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.
Which would have been a fantastic idea. Hang out at that place, ideally have a few weeks of groceries stocked up, so you can just hang out there and watch TV and not have to leave or be seen. Then you basically don’t leave for a few weeks, at which point a lot of the hoopla will have blown over and your surveillance photo won’t be on every TV screen.
Or if he wants more distance, get rid of the freaking evidence. Makes no sense that he would have such a good escape plan, and yet not have thought through what might happen if someone recognized him a.
Has that idea ever worked?
Well. I guess if it had then we wouldn’t hear about it.
Play it out with your mind.
Police arrest a guy who matches the picture but without the backpack full of evidence have no proof that he is the guy. After 3 days his lawyer demands they let him go. End of story.
A guy who travelled discreetly by bus for three days without rest away from his lifelong home despite being the heir to a fortune, meaning he could have taken a plane or drove a car, for no apparent reason to travel at all, no alibi for the time of the murder, and the files to print the gun mod used to kill Thompson on his computer.
Still guilty.
Or do you mean he ditched the evidence at the hypothetical safehouse? If so it still exists.
Taking a bus isn’t a crime. And if you don’t have the files on the computer, or the backpack full of evidence, all you have is a guy who’s acting a little suspicious and looks like the guy in the video.
I’m saying he was smart enough to do this, and to evade authorities for 3 days, but dumb enough to be caught with a backpack full of evidence and the files on his computer. I’m not sure that adds up in my opinion.
Nobody chooses to sit on a bus for days nonstop unless they have to, and Luigi did not have to, it’s suspicious.
Right, suspicious. Suspicious doesn’t mean guilty, that’s not enough to convict someone in court.