In a new legal filing, Luigi Mangione’s defense team claims there is no evidence his mother told law enforcement the United Healthcare shooting is something that she could see her son doing.
In a Dec. 17, 2024 press conference, a week after Mangione’s arrest, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny referenced information about a conversation between law enforcement and Mangione’s mother, Kathy Mangione. According to the press conference transcript, Kenny talked about how a San Francisco officer working on a missing person’s report reached out to the FBI about crime photos distributed by the NYPD during the five-day manhunt. They believed there was a resemblance between the suspect photos and a missing-person case they’d been working on — Luigi Mangione.
Kenny went on to say that while vetting this tip, law enforcement reached out to Mangione’s mother and 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.”
Mangione’s lead attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, filed a document last night arguing that the defense has yet to receive evidence showing proof of this statement. Friedman Agnifilo points out that the quote was widely cited by several news outlets including CBS, People, and Newsweek, along with a book about Mangione that was just published last week. Fox News ran the story with the headline, “Luigi Mangione’s mom made shocking admission to police.”
Mangione’s family has been notoriously quiet since his arrest, releasing just one statement through a family spokesperson to the media. So, the quote from his mother has been the only words attributed to her — or anyone in Mangione’s immediate family — in the past year.
“All the discovery provided so far indicates that she did not make such a statement,” writes Friedman Agnifilo in the recent filing. “If it is true that Mrs. Mangione never made this statement, then it is shocking and unconscionable that the District Attorney’s Office and the NYPD have never corrected this highly prejudicial false statement.”
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Mangione’s family and the NYPD did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s request for comment. The DA declined to comment and said they will respond in court filings.
Last spring, Rolling Stone spoke with the San Francisco detective who first identified Mangione as the prime suspect. San Francisco Police Sgt. Michael Horan told us he talked with the FBI agent working on the United Healthcare shooting and sent them Mangione’s missing persons report along with his social media images.
Horan said that after he realized Mangione bore a resemblance to the shooting suspect, one of his colleagues called Mangione’s sister. Horan said the investigator didn’t mention the shooting during that conversation — they just called to see if his family would bring up the shooting on their own. Horan said the sister never volunteered any information about the shooting suspect; she just spoke about how her brother was missing.
Horan remembers going into work a few days later on Monday, Dec. 9, and hearing that a person of interest was detained in the UHC shooting. Horan called the FBI again after hearing about that news, and he remembers they commended him for a job well done.
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“[The case agent] told me they had talked to his mom at some point over the weekend prior to him being detained,” Horan added.
In last night’s filing, Friedman Agnifilo also pointed out that Mangione has yet to receive a laptop and hard drive in order to review the discovery in time for his next New York state hearing, which will take place on Dec. 1.
