Blood is thicker than a viral surveillance image of a suspected killer grinning at a flirty clerk in the lobby of a New York City hostel.
Luigi Mangione, a past computer science student from an Ivy League school, is now a suspect in the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City. He comes from a well-known family in Maryland, with numerous cousins. However, none of his relatives seem to have identified him from his widely circulated image during a nationwide search that concluded on Monday.
NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told “Your World” host Neil Cavuto that of more than 200 tips police received in the case, none of them named Mangione.
This undated photo provided by UnitedHealth Group shows UnitedHealthcare chief executive officer Brian Thompson. (AP Photo/UnitedHealth Group)
“He was such a long shot in his friends’, family, and acquaintances’ minds, because none of them believed he was capable of such violence,” he said.
Josiah Ryan, a member of the Surfbreak co-op in Honolulu, Hawaii, where Mangione lived in 2022, said there had been no warning signs that he or other friends were aware of.
“He was just a great guy, you know?” he told Fox News Digital. “I think it’s easy in a circumstance like this to look back and find weird things about people…highlight them and say, ‘Hey, he was always a weirdo.’ And people aren’t doing that. There’s just nothing.”
The Mangione family owns golf courses and clubs across Maryland, a radio station and other properties, Fox News Digital has reported.
The family’s affluence allowed the suspected killer to attend Baltimore’s Gilman School, a private K-12 school with tuition costing around $40,000 per year. He graduated as valedictorian of his class in 2016 – then went on to the University of Pennsylvania. He graduated from the Ivy League school in 2020 with both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in computer science.
A photo obtained by Fox News Digital shows Luigi Mangione. (Obtained by Fox News Digital)
“He seemed like a smart kid, he was always doing the right thing, it seemed like,” another former classmate told Fox News Digital Monday. “Wasn’t crazy.”
Mangione had only a minor criminal record – a trespassing case in Honolulu from December 2023 for entering the Nuuanu Pali Lookout when it was closed. Authorities told Fox News Digital they don’t think a booking photo was taken in connection with the citation.
Mangione specifically mentioned UnitedHealthcare and the shareholder conference where Thompson was headed at the time of the shooting in his alleged manifesto, Kenny said. He’d also had allegedly written online about a back injury, and investigators were looking into whether the health insurance industry had denied a claim from him or withheld some kind of care.
Fox News’ Alexis McAdams and Anders Hagstrom contributed to this report.
