A New York grand jury began reviewing evidence in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week, and the state’s governor says that’s the first step in preparing to extradite Luigi Mangione from Pennsylvania, where he was arrested earlier this week.
Mangione, 26, is fighting extradition to New York, where police have charged him with second-degree murder and other counts. Once an indictment is handed down, Governor Kathy Hochul can issue a governor’s warrant for the extradition which must then be signed by Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro.
“I will issue it, he will sign it,” Hochul told CBS News. “But the judge has already set a date for a hearing on Dec. 23. We’ll see whether that date has to hold. The governor and I both want him brought back to New York as soon as possible. So there will be some legal activities from the defense lawyer side, but I believe that the judge will say he’s going back to New York. So we’re expecting that to happen any day now.”
Once the warrant is signed in both states, Mangione will make an appearance to satisfy the court that he is the person listed on the warrant, either through fingerprints or DNA. Police have said that Mangione’s fingerprints matched those found on items found near the scene of the crime, but they have not said if they recovered DNA from those items.
Hochul said the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is working to make sure the indictment is “ironclad.”
“We expect that to be issued any day now, and at the second that happens, I’m issuing a warrant for extradition,” she said.
Police have not said specifically what evidence they’re presenting to the grand jury, although they did say that in addition to fingerprints, shell casings found at the scene matched the ghost gun Mangione was carrying when he was arrested on Monday when a McDonald’s employee in Altoona, Pennsylvania, thought he resembled widely publicized photos of Thompson’s alleged killer and called police.
He faces gun charges in Pennsylvania, where he was ordered held without bail. Blair County Judge David Consiglio scheduled a hearing for December 30 on Mangione’s petition of a writ of habeas corpus challenging Pennsylvania’s ability to prove he is the person New York wants to extradite, CNN reported. Consiglio will also hear another request for bail at that time.
A preliminary hearing on the Pennsylvania charges is set for December 23.
New York Police charged him with second-degree murder and other charges, but Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said that additional charges — including possibly first-degree murder — were expected, as CrimeOnline reported. It’s not clear if Bragg is seeking a first-degree murder charge from the grand jury.
While police have only hinted at a possible motive for the murder, Mangione’s writings in a spiral notebook and a 2-page “manifesto” make clear he was angry about the private U.S. health insurance system, correctly noting that healthcare in the United States is the most expensive in the world and that U.S. healthcare, in particular, is the among the country’s largest corporations.
In the notebook, the accused gunman wrote that he’d considered using a bomb but determined that it would be better to “wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention.”
“It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, The Associated Press reported on Thursday that Mangione was not a client of UnitedHealthcare, citing NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.
Additional reporting by KC Wildmoon.
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[Feature Photo: Luigi Mangione/Pennsylvania Department of Corrections and Brian Thompson/UnitedHealthcare]
