Luigi Mangione’s Mom Told Cops ‘Might Be Something She Could See Him Doing’

Joseph Kenny, NYPD chief of detectives, disclosed the mother’s alleged comment at a news conference announcing Mangione’s indictment in the Dec. 4 killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.

Mangione, who was captured at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s on Dec. 9, has been charged with murder as an act of terrorism, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said. His office is working to bring Mangione to a New York courtroom from a Pennsylvania jail.

Mangione already had been charged with murder. But Bragg added that Thompson’s early morning slaying outside a midtown Manhattan hotel “was a killing that was intended to evoke terror. And we’ve seen that reaction.”

At the news conference, Kenny was asked about some of the tips that police received and steps officers took to run them down.

He said Mangione’s mother, Kathleen Mangione, had filed a missing persons report on her son on Nov. 18 in San Francisco.

New York police officers embedded within an FBI task force then got the tip that the missing person in San Francisco, Mangione, might be their suspect and called his mother.

According to the NYPD’s Kenny, a San Francisco police sergeant working on the missing case saw the photo of Mangione and reached out to the FBI’s San Francisco field office “and said hey, basically, ‘I’m working on a missing case. I saw the photograph that was distributed by the NYPD, there bears a resemblance.’ That tip was forwarded to us close to 45 hours after the incident took place.”

“It was one of four tips that they had received that day, and they were vetting it,” Kenny told reporters. “They had a conversation where she didn’t indicate that it was her son in the photograph, but she said it might be something that she could see him doing.”

The information was going to be passed along to New York detectives assigned to the case the next morning, Kenny said. “But fortunately, we apprehended him before we could act on that.”

Mangione’s mother could not immediately be reached for comment on Kenny’s account.

Nino Mangione, a cousin of Luigi and a Maryland state delegate who issued an initial joint statement for the family, did not respond to a message on a number listed to him.

USA TODAY also has reached out to Mangione’s New York lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo.

Hours after Mangione’s arrest, his family released a statement saying they were “shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest” and offered “our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved.”