... He had all of these IDs.
What was he planning to use them for, Tom? Well, there's a good possibility he was planning to use them to possibly commit additional murders against other C-suite members and other insurance companies. That seems to be the, you know, the thought pattern here is that if he had gotten away with the killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, then what was to stop him from continuing that with other people either in that way? particular company or other companies. And that's what makes him a public threat too, right?
Because at some point he clearly has snapped, right? In order for him to go and commit this type of crime, especially since he's never been apparently arrested before. So to suddenly go from zero to a hundred, it has to be something that snapped within him to make him feel like that was the only option was to manufacture a ghost gun, then go out and target someone from a specific insurance company. So that would lead us to believe that there were other potential targets that he might want to go after. And when you're attempting to shoot at someone, if you happen to miss and you hit the nine-year-old on the playground or the grandmother sitting on a park bench, that now leaves the rest of us open for danger.
So it was important to get a hold of this guy as quickly as possible because while his theory was, well, I don't want to really hurt the general public, I want to target my— you know my my victim is specific to the health care industry there's always that possibility that something goes wrong and someone else gets hurt or killed you know another big question is if he was acting alone so and i want to explore this a little bit did someone help him at all because we know from his writings and what was told to police in these writings to save you a lengthy investigation i state plainly that i wasn't working with anyone but you know Is that true? There are some facts from the timeline of Mangione's whereabouts that maybe could suggest otherwise, because according to this timeline that was put together by CNN at around 6.30 a.m. on the morning of the shooting, so this is about 14, 15 minutes before the shooting, there is surveillance footage that appears to show him on the phone.
And who was he on the phone with? Did that person know what he was doing or was about to do? And then sometime after this call, police say he positioned himself where he was lying in wait outside the hotel as Thompson was walking to an investors meeting at the Hilton Hotel.
This is a big one. How in the world did Mangione, if he did this, know that Brian Thompson would be walking by the hotel at that exact time? Sure, he knew he was going to investors conference.
How do you know he's going early and taking that route? Did someone tell him he would be there? Tom, this is one of my main questions about this. The phone call and how he knew he was going to be walking on that street. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, it stands to reason that there's a possibility that someone else could have known about what he was doing or could have been helping him in the commission of this act. And that's something that investigators are absolutely looking into. They're going to be combing all through his phone, all through his phone records.
pinging his signal to see where he was and who he was talking to. And if they have not already started speaking to those people, I'm sure that they will because they want to find out. Again, you want to bring this case to court.
You want to make sure that you have as much evidence as possible and that that chain of evidence has been secured and that all these dots are connected, every T has been crossed and every I has been dotted. In order to allow a prosecutor, to successfully prosecute this case where there is no doubt, right? So this case has to be prosecuted beyond a reasonable doubt that he is the one that committed this murder. And if there are other parties involved, to make sure that we can now go out and get them and make them as responsible as well. So in my opinion, is it possible that he could have been acting with others?
I think it is possible. All the evidence seems to point right now to him specifically. So unless other evidence leads us to believe that there are one or two other parties involved, then they will certainly track down those leads as they become available. The other thing to mention, too, is, you know, his parents had, you know, had listed him or reported him as missing, you know, a while ago.
You know, but then when his picture was being splashed all over the media over the last week or so by the media, it's interesting to me that, you know, his parents didn't. you know notice who that was and and go to the authorities right so there is some sort of question as to whether or not at some point even if his parents didn't know what he was going to do that day at some point did they know soon after once his picture well became present you know explore that because you can make the argument was it entirely clear it was him in that photo there are people i think even online who are not entirely sure that the photos from the surveillance match up to mangioni but look i think the other the other thing to think about is Could, from publicly available information, could he know that where Brian Thompson was staying, what time he was going to arrive at the hotel? Did he just, I mean, he left the hostel at a certain point, went to the Starbucks, arrived. You couldn't get at a more perfect time to find him.
It wasn't like he waited all night outside of the Hilton Hotel and just was looking at every area to see where Brian Thompson would be. That hotel has a few different entrances. And so it just, it's very curious and it makes me wonder, you know, maybe he was on the phone. I don't know who the phone call was with, but maybe he was calling a hotel to see if Brian Thompson had arrived yet.
I don't know, but I'm just saying, do you think it's possible from publicly available information that he would be able to track down a CEO's whereabouts? Well, it all depends on how much information Brian Thompson himself puts out on social media. So if the company was advertising that, hey, at this event.
we're going to have our CEO, Brian Thompson, speaking at such and such time, then at least you know he's going to be within that area during a certain period of time that day, either coming and going, right? And now if I haven't seen information related to Brian Thompson and whatever social media he has, so if he himself put out something along the lines of, hey, I'm going to be in New York or I can't wait to go speak at the Hilton Hotel at this conference or whatever it may be, you know, maybe it's possible that... Mangione was following him on social media.
You know, people have to be careful about what they post sometimes, right, and putting their lives out there for people to see, especially if you are a CEO of a company where you've received threats. I would recommend to not be doing that and be very selective as to what you're putting out on social media. And maybe now after this incident, considering having some personal protection, especially if you're going to be in a very public. setting. Let me ask you, this is another big question.
There are aspects of this that seem so meticulous, so pre-planned. Almost an element of criminal sophistication, but then there's not. Like, so for example, allegedly checking into a hostel that allows you to pay in cash, using a fake ID to check into the hostel, coming to the city by bus to avoid detection, possibly, you know, from means of business as opposed to going through an airplane or airport, constructing this ghost gun that can't be traced, using a silencer on it to avoid detection in the killing, having a Faraday bag that can block a cell signal. You would think all of this suggests. criminal sophistication.
But then the escape part of this is what doesn't appear sophisticated, because armed with multiple forms of ID, a fake New Jersey's driver's license, a 3D printed weapon, around $10,000 in cash, Mangione, I mean, a fair assessment would be he was prepared for anything. Yet instead of making a beeline for a foreign country, maybe with no extradition treaty, although I don't know if it would have worked, he takes this bus to Philadelphia, then travels to Pittsburgh. Then he makes his way to Altoona. He's ultimately arrested in the McDonald's, a very public place. And he was found with his passport on him.
So, again, it's a very seems like a convoluted route. But also trying to cover his tracks. You know, and one of the things I don't understand is he allowed himself to be captured on so many cameras in New York City.
The Starbucks before the killing. Unmasked at the hospital. I mean, assuming it's him. Unmasked at the hospital.
Possibly flirting with a worker there. That's why he removed the mask. leaves behind a water bottle, a candy bar or power bar wrapper that now they say his fingerprints are on, leaves behind a phone.
Again, as he's running from the scene, I don't understand how the two things don't coincide. I don't quite understand that. Yeah. So there was an early debate occurring as to whether or not he was a professional hitman or just a... a disgruntled employee or someone with a grudge against the company or a grudge against Brian Thompson specifically.
Yeah. And I didn't buy into the hitman theory early on because if this was a sort of professional, you wouldn't have probably seen him come onto the scene or leave the scene and they wouldn't have left behind a treasure trove of evidence. So that led me to believe that this was someone with a grudge or some deep-seated issues against the company or Brian Thompson specifically.
And you're right. He, you know, he looked, he's a very smart kid. And I say kid because he's young enough to be my kid.
Right. So he's, you know, he's smart. We know he's college educated, you know, had a good successful job.
And, and, you know, so that's, it's not his intelligence that's in question here. It's the, you know, the pre-planning and the actual act. And then the now covering his tracks is where that third part is where he sort of faltered. And I think the best laid plans that criminals have sometimes, you know, don't go the way that they expect.
Especially he must have seen at some point, either in a newspaper or, you know, a news show or social media, somewhere on the Internet, his picture being plastered all over the place. So at some point he knew the jig was up, that there was enough of his identification visible enough where people could, you know. see him facially and say, hey, that kind of looks like that guy from New York, which is what happened in Altoona, right?
So he knew, I think, that there was a certain period of time where he was, that they might catch up with him. And so whatever his original plan was, he had to now kind of shift gears maybe and try to figure out a plan B or a plan C or a plan D, because he must have felt the authorities hot on his heels, trying to piece together these different pieces of the puzzle. Which initially, you know, a lot of people were concerned, oh, well, you know, 24 hours have passed, 48 hours have passed, 72 hours have passed, and we still don't know who this guy is or where he is.
And I was trying to sort of, you know, advise people that these investigations don't get solved in 43 minutes without the commercials like on TV. These investigations take a long time. There were mounds of video surveillance to go through.
You could sit in front of a video, you know, camera and review that tape. eight or 10 hours to come up with five seconds of useful videos. It's a very daunting task.
And I think it's interesting. He puts himself in a public place. He was eating a hash brown at McDonald's, allegedly looking at a laptop. And you wonder, why didn't he just get the food and take off?
Maybe he needed the Wi-Fi for the laptop. What was he looking on the laptop? The McDonald's element is a bit of a question, too.
Yeah. Well, I heard the McRib is back. So I can imagine. the lure to want to to be at a mcdonald's but uh yeah yeah and again that could be very well the reason why he was there if you want to plug into their wife they'll be able to see what's on the laptop or what he was looking at Yeah, I mean, they'll get a subpoena to go into his laptop. Well, they have to get a subpoena to do that anyway, to get into his phone.
There's all sorts of legal proceedings that they have to, you know. And what's funny is, you know, detectives, investigators have to jump through all kinds of hoops to be able to piece this together legally. And, you know, well, criminals don't have to jump through any hoops.
So, you know, and that's why they want to make sure, since it's such a high-profile case, that they want to not only collect as much evidence as possible and extinguish any. potential external threats that may be against other people and make sure that if there are other parties involved that they can get a hold of them first before someone else is being threatened right and then you know just put this whole puzzle together and and package it up nice for the da and get it in front of a jury and look at the time of this recording we still don't know why he was in Altoona so hopefully that part is explained as well i do want to go into the gun Okay, so the gun is really interesting. So the NYPD has confirmed that at least part of that was made using a 3D printer.
Because of certain indentations, the design could be connected directly back to this free-to-download design. And a designer who contributed to that pattern told the New York Times that he saw photos of the gun after the shooting and immediately recognized that design. And the New York Times has also reported that the bottom half of the gun was 3D printed, while it appears the top of it. which includes the barrel, the slide, as well as the magazine and the ammunition, they were bought at a store.
So court records also reportedly indicated that the silencer, also known as a suppressor, was also 3D printed. And whether Mangione made the 3D printed parts himself or he bought them from someone else, it remains unclear. But the gun, there's a lot of questions surrounding that gun too, right, Tom? Yeah.
Yeah, and that's, so what's interesting about that, well, first of all, this, These ghost guns are becoming a real problem in our society. Guns in general are a problem in our society. There are more guns in the streets than there are people in the United States. And so the fact that you can now download these specs and sort of print your own weapon that has no serial numbers and is virtually untraceable is frightening. And it's a real problem for law enforcement.
And, you know, that could explain the reason. why there seemed to be some sort of malfunction when he was using the weapon. If you were to buy a 90-millimeter gun from a gun shop, as I have, and I have 90 millimeters from my time in the police department, so even with a fully constructed weapon by an authorized weapon maker, you sometimes could have malfunctions, right?
So now when you have a weapon that's sort of a mishmash of parts of a real weapon versus parts of a weapon from a 3D printer and another silencer or suppressor that may or may not be made for that specific weapon or sort of fits but doesn't really. That's going to cause these weapons to malfunction even more so. And that's what we kind of see on the video that he shoots Brian Thompson, but then there's some sort of a jam.
He's trying to clear the jam. He's certainly familiar enough with the weapon to be able to do that. and continue shooting.
So there was some preparation put into that and having the knowledge of how to work that weapon. And even with the way that he's shooting is he's sort of standing in a shooting stance or what we would call a combat stance. So either he received some sort of instruction on how to fire that weapon, or he watched some videos on the proper way to fire a weapon where you would be more accurate than some of these guys in the streets with the sort of firing sideways. you know gang shootings and whatnot they missed a person that they're trying to hit and they hit somebody else so you know this this whole thing with the ghost gun is is pretty fascinating as far as how he was able to put it together where he got the parts yeah or the means or the method to do that and that's that's something investigators are also in the midst of trying to piece together real quick is that going to be very tough for them to get an answer because it's again it's this ghost gun it's not easily traced you think it's they're going to be able to have answers to those questions Well, I sure hope so. I mean, it would certainly answer a lot of questions and theories that people have as to how he was able to obtain this specific weapon.
I want to move on to the family because we mentioned that before. And look, you're talking about a guy who grew up in apparently this affluent, well-connected family in Towson, Maryland. Mangione apparently had all the trappings of success.
He was a valedictorian, highly educated data engineer, part of this prominent local family. that was involved in the community and charitable works. I mean, I'm talking a family that was very well known, has a history including owning country clubs and even a radio station.
And yet, despite all of this... He had apparently lost touch with his family and some friends in the months leading up to his arrest. This law enforcement official told CNN that Mangione hadn't spoken to his mother since the summer.
And the NYPD says that she reported him missing on November 18th. So this is about, what, two weeks before Thompson was killed? And here's what's a bit strange as well.
According to what a law enforcement official told CNN, Mangione's mom told the San Francisco Police Department that she had no reason to believe that her son... was a danger to himself with others, but, you know, she hadn't heard from him in months. And also, she'd called his phone repeatedly, apparently, and he wasn't picking up.
And the voicemail was full. So why did she believe he wasn't in danger? And why was she contacting the San Francisco Police Department?
What we know is she had contacted them, according to CNN, because she believed or knew her son had been living there. And, you know, Tom, those are all questions, too, but also... As you mentioned, the surveillance photos came out.
And you have to wonder, did any of his family members suspect he could allegedly be involved in this? Could they have known about this growing discontent with the world of corporate America? Were they completely blindsided? Look, I'll say to you, it wasn't entirely clear who the person was on the photos, but it seems those photos actually helped identify him at the McDonald's.
So when it circulates the questions about what the family knew and the fact that he why he did this and they seem to be a close family and they lost touch with him. What are the answers to these questions? Yeah, I think it's look, it's entirely possible that the the family did lose touch with him and didn't know what his plans were.
You know, filing a missing missing persons report. Generally, one of the first things you want to know is, you know, does this person, whoever you're reporting as being missing. Do they have any psychological issues or have they been suicidal?
Are they known to use drugs or alcohol? Are there any prescription drugs that may be for mental illness of some kind that they're maybe currently not taking? So there's a lot of questions that go into that just to kind of paint a better picture as to who they're looking for and where we might find them.
Right. So, you know, with. with this young man. You know, he disappeared apparently about six months ago and, you know, went right off the grid where, you know, people weren't able to find him, which is odd. And then to suddenly, you know, appear on the news as a potential suspect in this murder in broad daylight in Manhattan, you know, that had to be jarring for the family.
I kind of feel, you know, look, I've been involved in a lot of cases where, honestly, where someone gets arrested. And then the family members, particularly the parents of a young person, have no idea that what they were involved in legitimately. And it just stunned and then shocked and then saddened by the fact that their child got involved in something of this nature. So I think that's entirely possible.
Once Mangione's picture was put out there all over the place, and now they're getting tips from people all over. saying, oh, I think I saw someone that fit that description or someone that looks like him. You know, once I'm sure his parents, just like the rest of us, were watching this unfold and they see this picture, you know, and I kept putting it out there on some of these other shows that I was on.
I said, look, if you someone must know somebody that's been missing for at least two weeks and might have had some sort of a medical issue where they have a problem with their insurance company or with the insurance industry where they may have had a claim denied. or kind of go along with that sort of methodology that insurance companies are the devil and something needs to be done about them. Once you piece together all of those things and then you see the facial picture, it was only a matter of time before someone said, yeah, wait, I know this guy that had a problem.
He was in pain. He talked about, I want to go kill some of these guys. And then you look at the picture, it narrows it down pretty quickly, right?
So the parents must have seen the picture. you know uh and but they were not the ones to call the authorities and say you know we haven't seen our son in months and he had back surgery i know he was in a lot of pain and anything else that may have connected that to him it kind of laid quiet right so it was it was you know some random person from uh from altoona and mcdonald's that kind of let authorities know that hey i think this might be the guy you're looking for They might have had no idea that he was leaning this way. And I'll tell you, in the family's official statement that was issued by the family spokesperson and cousin, Nino Mangione, they expressed shock. They didn't indicate that they knew anything ahead of time. And they also offered no details about any of Mangione's recent life struggles, simply saying, we only know what we have read in the media.
Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi's arrest. We offer our prayers to the family and Brian Thompson. We ask people to pray for all involved. And just to put a bow on this, I mean, again, we're asking why this guy, who was well-educated, he was going to be successful in life, I mean, intelligent guy, was it the idea of he had spinal surgery, he was in pain, he...
based on what appears to be alleged activity online, was leaning towards more ideological leanings, more extreme leanings, actually was seeming in support of a manifesto written by the Unabomber. And there seemed to be a distancing, though, from his family and friends. So it's still that's the main question about the why. And, Tom, do you think we'll ever really know the why behind this? Well, I mean, unless unless Mangione.
Decides to confess and then explain himself. You know, the why isn't necessarily needed for this conviction. There's enough, you know, certainly so far, enough physical evidence connecting him to it.
Just, you know, between the fingerprints, you know, the bullet, the bullets matching the gun or the casings matching the gun. You know, the videotape, the manifesto. So there's a growing, growing mountain of evidence against him already.
And, you know, and I know that defense attorneys that I've spoken to are clearly, you know, saying, you know, that there's it would be extremely difficult to try to, you know, defend him in court with the amount of evidence that's already been presented. So, you know, the why is it would be nice for all of us to sort of get that perspective specifically as to why he did it. But when you piece together what we already know.
It's someone who has clearly at some point snapped and then made it very clear that he was going to target someone from this industry. And Brian Thompson happened to be the unfortunate soul that he went after. Well, we'll continue to follow it.
We'll continue to try to get more answers to these unsolved questions that we have. But Tom Verney, thanks so much for coming on. Really appreciate it.
And thank you for your service to the city. Really appreciate that as well. Of course.
Thank you. All right, everybody, that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar. Thank you so much for joining us.
And as always, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time.