A new report from CNN, citing two law enforcement officials briefed on the matter, says that the fingerprints collected at the scene of the assassination of UnitedHealthcare’s CEO match those of suspect Luigi Mangione.
The report comes two days after Mangione was arrested and charged in connection to the murder of Brian Thompson, who was gunned down last Wednesday morning while leaving his Manhattan hotel.
Investigators say that the fingerprint match is the first forensic data they’ve seen that directly ties Mangione to the crime scene, CNN reported.
Authorities have been digging into Mangione’s past since he was arrested by police at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Monday.
The 26-year-old is a high school valedictorian and an Ivy League graduate, but in recent months, he has disappeared from view of his family. Reports have come out that he recently struggled with a painful back injury, which some have said could have served as motivation for the alleged attack.
Mangione is currently being held in Pennsylvania and fighting extradition to New York, where he has been charged with Thompson’s murder.
His lawyer, Thomas Dickey, has denied his involvement in the killing, saying he plans on pleading not guilty to the charges brought against him.
“I haven’t seen any evidence that they have the right guy,” Dickey told CNN’s “The Source.”
He doubled down on this during a press conference and other appearances on TV shows and on Audacy's KDKA, where he said Mangione will plead innocent. He also said he's handling incarceration as well as 'any young man could' and confirmed accounts that callers to his office are offering to pay Mangione's legal bills.
That bolstered the idea that some see this as a Robin Hood situation where a lone gunman struck a deadly blow against the greed of insurance companies. Police said Mangione was found with writings at the time of his arrest, some of which referenced a back injury he sustained in July 2023, New York Police Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told Fox News.
“Some of the writings that he had, he was discussing the difficulty of sustaining that injury,” Kenny said. “So, we’re looking into whether or not the insurance industry either denied a claim from him or didn’t help him out to the fullest extent.”
In New York, Mangione is facing one count of murder, two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, one count of second-degree possession of a forged document, and one count of third-degree criminal possession of a weapon, online court documents show.
Among the evidence outlined in the charging documents was surveillance footage that showed the fatal shooting of Thompson and the suspect wearing the same clothing that a man at a New York hostel was wearing; Mangione possessing a “black 3D-printed pistol and black silencer” at the time of his arrest; and police finding a fake ID on Mangione that matched the name used by the man at the hostel.