<\/p>\n
Luigi Mangione appears in Manhattan Criminal Court, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025, in New York. (Sarah Yenesel\/Pool Photo via AP)<\/p>\n
Sarah Yenesel\/AP<\/p>\n
Luigi Mangione appears in Manhattan Criminal Court, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025, in New York. (Curtis Means \/Pool Photo via AP)<\/p>\n
Curtis Means\/AP<\/p>\n
Luigi Mangione appears in Manhattan Criminal Court, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025, in New York. (Sarah Yenesel\/Pool Photo via AP)<\/p>\n
Sarah Yenesel\/AP<\/p>\n
Luigi Mangione appears in Manhattan Criminal Court, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025, in New York. (Curtis Means \/Pool Photo via AP)<\/p>\n
Curtis Means\/AP<\/p>\n
Luigi Mangione appears in Manhattan Criminal Court, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025, in New York. (Sarah Yenesel\/Pool Photo via AP)<\/p>\n
Sarah Yenesel\/AP<\/p>\n
NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 Moments after Luigi Mangione was put in handcuffs at a Pennsylvania McDonald\u2019s, a police officer searching his backpack found a loaded gun magazine wrapped in a pair of underwear.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The discovery, recounted in court Monday as Mangione fights to exclude evidence from his New York murder case, convinced police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, that he was the man wanted for killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan five days earlier.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s him, dude. It’s him, 100%,\u201d an officer was heard saying on body-worn camera video from Mangione\u2019s Dec. 9, 2024 arrest, punctuating the remark with expletives as the officer combing the bag, Christy Wasser, held up the magazine.<\/p>\n
Wasser, a 19-year Altoona police veteran, testified on the fourth day of a pretrial hearing as Mangione seeks to bar prosecutors from using the magazine and other evidence against him, including a 9 mm handgun and a notebook that were found during a subsequent bag search.<\/p>\n
Why the defense says the evidence shouldn’t be used at trial<\/p>\n
Mangione\u2019s lawyers argue the items should be excluded because police didn\u2019t have a search warrant and lacked the exigent circumstances to justify a warrantless search. Prosecutors contend the search was legal and that police eventually obtained a warrant.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
Wasser, testifying in full uniform, said Altoona police protocols require promptly searching a suspect\u2019s property at the time of an arrest, in part for dangerous items.<\/p>\n
On body-worn camera video played in court, Wasser was heard saying she wanted to check the bag for bombs before removing it from the McDonald\u2019s. Despite that concern, she acknowledged in her testimony Monday that police never cleared the restaurant of customers or employees.<\/p>\n
Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal murder charges. He appeared in good health on Monday, pumping his fist for photographers and chatting with his lawyers as testimony resumed.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
The hearing, which was postponed Friday because of Mangione\u2019s apparent illness, applies only to the state case. His lawyers are making a similar push to exclude the evidence from his federal case, where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.<\/p>\n
Why prosecutors say jurors should be able to see the evidence<\/p>\n
Prosecutors have said the handgun found in the backpack matches the firearm used in the killing and that writings in the notebook showed Mangione\u2019s disdain for health insurers and ideas about killing a CEO at an investor conference.<\/p>\n
Thompson, 50, was killed as he walked to a Manhattan hotel for his company\u2019s investor conference on Dec. 4, 2024. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind. Police say \u201cdelay,\u201d \u201cdeny\u201d and \u201cdepose\u201d were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
Mangione was arrested in Altoona, about 230 miles (about 370 kilometers) west of Manhattan, after police there received a 911 call about a McDonald\u2019s customer who appeared to resemble the suspect.<\/p>\n
Wasser said that prior to responding to the McDonald\u2019s she had seen some coverage of Thompson\u2019s killing on Fox News, including the surveillance video of the shooting and images of the suspected shooter.<\/p>\n
Wasser began searching his bag as officers took him into custody on initial charges of forgery and false identification, after he acknowledged giving them a bogus driving license, police said. The same fake name was used by the alleged gunman used at a Manhattan hostel days before the shooting.<\/p>\n
By then, a handcuffed Mangione had been informed of his right to remain silent \u2014 and invoked it \u2014 when asked if there was anything in the bag that officers should be concerned about.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
Wasser told another officer she wanted to check the bag for a bomb before leaving the McDonald\u2019s because she didn\u2019t want to repeat an incident in which another Altoona officer had inadvertently brought a bomb to the police station.<\/p>\n
What did police find in Mangione’s bag?<\/p>\n
\u201cDid you call the bomb squad?\u201d Mangione lawyer Karen Friedman Agnifilo asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo. I didn\u2019t find a bomb yet,\u201d Wasser responded.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
According to body-worn camera video, the first few items Wasser found were innocuous: a hoagie, a loaf of bread and a smaller bag containing a passport, cellphone and computer chip.<\/p>\n
Then she pulled out the underwear, unwrapping the gray pair to reveal the magazine.<\/p>\n
Satisfied there was no bomb, she suspended her search and placed some of the items back in the bag. She resumed her search at the police station, almost immediately finding the gun and silencer. Later, while cataloging everything in the bag in what’s known as an inventory search, she found the notebook.<\/p>\n
A Blair County, Pennsylvania, prosecutor testified that a judge later signed off on a search warrant for the bag, a few hours after the searches were completed. The warrant, she said, provided a legal mechanism for Altoona police to turn the evidence over to New York City detectives investigating Thompson\u2019s killing.<\/p>\n
Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n
As he has through the case, Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann described Thompson\u2019s killing as an \u201cexecution\u201d and referred to his notebook as a \u201cmanifesto\u201d \u2014 terms that Mangione\u2019s lawyers said were prejudicial and inappropriate.<\/p>\n
Judge Gregory Carro said the wording had \u201cno bearing\u201d on him, but warned Seidemann that he\u2019s \u201ccertainly not going to do that at trial\u201d when jurors are present.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luigi Mangione appears in Manhattan Criminal Court, Monday, Dec. 8, 2025, in New York. (Sarah Yenesel\/Pool Photo via…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":64550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[32753,6972,33766,33765,33869,6974,33764,75,84,83,9,24,63,833,834,3909,28378,3065,2336,31712,829,831,3300,27231],"class_list":["post-64793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-manhattan","tag-altoona","tag-brian-thompson","tag-gregory-carro","tag-joel-seidemann","tag-karen-friedman-agnifilo","tag-luigi-mangione","tag-mangione-unitedhealthcare-hearing-evidence","tag-manhattan","tag-manhattan-headlines","tag-manhattan-news","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-package-100024-ap-online","tag-package-100373-mc-complete-state-national","tag-pennsylvania","tag-product-30065-ap-minnesota-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30083-ap-new-york-city-news-no-weather","tag-product-30085-ap-new-york-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30097-ap-pennsylvania-state-news-no-weather","tag-product-30598-ap-national-news-report-a-wire","tag-product-31998-ap-online-national-news","tag-product-32538-ap-online-health-and-medical-news","tag-product-46986-ap-online-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/64550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}