Handwritten Manifesto Cited by NYPD as Primary Evidence

Accused assassin of UHC CEO Brian Thompson carried document that is being regarded by police as akin to a confession.

As I noted in my post this morning—Did Luigi Mangione Want to Be Caught?—six days after he allegedly murdered UHC CEO Brian Thompson, Luigi Mangione dined in a McDonald’s 280 miles from the crime scene, wearing the same clothing he apparently wore on the day of the murder, with multiple incriminating objects still in his possession, including a 9 mm pistol and a handwritten manifesto the NYPD is regarding as akin to a confession.

At the time he was arrested in McDonald’s, he was wearing the same black jacket and blue surgical mask as the young man who was photographed getting into a taxi on the Upper West Side shortly after 7:00 a.m. on the morning Thompson was shot. However, while dining in McDonald’s, Mangione was also wearing a stocking cap, but he didn’t pull it down quite low enough to conceal his conspicuously bushy eyebrows. One wonders why he didn’t wear this stocking cap (pulled all the way down over his eyebrows) when he got into the cab. If he had done so, he might have evaded capture.

To my knowledge as of this writing, the police have not shared any photographs of the manifesto with the press. So far, it appears the police have only made verbal representations to the press that they found a 262-word manifesto in Mangione’s possession. The document purportedly states that healthcare companies “continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it … I do apologise for any strife or trauma but it had to be done. These parasites had it coming.”

Did the high school valedictorian and University of Pennsylvania graduate experience some kind of mental breakdown that resulted in him committing murder without taking the most elementary steps to dispose of evidence that would incriminate him?

Did he—by all accounts and intelligent and handsome 26-year-old with most of his life ahead of him—have no desire to remain free?

As was just reported in the New York Times:

In posts on a Reddit account, the man, Luigi Mangione, said back pain that had once been a minor issue in his life grew more extreme in 2022 after he went surfing, then grew worse again a few weeks later when he slipped on a piece of paper. He reported persistent problems, including pain when he sat down, twitching leg muscles, and numbness in his groin and bladder.

He shared details that friends have corroborated, writing that he had a spinal fusion surgery in July 2023. He wrote that within days he did not need pain meds and could sit, stand and walk just fine.

“The surgery wasn’t nearly as scary as I made it out to be in my head, and I knew it was the right decision within a week,” he wrote in one Reddit post. He went on to encourage others to consider such surgery, pointing to athletes who had done so. An X-ray that he posted on another social media account showed a spinal fusion.

The back pain was not his only struggle. He wrote at times about “brain fog” that had worsened during his college years, making studying more difficult. Doctors could not seem to figure out what was happening, he reported.

“It’s absolutely brutal to have such a life-halting issue,” he wrote.

He also posted on a page for people dealing with irritable bowel syndrome, saying that he had undergone some testing for the condition. He said the testing had been covered by Blue Cross Blue Shield — his only reference in the Reddit writings to insurance coverage.

After the back surgery, he returned to Hawaii, where he had previously been living, but by the spring of this year, he had ceased communications with most friends and family members. His family reached out to his friends in recent months in hopes of finding him.

I hope that the NYPD understands that a manifesto found in the young man’s possession should not be regarded as evidence unless it can be corroborated with other evidence that Mangione is the man who shot Brian Thompson.

I once investigated a case in which a confused and intoxicated young man confessed to murdering a young woman named Angelika Foeger in rural Tyrol, Austria. After he was released from prison, I met him in person and showed him evidence that exculpated him. I then implored him to tell me the whole truth about what happened on the day the young woman was murdered.

He told me that he desperately wanted to tell me the whole story, but felt that he wasn’t at liberty to do so. A few days later his sister called me and told me he had admitted himself into a psychiatric hospital and cut off all contact with everyone. She believed that someone with power had caught wind of the fact that he had met me in the back room of a rural restaurant, and had threatened him with a severe reprisal if he did not remain silent.