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Luigi Mangione’s defense team is demanding prosecutors clarify whether his mother actually told police the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was “something she could see him doing” — or if law enforcement fabricated the widely reported quote and, in the defense team’s view, made a “highly prejudicial false statement.”
At issue is a Dec. 17, 2024 news briefing where NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said that during a massive manhunt for Thompson’s suspected killer, a tip involving a missing person case in San Francisco led them to their suspect.
Mangione’s mother reported him missing to San Francisco police on Nov. 18, 2024, Kenny said. The detective working that case called his NYPD counterparts and said the person he was looking for “bears a resemblance” to the picture of the smiling suspect seen checking into a Manhattan hostel before Thompson’s murder.
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Investigators then reached out to Mangione’s mother on Dec. 7, 2024.
“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,” Kenny told reporters. “So that information was going to be passed along to the detectives the next morning, but fortunately we apprehended him before we could act on that.”
Kenny’s remarks were widely reported by major news outlets, including Fox News Digital, and they were cited in a book published this month about the case.
Read the defense filing:
Mangione’s defense argued in a new court filing that they have not been provided any discovery documents related to this allegation involving his mother, Kathleen Mangione.
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“To date, there has been no documentation provided in discovery that confirms the Chief of Detectives’ statement as to Mrs. Mangione’s alleged statement,” one of his lawyers, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, wrote to a New York state judge. “In fact, all the discovery provided so far indicates that she did not make such a statement.”
She added that she could see only two plausible explanations — one that the statement was never made, or two, that Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office had failed to meet its discovery obligations.
Bragg’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
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“We ask that the Court direct the District Attorney’s Office to state for the record whether Mrs. Mangione made this statement to law enforcement,” she wrote.
Through a spokesperson, Friedman Agnifilo declined to comment.
On Dec. 9, 2024, police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, received a tip that someone recognized Mangione from a wanted poster and that he was eating breakfast at the local McDonald’s.
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They arrested him there.
Fox News’ Brooke Curto contributed to this report.
