San Francisco police recognized UnitedHealthcare CEO murder suspect Luigi Mangione from surveillance photos and contacted the FBI a full four days before his capture at a McDonald’s in Western Pennsylvania, according to a new report.
An officer with the Special Victims Unit at the San Francisco Police Department recognized Mr. Mangione after the suspect’s photos were released just a day after the gruesome slaying of Brian Thompson. SFPD officials had even reached out to federal investigators to say they may have identified the suspect, according to a report from the San Francisco Chronicle, which spoke with a pair of anonymous sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Mr. Mangione’s mother, Kathleen Mangione, reported her son missing to the SFPD on November 18. She said she had not seen or heard from him since July and told authorities he had been living and working in the city at the car-listings website TrueCar.
It was not immediately clear how the SFPD had reported the information to the Feds or if the agency ever received the tip. Spokespeople for the department and the FBI declined to comment when contacted by the Chronicle.
Mr. Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate from a prominent Maryland real estate family, was arrested Monday in the killing of Thompson, who headed one of America’s largest medical insurance companies.
He was arrested at Altoona, Pennsylvania after the McDonald’s customer recognized him and notified an employee, authorities said. Police at Altoona, about 233 miles west of New York City, were soon summoned.
They arrived to find Mr. Mangione sitting at a table in the back of the restaurant, wearing a blue medical mask and looking at a laptop, according to a Pennsylvania police criminal complaint.
He initially gave them a fake ID, but when an officer asked Mr. Mangione whether he’d been to New York recently, he “became quiet and started to shake,” the complaint says.