Luigi Mangione charged with murder as act of terrorism in UnitedHealthcare CEO killing

The 26-year-old Ivy League grad charged with murdering UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk this month has been indicted by a grand jury in the case, the district attorney's office announced Tuesday.

Luigi Mangione stands accused of first-degree murder, in furtherance of terrorism; second-degree murder, one count of which is charged as killing as an act of terrorism; criminal possession of a weapon and other crimes.

Mangione already was charged with murder in the Dec. 4 killing, but the terror allegation is new. Under New York law, such a charge can be brought when an alleged crime is “intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population, influence the policies of a unit of government by intimidation or coercion and affect the conduct of a unit of government by murder, assassination or kidnapping.”

In a press release, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg called the the alleged killing "brazen" and "pre-meditated." The DA added that Mangione could face up to life in prison without parole if convicted on the murder charges.

“This was a frightening, well-planned, targeted murder that was intended to cause shock and attention and intimidation,” Bragg said at a news conference Tuesday. “It occurred in one of the most bustling parts of our city, threatened the safety of local residents and tourists alike, commuters and businesspeople just starting out on their day.”

Mangione’s New York lawyer has not commented on the case.

Prosecutors are working to extradite Mangione from Pennsylvania, where he was arrested on unrelated weapons charges, to New York City to formally face charges in the 50-year-old health executive's death. A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Thursday.

A spokesperson for Gov. Kathy Hochul said the governor planned to issue a warrant for extradition to New York as soon as the indictment against Mangione was handed up. His lawyers had said their client would plead not guilty to charges in both Pennsylvania and New York. Mangione faces up to life in prison without parole if convicted of the New York charges.

Three lawyers visited Mangione in prison on Friday, including a new attorney on his case, Karen Friedman Agnifilo. She is a longtime veteran of the Manhattan District Attorney's Office. She will be representing Mangione on any charges that come from New York.

A spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections on Friday told Newsweek that Mangione was being held in a small cell and not in solitary confinement. Mangione is "not interacting with other inmates at this time" and "has taken every meal in his cell," she said. He has gotten mail, though.

A spokesperson says Mangione had received 33 emails and six pieces of mail as of Tuesday morning. She says he also received 153 deposit entries in his commissary account. According to the Inmate Handbook, inmates may order commissary items like toilet articles and snacks on a weekly basis.

Mangione was arraigned last Monday in Pennsylvania on two felony charges — forgery and carrying a firearm without a license — and three misdemeanors: tampering with records or identification, possessing instruments of crime and providing false identification to law enforcement -- none with any direct connection to the case in New York.

He has pleaded not guilty.

Police have detailed some of the evidence they said links Mangione to the scene of the shooting, including fingerprints and ballistic evidence.

Roughly a half hour before the shooting, video from a Starbucks location in midtown Manhattan showed the masked-up killer buying a bottle of water and a KIND bar. Police said five fingerprints on a water bottle and and two fingerprints on a KIND bar wrapper found near the scene of the shooting matched Mangione's.

The gun found on the suspect when he was arrested on Dec. 9 was sent to the NYPD, according to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. The department confirmed there was a ballistics-related match as well, with shell casings from the scene of the shooting matching those found in the weapon.

"We brought [the gun] to our forensics laboratory, where we were able to match that gun to the three discharge shell casings were recovered at the scene. So it was a ballistics match," NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told NBC New York in an exclusive interview Thursday.

Kenny said during that interview that there was "no indication" Mangione ever was a client of UnitedHealthcare, and that he may have targeted Thompson outside a hotel the morning of Dec. 4 simply due to the size of the company and because he knew there was a conference taking place at the hotel that day.

In his alleged writings, Mangione wrote about wanting to use a gun to target a CEO of a big corporation, like UnitedHeathcare, at a conference.

“What do you do? You wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents," writings inside a notebook believed to belong to him stated.

Between the writings and posts on social media he made about what Kenny called a "life-altering injury" that required screws being inserted into his spine, police were looking into what could point to a possible motive for the alleged shooting.

While police said they got some DNA recovered from a cellphone believed to be Mangione's, they won't be able to compare it to anything until he is extradited back to NYC and they can get a court-ordered sample. They also have not been able to get into the cellphone found in an alleyway, according to Kenny.

Mangione is next scheduled to appear in court on gun charges in Pennsylvania on Dec. 19.