Police in San Francisco identified UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s alleged killer, Luigi Mangione, and alerted the FBI four days before his high-profile arrest, a new report says.
An officer tipped off the feds after recognizing the 26-year-old’s face in surveillance images put out by the NYPD after Thompson was gunned down last week, sources told the San Francisco Chronicle.
Mangione’s face was known to cops in California because he’d been reported missing by his family just weeks earlier on Nov. 18, the sources added.
When Mangione was eventually nabbed at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s after a five-day manhunt on Monday, authorities had said the alleged assassin identity wasn’t on their radar.
It wasn’t immediately clear if the FBI ever received the tip from cops, or if they acted on it.
The details emerged as investigators have been scrambling to piece together a motive for the cold-blooded killing – including whether a back injury that Mangione suffered in July last year had fueled an alleged vendetta against the medical industry.
Cops are scrutinizing photos on Mangione’s social media that featured X-ray images of a person’s back, as well as a three-page manifesto-type document that included raging remarks about “parasitic” health insurance companies, an NYPD official said.
“He posted X-rays of numerous screws being inserted into his spine — and [in] some of the writings, he was discussing the difficulty of sustaining that injury,” the official said.
“As far as motive, it looks like he had animus toward the healthcare industry.”
Mangione remains jailed without bail in Pennsylvania on gun and forgery charges.
Manhattan prosecutors are working to bring him to New York to face a murder charge in the CEO’s death.
[
]