Moments after Luigi Mangione was handcuffed at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s, a police officer searching his backpack found a loaded gun magazine wrapped in a pair of underwear.
The discovery, recounted in court Monday as Mangione fights to keep evidence out of his New York murder case, convinced police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, that he was the man wanted in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan five days earlier.
I find it hard to believe he was just casually carrying around bullets days after allegedly shooting someone…
Well that clinches it. Bullets are super rare in the US.
Luigi wasn’t there he was with me, we were picking blueberries in the woods.
This is true.
Source: I’m Luigi.
No, I am Luigi!
I know I don’t have a gun, but I have a hard time that you’d bring more than the single magazine you’d have loaded in the gun if your intention is to kill someone then disappear.
Was it just a random collection of unfired rounds in different calibers?
Yeah like, everybody needs a hobby. Sheesh!
I just think they’re neat.
Nah I don’t believe it. Look at that face. He should be pat on the head and sent home with well-wishes.
With his money, if his victim had been any regular person, he’d already be home, and the victim’s family would be living in a new home with a new car in the garage.
We can’t trust any ‘evidence’ cops find because they have an extensive history of planting it.
What kind of assassin carries an extra magazine?
A bad one who has one target, or a good one who has several? 🤷♂️
And days after? Makes no sense.
Gotta make 100% sure he’s good and dead, reload, and then make even more sure he’s really dead. Haven’t you played those Hitman games?!
Enough plausible deniability with bullets, but if he was found with a blueberry muffin, THAT would seal his fate.
And we can’t trust the “innocence” of every criminal either. So where does that leave us?
It leaves us reading your sentence wondering when you will complete a basic civics course.
I’m guessing the word “criminal” to you means innocent person?
For fuck’s sake, I was told there is zero nuance to be understood here. I didn’t think I’d have to explain simple concepts like what a criminal is.
Civics course indeed.
every person is innocent by default. complete and trusted. it’s the gov’s job to PROPERLY prove guilt.
That I said CRIMINALS, implies that I’m talking about people who are NOT innocent.
And I didn’t say how our system of law should perceive them, I said that they will all claim to be innocent.
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We presume innocence. Burden is on proving guilt. That’s where it leaves us.
Note how I said, “criminal”. This implies that we already know they are guilty- yet they’ll claim innocence.
My point is, this works both ways.
He was up here in Ottawa hoisting a beer with me at my local pub.
Thats impossible bro we were playing Civ VI together that night
The CIV franchise has really gone down hill since Luigi left the team.
Ridiculous. There’s like ten thousand people who can testify that he was with them at the time of the shooting.
The problem is that they’re all lying to cover for him. i know this because he was with me at the time. We were talking fashion, he was giving me tips.
And why wouldn’t you want tips from him, look at the guy. Stunning in prison
Not only did they search the bag without a warrant…
Wasser resumed her search after an 11-minute drive to the police station and almost immediately found the gun and silencer — the latter discovery prompting her to laugh and exclaim “nice,” according to body-worn camera footage. Wasser said the gun was in a side pocket that she hadn’t searched at McDonald’s.
She had the bag in her car for over ten minutes, with not witnesses or video, and then after resuming the incomplete search almost immediately found the gun and silencer. My read is that there is every possibility that the gun and silencer could have been placed in the bag during that transport.
An officer concerned about a bomb accidentally being brought to the police station (again) would hardly forget to look in the bag’s side pockets. Nor is it reasonable to suggest that they could overlook a gun and silencer in the initial search of the bag.
“nice” is what you exclaim after discovering what your colleague meant by “I put a little something special in there just for you.” with a wink.
Yeah, I thought it was known long ago that the chain of possession (or whatever the term is) for the backpack is fucked. Idk why this isn’t being used straight away to throw away all evidence.
It is being used. The defense is moving to suppress evidence (his backpack and anything he said before he was locked up), and that’s what these days in court are all about.
The state is trying to tell a complicated story. They claim that he (a) wasn’t detained, (b) voluntarily gave them a fake ID because … nobody knows why, © he didn’t feel like he was being detained, and therefore (d) they arrested him for the fake ID, after which (e) they read him Miranda, and after that (f) they searched his bag as part of arresting him.
That lets them maximize the evidence against him. The problem for the prosecution is that probably the above is actually factually incorrect. It’s the judge’s job to determine exactly where the prosecution and cops are making shit up, which is why the hearings are happening right now. Later the judge will rule on what actually happened, and therefore what evidence can be admitted against him.
The proceedings right now are before the trial. No jury is watching this.
Chain of custody is the right term
I remember OJ Simpson getting off a double-murder because there was a remote possibility that someone (actually several hundred people) orchestrated a conspiracy to plant evidence.
He stabbed two people to death and there was DNA evidence tying him to the crime scene.
Not remote, they did. Police corruption let him off. If they let the evidence do its job there was enough to convict.
They went with their instincts and tried to frame a guy who just happened to actually be guilty, and it backfired on them.
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You seem to be confusing Martin Luther King with Rodney King. No need for you to do legwork.
OJ got off because the jury wanted retribution for the Martin Luther King trail.
He got off because the jury was subjected to an absolute media circus and was tampered with repeatedly and the lawyers for OJ did everything they could to confuse them about the relatively new technology of DNA analysis, and judge Ito had almost no control over the courtroom, leading to one of the first “memes” of “I’ll allow it.”
You don’t have to do legwork, I remember much of it.
Edit: it took me a moment to realize you said Martin Luther King… I don’t even… man, bruh, just… bruh.
Martin Luther King Jr doesn’t have any famous trial losses to his name, are you thinking of Rodney King, who was also in LA and whose trial was contemporary?
There are users in here who are utterly confused, look at the other replies. I know the 90’s were now over 3 decades ago but it’s all completely searchable. There are multiple documentaries. I don’t know how people confuse Rodney King, Martin Luther King and the OJ Simpson case all in one thread. Astonishing.
Add another one: my brain completely deleted the “King” part and I thought he was talking about the Protestant reformist before reading the replies about OJ and Rodney King.
I should sleep.
it has an uncomfortable “i can’t tell the difference between Black people” vibe. i don’t mind people not remembering the 90s. i do mind people not double checking the broad details real quick
It’s mind blowing particularly to an Oldy McOldface like myself who was there and lived through the events.
They’re thinking of Rodney Dangerfield who, quite famously, suffered from a lack of respect.
And he was always suspiciously stepping on ducks whenever he was around…
You’re thinking of Rodney King. Completely different. Mark Fuhrman committed perjury and tampered with evidence.
Rodney King was the case of a driver who got assaulted by police and brutally beat, it led to rioting across LA because it was captured on video, and King’s iconic “Can’t we all get along” speech on TV. It was the same general time and place, but not directly connected to the OJ case.
Mark Fuhrman may or may not have been some racist tampering with evidence but it still would have taken enormous resources and a risky gamble to frame OJ for… reasons. OJ was not framed, he got off because they turned the trial into a media circus and the jury didn’t understand DNA evidence which was very new and few people had heard of it as an investigation tool. They have tried to leverage Rodney King’s beating but that was only one part of the massive fuck-up by prosecution and the legal system.
My memory of events is still pretty fresh but you’re welcome to look it all up.
Any movies or other media you’d recommend for getting an accurate and detailed account of the OJ case?
I would have to look it up, I didn’t watch documentaries, I watched it all on live TV at the time. I’m sure there’s boatloads of stories and documentaries on youtube, just beware anything that tries to paint the case as anything other than a massive clusterfuck and failure of the system to safeguard judicial system from money, fame, influence and media hype. What went wrong, was it was the first huge celebrity trial covered on live TV, and all the same nonsense and political bullshit you would expect to happen today, happened then.
The DNA evidence was biggest the key which would have clinched any similar case today, but it was still a very new thing, and people were as dumb about science then as they are now, so that ignorance was leveraged by a rich man’s legal team and whatever political funding they were getting.
Time is a flat circle.
There was more than DNA evidence, there was a fat ton of circumstantial evidence, testimonies from associated people, and of course things like Nicole Brown Simpson having previously called 911 as OJ was beating her up and threatening her life, the whole massive performance piece of the slow-speed bronco chase, it was just a fuckup from the start and everyone involved just wanted to get famous from it.
This. They’re trying to manufacture probable cause after an illegal search.
Christy Wasser
That names going on the list.
On body-worn camera video played in court, Wasser was heard saying she wanted to check the bag for bombs before removing it from the McDonald’s. Despite that concern, she acknowledged in her testimony Monday that police never cleared the restaurant of customers or employees.
Unless they had probable cause to believe there was a bomb, that’s absolutely no excuse for a search. Might as well just get rid of the fourth amendment altogether if police can just imagine the possibility of a dangerous object and excuse searching anything at any time.
If she really thought there was a bomb, she is recklessly handling this herself instead of calling in a properly trained and equipped bomb squad. But far worse, she claims she needed to check it so as not bring a bomb to the station, but apparently has no problem potentially handling a bomb around a bunch of innocent bystanders.
That she is lying in order to justify what she knew to be an illegal search is actually the least damning interpretation. Either way though, the evidence should be thrown out along with her career.
Also, she apparently hadn’t even searched it well enough to notice a gun sitting in it…so not sure she’d have noticed a bomb in there anyway.
(Not that any of this isn’t a bullshit frame job, as that gun clearly got tossed in before her body camera got turned back on once back at the station)
Not only that but also somehow failed to find a full sized pistol and silencer while searching the bag for explosives, which is pretty alarming.
I replied at about the same time as you, with similar comment, but I wanted to add that she didn’t ‘find’ the gun and silencer until she took the bag on an 11 minute ride to the station in her car. How do you search a bag for a possible bomb and miss a handgun and silencer? That is an incompetent search or the gun wasn’t there during the initial search and was added later.
That’s the bullshit issue with probable cause. A “hunch” is proof enough and can range from good instincts to racism.
Not always. Well, maybe it depends on the jurisdiction. But, for example, stopping and searching cars has a lot more leeway than searching a house. Maybe searching people in public is the same? I remember New York has/had that stop and frisk law.
Of course I am not arguing against you, as I agree that it’s all bullshit and unconstitutional. This case especially. People have gotten off for much less technicalities, and yet Mangione is still on trial. He will never see a fair trial.
Different levels of search. A “weapons pat down” does not constitute a search requiring a warrant or probable cause. Even then a weapons pat down can only be initiated on a detained or arrested person. The former simply requires “reasonable and articulable suspicion” that crime is afoot. That’s a lower bar than probable cause but should be more than just a hunch.
And a tip is more than a hunch. I’m sure there was some illegal conduct during the arrest, but I don’t think this is it.
A tip is absolutely not “more than a hunch”. I can’t recall all the finer details about what elevates a tip from essentially “random gossip” to RAS or even PC, but it’s not as simple as cops receive a tip means they can search you.
Ah yes a hearsay hunch. Nobody positively ID’d anyone before submitting a tip. It’s still a hunch.
Well, if it was anybody other than st Luigi, we probably wouldn’t care as much about the technicalities. And there really are too many police officers to only hire ones that can handle all the technicalities. So the system gives them wiggle room, which is reasonable. There are lots of places where that wiggle room is clearly excessive. I am not sure if this really is one though. Hard to say for sure.
In the part of rural Pennsylvania where people have guns. Yeah, Ok.
Wouldn’t the bullets that killed the CEO be in the corpse and not Luigi’s bag? Sounds like exculpatory evidence to me…
The scalpel would be in the surgeon’s hand. This sounds like circumstantial evidence.
The circumcision would be in the Mohel’s tip box. This sounds like prima facie evidence.
Exactly what I had in mind.
Never eat gribbinis from a Mohel, it’s so chewy.
Wasn’t the official story such that a search at the scene of arrest found nothing, but suddenly the gun was found on search once the bag was in police custody in a second location? It’s hard to keep track of the truth in 2025.
Yes, they illegally searched his bag “because they wanted to make sure there wasn’t a bomb in it”, while in the middle of a full restaurant, and found no weapon.
It only appeared after they moved it to a second location.
Its almost like this guy is innocent
They certainly seemed to put a lot of work into making him not look that way.
After an 11-minute car ride with no video. Suddenly, there’s a gun in the side pocket, one that was conveniently overlooked before.
Ooh, real believable NYPD. Fucking pigs.
For the record, it’s Altoona’s pig department testifying here.
Thank you for the clarification, I guess ACAB is just a truism.
this is like OJ all over again, police so corrupt and incompetent they feel the need to fake evidence on someone whose guilty.
hope he gets off scot free whether he did it or not, as clearly these parasite CEO’s need to fear for their lifes to act like decent humans
It’s important to keep in mind that Luigi is exactly the type of person that the police would try to pin this on. It’s so easy to see how it could happen. The NYPD had a high profile murder of a wealthy CEO to deal with. The NYPD leaders had politicians and corporate leaders breathing down their necks, demanding this case be solved immediately. And at the same time, the suspect seemingly made a perfectly planned getaway and had disappeared. This kind of thing has happened countless times in history. Have a high profile case that simply must be solved? Find some undesirable to pin it on. Ideally this is someone who is already dead, maybe someone who recently killed themselves. You don’t have to prove guilty beyond a reasonable doubt if you blame the crime on a corpse. But if a suitable dead person isn’t available, then a living person can do in a pinch.
If you want to pin a crime on someone, you find someone who resembles the suspect and also isn’t someone with a lot of social respect or clout. Homeless people are classic targets. And Luigi was a queer kid, out of contact with his family for months, living in a youth hostel. He is the exact type of person the NYPD would choose if they were looking for someone to pin this on. I’m sure they would try to pin it on a black person if they could, but the person they chose had to at least have some visual resemblance to the person on the security footage.
huh, thought Luigi was just some nepo baby who finally became jaded and class conscious
regardless…i want to be very clear here, i really don’t care if he did or didn’t do it. some people will only do the right thing when they feel personally threatened, these types of people are overwhelming represented within the C-suite type of business-class…so fuck em. hope he gets off even if he did do it
Whoa whoa whoa, why are you so comfortable assuming he’s guilty? As far as I’m concerned he’s a free man being prosecuted by the biggest gang in NY.
