Federal prosecutors in Manhattan on Thursday leveled four charges against the suspect in the fatal shooting of UnitedHealthcare’s chief executive, including a count of murder that could bring the death penalty.
The federal charges also include two stalking counts and a firearms offense. They come two days after the office of the Manhattan district attorney filed state murder and terror charges against the suspect, Luigi Mangione, 26, in the killing of the executive, Brian Thompson. Mr. Thompson, 50, was gunned down on a Manhattan sidewalk this month.
Mr. Mangione was brought back to the city on Thursday after an extradition hearing in Pennsylvania, shackled and escorted by a phalanx of law enforcement officers. Mayor Eric Adams and top police officials joined the dramatic tableau.
The federal complaint accuses Mr. Mangione of traveling across state lines — from Atlanta to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York, where he arrived shortly after 10 p.m. on Nov. 24 — to stalk and ultimately kill Mr. Thompson, which would give the federal government jurisdiction to prosecute him.
Mr. Mangione was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday afternoon before a federal magistrate judge in Manhattan. Efforts to reach his defense lawyer, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, were unsuccessful. She said Wednesday night in a statement that the Southern District of New York’s involvement in the case raised troubling issues.
“The federal government’s reported decision to pile on top of an already overcharged first-degree murder and state terror case is highly unusual and raises serious constitutional and statutory double jeopardy concerns,” the statement said. “We are ready to fight these charges in whatever court they are brought.”
The highest penalty Mr. Mangione could face if convicted in state court would be life in prison without parole. A spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, said on Wednesday that the state case would proceed in parallel with any federal prosecution.
The new federal charges came just over two weeks after the predawn killing of Mr. Thompson on Dec. 4.
Surveillance footage showed a gunman approaching Mr. Thompson from behind outside a Hilton hotel in Midtown Manhattan, lifting a handgun fitted with a suppressor and firing at him several times before fleeing.
The authorities have said the suspect then fled uptown on an e-bike and soon left New York.
The complaint includes images of what it says was the shooter traveling to and from the scene of the killing in the early morning. One image shows him at about 5:35 a.m., walking while wearing a gray backpack; in another, he is riding an e-bike down Central Park West to a location near the Hilton in Midtown.
Other images in the complaint show him after the killing, which occurred around 6:45 a.m. One shows the shooter, after he fled on foot to West 55th Street and mounted an e-bike, riding toward Central Park. Another shows him leaving the park near West 77th Street and Central Park West, riding north. In that image, he is no longer carrying the gray backpack.
Mr. Mangione was arrested on Dec. 9 in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., as he was eating hash browns and looking at his laptop. A fellow customer had told a friend that he resembled the person in photos that the police had shared widely, and an employee, overhearing the conversation, called the police
On Thursday, Mr. Mangione appeared at the courthouse in Hollidaysburg, Pa., arriving handcuffed and clad an orange jail jumpsuit. He gave brief answers to say that he understood the proceeding and that he was agreeing to be extradited. He conferred extensively with his Pennsylvania lawyer, Thomas Dickey, furrowing and raising his eyebrows, nodding, shrugging his shoulders and smiling.
Mr. Mangione left the courthouse after the hearing with New York City police officers, who placed him in a black vehicle and took him to an airport.
His journey to New York was swift. Just after noon, Mr. Mangione landed at Long Island MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma; he was led into a Police Department helicopter that took off 23 minutes later, according to Flightradar24, a flight tracking website, and arrived at South Street Seaport in Lower Manhattan.
When he disembarked, Mr. Mangione was immediately surrounded by at least 40 police officers and F.B.I. agents, as well as Mr. Adams, who himself has been indicted by the Southern District on corruption charges. There were also Jessica Tisch, the Police Department commissioner, and Joseph Kenny, the chief of detectives who spearheaded the case — a practically unprecedented entourage. About a dozen onlookers and another 20 news reporters watched as the authorities led Mr. Mangione into a black van.
Thursday’s federal criminal complaint charging Mr. Mangione provides new details about a notebook found with him when he was arrested. The notebook, separate from a short note addressed to “feds” that the authorities later described as a manifesto, expressed “hostility towards the health insurance industry and wealthy executives in particular” across several handwritten pages, the complaint said.
In an entry marked “8/15” — apparently written in August, months before the shooting — a notebook entry said “the details are finally coming together,” adding that the writer was glad to have procrastinated because it had left time to learn more about UnitedHealthcare, according to the complaint.
Two months later, on Oct. 22, another notebook entry described an upcoming investor conference as “a true windfall” — and went on to describe an intent to “wack” the chief executive of an insurance company. The description in the entry corresponds with the date of the UnitedHealthcare investor meeting Mr. Thompson was attending when he was killed.
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