Luigi Mangione wrote about plans to kill UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in his diary months before Thompson was gunned down in New York City last year, state prosecutors alleged in a court filing Wednesday.
Mangione, 27, who has pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges in connection with the murder in December, used a red notebook as a diary to document his plans to kill Thompson, the court filing alleges. Authorities confiscated the notebook during Mangione’s arrest in Pennsylvania after a five-day manhunt for Thompson’s killer.
“So say you want to rebel against the deadly, greed fueled health insurance cartel. Do you bomb the HQ? No. Bombs=terrorism,” Mangione wrote in August, the state court filing alleges. “Such actions appear the unjustified anger of someone who simply got sick/had bad luck and took their frustration out on the insurance industry, while recklessly endangering countless employees.”
Instead of carrying out a bombing, prosecutors allege, Mangione wrote in an entry in October that someone should “wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention.”
“It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents. Most importantly, the point is self-evident,” the diary entry reads, according to the filing. “The point is made in the news headline ‘Insurance CEO killed at annual investors conference.'”
In submitting the court filing, state prosecutors were trying to justify the terrorism enhancement added to Mangione’s first-degree murder charge. Last month, Mangione’s attorney filed a motion to dismiss the state murder charges.
“If ever there were an open and shut case pointing to defendant’s guilty, this case is that case,” Manhattan Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann wrote in the filing. “Simply put, one would be hard pressed to find a case with such overwhelming evidence of guilt as to the identity of the murderer and premeditated nature of the assassination.”
“Brian Thompson and UHC were simply symbols of the healthcare industry and what the defendant considered a deadly greed-fueled cartel,” Seidemann added in the filing.
Mangione’s attorney did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Thompson, 50, was fatally shot in December by a masked gunman outside the New York Hilton hotel in midtown Manhattan, hours before he was set to speak at UnitedHealth Group’s investor conference.
The shooter fled on a bike and rode into Central Park, evading capture.
Five days later, a worker at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, called police and said they saw a masked man who they believed matched images authorities released of the gunman. The masked man in the McDonald’s was Mangione, authorities said.
While Thompson’s death caused outcry, it also prompted a wider national conversation about the high costs of health care in the United States.
Mangione’s state and federal hearings in New York City regularly draw protests against the health care industry, with flocks of people gathering outside the courthouse calling for Mangione’s release.
The legal defense fund for Mangione has surpassed $1 million in the weeks after Attorney General Pam Bondi directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty.
Mangione will next appear in court for his state charges on June 26.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
