A man was arrested Wednesday and charged with sending violent, threatening voice messages to the family of Brian Thompson, the UnitedHealth chief executive who was gunned down in Midtown Manhattan last December.
Starting the day that Mr. Thompson was killed, Shane Daley, a resident of Galway, N.Y., about a 45-minute drive from Albany, left a series of voice mail messages at the Minnesota workplace of a family member of Mr. Thompson, federal prosecutors say. Mr. Daley said in the messages that the executive had deserved to die and, using an expletive, called him a “capitalist pig” who was “profiting off the backs of poor Americans,” according to prosecutors.
Mr. Daley, 40, was charged with cyberstalking and appeared before Magistrate Judge Daniel J. Stewart in Federal District Court in Albany on Wednesday afternoon. He was released with electronic monitoring and is due back in court Thursday for further proceedings, according to a spokesman with the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of New York.
Sam Breslin, a lawyer for Mr. Daley, declined to make a statement on his client’s behalf, but said that “all of Mr. Daley’s rights, including the presumption of innocence, were preserved.” If convicted at trial, Mr. Daley faces up to five years in prison.
The crime that Mr. Daley is charged with is the latest example of the glee and anger elicited by Mr. Thompson’s murder, particularly from those who felt intense antipathy toward the health care industry.
On Dec. 4, Mr. Thompson was shot to death outside a Hilton hotel on West 54th Street where he had arrived for an investors’ day gathering. After a five-day manhunt, officers in Pennsylvania arrested and charged Luigi Mangione, now 27, with Mr. Thompson’s murder. Federal prosecutors are seeking the death penalty against Mr. Mangione.
In the hours and days after Mr. Thompson’s killing, a torrent of online messages denouncing the health care industry flooded social media. Many people brought up their own negative experiences with seeking expensive treatments, or being denied insurance coverage by UnitedHealth.
A strong fan base has developed in support of Mr. Mangione, who said companies like UnitedHealth were abusing “our country for immense profit” and called the health care industry “parasitic” in a manifesto retrieved from his backpack, according to investigators.
Mr. Daley called Mr. Thompson’s family member at work nine times and left four expletive-laden messages, according to prosecutors, who did not identify the family member. The first three messages were left on Dec. 4, between 13 and 14 hours after Mr. Thompson was shot and days before Mr. Mangione was arrested.
In one voice message, Mr. Daley said “10.2 million a year,” an apparent reference to Mr. Thompson’s annual compensation at UnitedHealth, according to prosecutors. In another, he said the family member deserved to “die on the cold concrete,” just like Mr. Thompson had, prosecutors said.
In that same message, Mr. Daley also mocked a public statement made by a family member of Mr. Thompson’s after his killing, prosecutors said. The statement matched one made by Paulette Thompson, Mr. Thompson’s wife, in which she called her husband “an incredibly loving, generous, talented man.”
When questioned by law enforcement in July, Mr. Daley denied making the calls, according to court papers, but later said he had been drinking and that it was possible that he had.
Santul Nerkar is a Times reporter covering federal courts in Brooklyn.
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