Luigi Mangione’s pretrial hearing concludes as judge says he’ll issue ruling on evidence in May

(NEW YORK) — A police officer who searched accused CEO killer Luigi Mangione’s backpack when he was apprehended at an Pennsylvania McDonald’s took the stand on Monday for the fourth day of a crucial pretrial hearing in which Mangione’s defense lawyers are trying to exclude from trial critical evidence that they say was illegally seized from his backpack without a warrant.

“Holly Jolly Christmas” was playing in the Altoona McDonald’s on Dec. 9, 2024, when officer Christy Wasser — a 19-year Altoona Police Department veteran — searched Mangione’s backpack, immediately pulling out a pocketknife and a loaf of bread, five days after Mangione allegedly gunned down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk.

When Mangione was formally placed under arrest at 9:58 a.m., Wasser testified that she “walked over and picked up his backpack.”

Two minutes into the search, Wasser was seen on body camera video extracting “wet, grey underwear” from the backpack. “And when I opened it up, it was a magazine,” she testified.

Prosecutor Joel Seidemann asked it was “fully loaded,” and Wasser responded, “Yes.”

Wasser also said she discovered a phone in a Faraday bag, designed to conceal its signal.

An officer was heard suggesting that the bag be brought to the police station to check for bombs. Wasser was heard joking that she preferred to check it at the McDonald’s because she “didn’t want to pull a Moser” — a sarcastic reference, she said, to a former Altoona officer who brought a bomb to the police station.

At 10:03 a.m. an officer was heard on the camera footage mentioning a search warrant. A different officer was heard saying that one was not needed at that stage.

Defense lawyers have argued Wasser’s actions violated Mangione’s constitutional rights and should justify excluding any of the evidence found in the bag, including the alleged murder weapon and writings that prosecutors say amount to a confession.

“[The officer] did not search the bag because she reasonably thought there might be a bomb, but rather this was an excuse designed to cover up an illegal warrantless search of the backpack,” defense attorneys argued in a court filing. “This made-up bomb claim further shows that even she believed at the time that there were constitutional issues with her search, forcing her to attempt to salvage this debacle by making this spurious claim.”

Although Wasser’s initial search of the backpack uncovered the magazine, she missed the loaded handgun, silencer, and journal that were buried deeper in the bag, she testified.

Wasser testified that she only discovered the two items about 15 minutes later, when she conducted a further search after driving from the McDonald’s to the Altoona police station.

“There’s a weapon!” she’s heard shouting on the video footage to the other officers in the intake area, as Mangione was being searched just feet away with his ankles shackled.

“Is that the first time you opened that zipper section on the side?” Seidemann asked Wasser on the witness stand.

“Yes, sir,” she affirmed.  

With Mangione just feet away from her in the station’s intake area, she testified it would be “unwise” to continue the search near Mangione.

“Were the defendant’s hands free at the time you took out the gun?” asked Seidemann.

“Yes,” she testified.

Body camera footage showed Wasser and Deputy Chief Derek Swope take the weapon over to a nearby hallway — behind a locked door — where she cleared the gun. She mumbled — at times inaudibly — when she explained the situation to Swope on the video.

“We just checked the bag … to make sure there were no bombs or anything,” she said on the body camera footage.

As the search continued, Wasser quickly uncovered a silencer buried beneath other items in the bag. She also found a journal allegedly belonging to Mangione.

“Holy s—,” Swope can be heard saying in the body camera footage.

Wasser testified that she was cautious when checking the back because the nature of Mangione’s alleged crime “greatened [her] concern.”

“I just wanted to make sure there was nothing that could harm anybody,” she testified.

“Did any of your supervisors say, ‘Stop — go get a search warrant?'” asked Seidermann.  

“No,” she said.

The stationhouse backpack search also turned up a slip of paper with a crude, handwritten map of Pittsburgh, Wasser testified, as well as what Seidemann described as possible escape routes.

The note said, “Keep momentum, FBI slower overnight” and “Break CAM continuity.” Another line read, “3+ hrs off cam, exit diff method (ex: megabus, rail)” and a note saying “check reports for current situation.” The note also said, “bus to Penn station,” “change hat” and “either taxi … or cross river.”

Wasser was also heard on body camera footage saying she pulled hair clippers from Mangione’s bag.

Earlier in the body camera video — when she was still searching the bag at the McDonald’s while “The Twelve Days of Christmas” blared in the background — prosecutors highlighted an exchange between officers and a supervisor about whether a warrant was necessary. One officer remarked that a warrant might be needed “because of the severity of the case,” but their supervisor interjected to say that no warrant was required because the incident was a “search incident to arrest” — a warrantless search conducted of an area within the arrestee’s immediate surroundings.

Prosecutor Nichole Smith of Pennsylvania’s Blair County District Attorney’s office also testified, outlining the chain of custody of items seized from Mangione after he was apprehended.

Smith recalled a lieutenant from the Altoona Police Department calling her at 9:53 a.m. to advise her “that he had the individual responsible for the CEO shooting” at McDonald’s. Smith said she was in court at the time and interrupted the proceeding to inform her boss, Blair County District Attorney Peter Weeks.

Smith said she and Weeks advised Altoona police to charge Mangione with forgery, carrying a firearm without a license, tampering with records for identification, possessing instruments of a crime and providing false identification to law enforcement.

Smith described a search warrant that obtained a court’s permission to seize Mangione’s belongings, including items in his backpack, and transfer them to the NYPD.

“Certain items in that bag were not inherently contraband, so we wanted to ensure that the court had approved,” Smith testified. “When they search the bag and they discover, for instance, the firearm, the ammunition and the suppressor, when he does not have a valid permit to carry those items concealed, they become contraband.”

Handwritten notes that police said they also discovered in Mangione’s backpack were not relevant to the local charges in Pennsylvania. Ordinarily, they would have been put aside and saved. The warrant allowed those items to be transferred as possible evidence in the New York case.

Defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo objected to Seidemann referring to the writings as an alleged “manifesto” and Thompson’s killing as an “execution.” Judge Gregory Carro said it was fine for the ongoing suppression hearing but said, “You’re certainly not going to do that at trial.”

Last week, during the first week of the hearing, prosecutors called six witnesses, including the police officers who first confronted Mangione and the corrections officers who were tasked with constantly monitoring him before his transfer from a cell in Pennsylvania to New York.

Last week’s testimony shed new light on the events leading up to and following Mangione’s arrest, with the two officers who initially confronted Mangione recounting their experiences for the first time.

“It’s him. I have been seeing all the pictures. He is nervous as hell. I ask him, ‘Have you been in New York,’ he’s all quiet,” Altoona police officer Joseph Detwiler testified on Tuesday.

Prosecutors also showed in court never-before-seen security camera footage that captured the chilling moments after Mangione allegedly shot and killed Thompson in the predawn cold of New York City’s early winter. The videos provided the public with a clearer picture of the shooting and emergency response, as well as clues about the case prosecutors have built against the alleged killer.  

At least three people were in the immediate vicinity of the shooting, including a woman just feet away from the suspect. The woman’s identity and whether she has spoken with police are not known.

The video also shows the suspect — after firing multiple shots — walk toward the victim, glance down at him, cross the street, then run toward a nearby alleyway. A woman holding a cup of coffee outside the famed New York Hilton on Sixth Avenue is seen flinching after hearing the first gunshot, after which she sees Thompson stumble, then appears to look straight at the gunman before running off.

Seconds later, a man inside the hotel exits, sees Thompson on the ground, then appears to point to a nearby alleyway where the suspect fled. 

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(NEW YORK) — A year to the day after Luigi Mangione allegedly stalked and gunned down United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a Manhattan sidewalk, the 27-year-old alleged killer was identified in court by one of the police officers who first encountered him in Altoona, Pennsylvania, following the shooting.

“He’s the gentleman right there sitting between the female and the male.  Looks like he’s wearing a suit,” patrolman Tyler Frye said, pointing with his left hand.

Mangione’s lawyers are attempting to convince the judge overseeing his case to prohibit prosecutors from using critical evidence, including the alleged murder weapon and Mangione’s journal. They argue the evidence was unlawfully seized from his backpack without a warrant during his arrest. 

Mangione — in court for the third day of a pretrial hearing in his state murder case — flipped a pen in his right hand and then began writing on a white lined legal pad, largely ignoring body camera footage of his arrest that played on screens around the courtroom.

Frye, 26, was still a probationary officer, on the job less than a year, when he responded to a McDonalds on E. Plank Road after the dispatcher told them a manager had called 911 to report someone who looked like the person wanted in the shooting. 

On the body camera footage played in court, someone is heard directing the officers, “He’s back there.”

Frye is seen in the footage standing a few feet from Mangione while Mangione nibbled a hash brown as the officers stalled for time by engaging in small talk about the Steak McMuffin. 

Another officer is heard asking Mangione, “Do you know what all this nonsense is about?” Mangione is heard replying, “We’re going to find out I guess.”

Mangione gave the officers a fake New Jersey ID for a Mark Rosario. 

Officers subsequently informed Mangione he was under “official police investigation” and asked him his real name. Frye, on the video, is seen writing the name “Luigi Mangione” in a small notebook and providing his date of birth. At that point, Mangione is read is Miranda rights.

Defense attorneys are trying to exclude statements Mangione made and the contents of his backpack, including a 3D-printed gun and a red notebook. 

“Where were you standing in relation to the backpack?” prosecutor Joel Seidemann asked.  “Right near it,” Frye replied.

“Were you aware of that backpack?” Seidemann asked. “I was,” Frye said.

“When did you become aware of it?” asked Seidemann.

“About the time I walked in,” Frye replied.

The hearing has the potential to sideline what prosecutors say is some of the strongest evidence of Mangione’s guilt, and has provided the most detailed preview to date of their case against the alleged killer.

The proceedings could last into next week.

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(NEW YORK) — What started as a dream vacation soon thrust a tight-knit blended family into shock and anguish when one of their own, a beloved teenage girl, was discovered dead on a cruise ship earlier this month.

Even more baffling and heartbreaking, her grandparents said in an interview with ABC News, the person authorities told the family is suspected of Anna Kepner’s death: her stepbrother.  

“We were all having a great time,” grandmother Barbara Kepner recalled of the trip. “I couldn’t fathom why anyone would wanna hurt my baby.”  

Her grandparents said 18-year-old Anna had her whole life ahead of her. She was an independent and “mighty” young woman, set to graduate high school in May and aspiring to join the Navy, the Kepners said. Those hopes came to a screeching halt when Anna’s body was found aboard the Carnival Horizon, where she and eight other family members were on holiday.

A cause of death has not been announced by authorities, but the Kepner family says the FBI has told them Anna apparently died from asphyxiation, possibly caused by a bar hold — an arm across the neck.

“We were looking forward to seeing her grow,” grandfather Jeffrey Kepner said.  “The cruise itself wasn’t what made me excited. It was the fact that I was gonna get to spend another week with my youngest son and his family and all the grandkids.”

The FBI on Sunday continued to decline to comment on the ongoing investigation, and ABC News has not independently confirmed the details of Anna’s death. 

“No such thing as steps”

The Kepners, their son, his three children, including Anna, his new wife, and her children from a previous marriage, took the trip together. It was to be a new tradition they were looking forward to keeping, Jeffrey Kepner said. The three generations had three staterooms on the ship.

“The two younger girls stayed with the parents and then the three teenagers, they decided amongst themselves they wanted to stay in the room together. But we had a larger room and we made it very clear that at any time if they weren’t getting along, they didn’t want to be together, we had an extra bed in our room that they could come to,” Barbara Kepner said.   

The Kepners painted a picture of a happy group, where familial ties reached further than blood, and there’s “no such thing as steps” for siblings.

“It’s all family. It’s a blended family, yes, but that’s not how our family is,” Jeffrey Kepner said. “Our dynamic is we’re all just family.”

When Anna’s father remarried, the Kepners said they gained two new grandchildren. 

“I loved them just like I’ve loved the rest of my grandchildren. They called us Memaw, Peepaw, told us they loved us,” Mrs. Kepner said.

“They were just like brother and sister,” Barbara Kepner said of the stepbrother now called a “suspect” in Anna’s death, according to court papers filed by his mother and Anna’s father in an unrelated matter.

Anna’s grandmother described the two teens as having been “two peas in a pod.”

“I know that those two kids cared about each other in the right way,” Barbara Kepner said. “I can’t accuse him because I don’t know what happened in that room.”  

No formal charges have been filed.

Anna’s grandparents said authorities told the family that the stepbrother, according to security cameras, was “the only one seen going in and the only one seen going out” from the room he had been sharing with Anna.

Kepner said she couldn’t understand why anyone would do such a thing to Anna — and wants to see justice done. 

“That will be for the courts to decide,” Kepner said.

The Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s office declined to comment Friday. The Kepners said the family has been told preliminary information indicates that there were no signs of sexual assault and that there did not appear to be drugs or alcohol in Anna’s system.

Autopsy and toxicology reports that could confirm those details have not been completed.

“I couldn’t stop screaming.”

The last night her grandparents saw Anna alive, her dental braces had been bothering her at dinner, Barbara Kepner said. But Anna was still determined to join in the fun.

“She just said, ‘Meemaw, I think I’m gonna go back to my room for a little bit, I don’t feel well.’ And she must have felt better, because she got dressed up. And she came down, we were playing in the casino. And she sat down and she played $20. And she didn’t win anything. And she said, ‘Meemaw, I love you guys, I’ll see you later,’” Mrs. Kepner said. “She’d pop in and out to check in with us. And we never saw her again after that.”

The next morning, Jeffrey Kepner said he was buying bingo cards when a medical alert blared over the ship loudspeakers. He recognized the room number.

“I went blank,” Jeffrey Kepner said. “I was hoping that it was something minor.” Instead, what he saw when he walked in haunts him. “I still wake up seeing that,” he said.

Anna’s body was discovered by a room attendant “concealed under the bed,” and there were bruises on the side of her neck, according to the Kepners and a security source briefed on the investigation.

When her son — Anna’s father — entered the room, Barbara Kepner said, “all he had to do was look at her and he knew she was gone. And then my husband got there and pulled them out of the room. As he said, they cannot see what they saw.” Then her husband came to tell her what had happened.

“I knew when he walked in the room, something was wrong,” Mrs. Kepner said. “And all he could say to me was, ‘Anna.’ The last I can remember for probably hours that morning is I just screamed. I couldn’t stop screaming.”

The utter shock of the situation hasn’t left much room for grief yet, the Kepners said — but it has made them crave understanding and rack their brains for clues.

“Those are the questions that we’ve been asking — what did we miss?” Mr. Kepner said.

Barbara Kepner said she thought Anna would have told her if she had any concerns about her safety.

“With my grandchildren, I have one rule, and it’s the only rule I have with all of them. You be truthful with me, I’ll be truthful with you, and we’ll figure this out,” Kepner said.

She said on the ship, the stepbrother told her, “In his own words, say he does not remember what happened.” She added, “I believe, to him, that is his truth.”

The stepbrother was questioned along with other family members by law enforcement — who also pored over the ship’s security camera footage and access-card swipes to get a picture of who was where at the various times prior to the death, according to the Kepner family and a security source briefed on the investigation.

“He was an emotional mess. He couldn’t even speak. He couldn’t believe what had happened,” Mrs. Kepner said of the stepbrother. After the boat docked in Miami, the stepbrother was hospitalized for psychiatric observation and then released to stay with a family member, Kepner said. 

Appearing virtually in a Florida family courtroom in connection with an unrelated custody matter connected to the divorce of Anna’s parents, the attorney for Kepner’s stepmother told the court Thursday that, immediately after the incident on the cruise ship, the stepbrother was “hospitalized.” He has since been released from the hospital and is now living with a relative of the mother and receiving counseling, the lawyer said.  The lawyer did not explain the reason for the hospitalization.

“The biggest question that I want answered is the why. And that’s the answer that I don’t know if we’ll ever get,” Jeffrey Kepner said.

Along with the pain of the unknown, the grandparents said, has also come the feeling they’ve lost not one, but two kids they cared for.

“I now know how she died. It helps a little bit, but it’s not going to bring Anna back,” Barbara Kepner said. “No matter what we find out, no matter what they tell us, it’s not going to bring either one of these children back.” 

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