Luigi Mangione latest: Gun found on suspected killer matches casings found at UnitedHealthcare CEO’s murder

Many of the coins listed on crypto sites like pump.fun sport supportive names including “Free Luigi Mangione” and “Justice for Luigi Mangione.”

One such coin, simply named Luigi, launched on Monday, the same day Mangione was charged with murder in New York. It briefly achieved a market capitalization of more than $76 million dollars.

“When someone outside the crypto-bubble … encounters headlines like this, they view it as absolutely insanity,” Alex Beene, a financial literacy instructor for the University of Tennessee at Martin told Newsweek of the phenomenon.

The suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson went missing and cut off contact with family and friends last month after undergoing back surgery, it has emerged.

While the motive for the attack is still under investigation, new details are emerging about Mangione’s own health issues – and the impact they appear to have had on his life.

Brian Thompson was laid to rest at a private funeral service in his Minnesota hometown on Monday.

The 26-year-old suspect was taken into custody in Altoona and is now being held without bond in Pennsylvania as he faces charges in two states. Mangione appeared for a hearing on Tuesday in Pennsylvania, where he fought extradition to New York to face charges.

Ten days before the exec was shot dead outside a hotel in Midtown Manhattan on December 4, the suspected shooter was believed to have traveled to New York City on a Greyhound bus. Five days after the shooting, Mangione was in handcuffs.

What is a ghost gun? Since the rise of 3D printers in the early 2010s, these untraceable firearms have become more and more common in American criminal cases.

Yet because these weapons have no serial numbers, it’s basically impossible to know how many have been sold, how many are in circulation, and the number used in crimes.

Inside the notebook was a to-do list outlining tasks to be completed to carry out the killing, as well as notes that justified those plans, a source told the network.

Alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO gunman Luigi Mangione repeatedly spoke of his anger at the healthcare system on Reddit, according to archived post.

Mangione, who had a spinal fusion surgery in 2023, complained on the site that medical authorities didn’t take people’s pain seriously, The Washington Post reports.

“Tell them you are ‘unable to work’ / do your job,” he wrote in one post. “We live in a capitalist society. I’ve found that the medical industry responds to these key words far more urgently than you describing unbearable pain and how it’s impacting your quality of life.”

In another post, he told readers they could fake difficulty using their feet to convince doctors to give them back surgery.

“This is the absolute nuclear option, but there comes a point where it’s just ridiculous that people won’t operate on your broken spine,” he said.

The Luigi Mangione case keeps getting stranger.

The alleged gunman who shot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson has retained a lawyer, but the attorney, Thomas Dickey, has declined to say who hired him.

“Yeah, I’m not gonna comment,” he told CNN.

Nationwide fundraisers have sought to funnel funds for Mangione’s legal defense.

“The Daily Show” is mocking conservatives for criticizing Luigi Mangione for his alleged vigilante-style shooting of the UnitedHealthcare CEO, despite the same figures previously praising armed civilian Kyle Rittenhouse, who fatally shot two men during unrest after the police shooting of a Black man.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez struck a measured tone on Wednesday when asked about the recent shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, warning of the “chaos” of vigilante-style attacks but saying the shooting reflected widespread disatisfaction over the state of U.S. healthcare.

“Of course, we don’t want to see the chaos that vigilantism presents,” she told Business Insider on Wednesday. “And we also don’t want to see the extreme suffering that millions of Americans confront when your life changes overnight from a horrific diagnosis, and people are led to just some of the worst, not just health events, but the worst financial events of their and their family’s lives.”

The New York Democrat added that she personally didn’t have consistent healthcare until she was elected to Congress, and that shooting is a “wake up call” for people’s widespread suffering in the U.S. health system.

A person walking their dog in New York City’s Central Park on Tuesday found a bag of bullets in the bushes, but the ammo does not appear linked to the recent UnitedHealthcare shooting, according to Fox 5 New York, citing unnamed sources.

The bag initially piqued their interest because alleged gunman Luigi Mangione fled through police after the shooting last week, according to police.