A detailed “to-do list” and travel plans, found during Luigi Mangione’s arrest and revealed in court this week, shed new light on his alleged efforts to evade capture.
Following UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s killing last year, the instructions included plucking eyebrows, buying less conspicuous shoes, and taking a bus or train west towards Cincinnati and St. Louis. Mangione also planned to move late at night and avoid surveillance cameras.
“Keep momentum, FBI slower overnight,” said one note. “Change hat, shoes, pluck eyebrows,” said another.
The notes, including a hand-drawn map and tactics for surviving on the run, were shown on Monday at a pretrial hearing as Mangione’s bid to prevent prosecutors from using evidence seized during his Dec. 9, 2024, arrest at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Excerpts of body-worn camera footage of the arrest, previously unseen by the press or the public, were released on Tuesday.
Police said they discovered the notes in Mangione’s backpack, along with a 9 mm handgun that prosecutors said matches the one used to kill Thompson five days earlier; a loaded gun magazine and silencer; and a notebook in similar handwriting which he purportedly described his intent to “wack” a health insurance executive.
Mangione’s lawyers haven’t disputed the authenticity of the notes or the provenance of the gun, pocket knife, fake ID, driver’s license, passport, credit cards, AirPods, protein bar, travel toothpaste, flash drives and other items seized from him and his backpack.
But they argue that anything found in the bag should be barred because police didn’t have a search warrant and lacked the grounds to justify a warrantless search. Prosecutors contend the search was legal — officers said they were checking for a bomb — and that police eventually obtained a warrant.
The notes, along with other evidence highlighted at the pretrial hearing, underscore that Mangione’s stop in Altoona, a city of about 44,000 people about 230 miles (370 kilometers) west of Manhattan, was only meant to be temporary.
One note said to check for “red eyes” from Pittsburgh to Columbus, Ohio or part way to Cincinnati (“get off early,” it reads). The map drawn below shows lines linking those cities, as well as other possible destinations, including Detroit, Indianapolis and St. Louis.
Thompson, 50, was killed as he walked to a Manhattan hotel for his company’s investor conference on Dec. 4, 2024. Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind and then fleeing the area. Over the next hours and days, police released photos of a suspect — first showing him in a mask and hooded coat and then his face and thick eyebrows.
Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal murder charges. The pretrial hearing, which resumes for a sixth day on Thursday, applies only to the state case. His lawyers are making a similar push to exclude the evidence from his federal case, where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty.
Among the notes revealed this week was one with a heading “12/5” and a starred entry that said: “buy black shoes (white stripes too distinctive).”
Another, also written in to-do list style, suggested spending more than three hours away from surveillance cameras and using different modes of transportation to “Break CAM continuity” and avoid tracking. Below that, it said: “check reports for current situation,” a possible reference to news reports about the search for Thompson’s killer.
