Burden of Proof: Luigi Mangione, from ABC Audio - Infamous

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A
Hey listeners. Vanessa here. I'm sharing something special with you this week and it's from our friends at ABC Audio and 2020. This comes from their new podcast, Burden of Proof Luigi Mangione. So on September 8, Luigi Mangione will be in a Manhattan courtroom standing trial for the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was shot dead in New York City in December 2024. So in this five part podcast series, ABC News legal analyst Brian Buckmire examines this case. It captivated the country. And he explores how Thompson's murder affected the conversation around healthcare in America. You've likely heard of Brian Buckmire before because he previously covered the case of Sean Diddy Combs in season one of this show, Bad the Case Against Diddy. Now he's back covering another high profile case that has obsessed the American public. Whatever you feel or think you know about the case of Luigi Mangione and Brian Thompson, this podcast will make you think more critically. Keep listening to hear episode one and if you like it, follow Burden of Proof Luigi Mangione on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Apple Podcasts by subscribing to 2020 True Crime Plus. Again, that's burden of Proof Luigi Mangione. Now here's the episode.
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What is the address of Your emergency?
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It's December 9, 2024 in Altoona, Pennsylvania, a small town between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg.
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It's not really an emergency. I just, I'm a manager at Plank Road McDonald's out here on the Boulevard.
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A McDonald's manager says there guy eating a hash brown and steak McMuffin in the corner of her restaurant. He's sitting by the bathroom wearing a tan beanie and a blue medical mask.
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I have a customer here that some other customers were suspicious of, that he looks like the CEO shooter from New York.
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Okay, the CEO shooter from New York. The one whose face has been all over the news for five days ever since he allegedly shot and killed an executive in midtown Manhattan. She says she's not sure it's him, but she's calling it in anyway because she says customers keep bringing it up to her.
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So they're just really upset and they're like coming to me. And I was like, well, I can't approach them, you know, no, of course not. I have to try to calm them down a little bit. And I'm like, guys, it's kind of hard to tell with his eyes and his eyebrows. I was like, I don't know what to do here, guys. You're fine. You're fine.
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Less than five minutes into the call, the operator tells the manager that police officers have been notified. Two patrolmen are on the their way to the plank road McDonald's.
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Just keep an eye on him. If he leaves, just give us a call back and let us know. Okay? Alrighty. Will do. All right. Thank you. Thanks. Bye. Bye. Bye.
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When Patrolman Joseph Detweiler gets the call to respond to the McDonald's, he's also skeptical. Someone snacking on a McDonald's sandwich in Detweiler's small town. He thinks, no way this guy's the CEO's shooter. In fact, he is so sure, he says he makes a bet with his supervisor.
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If it really turns out to be the guy wanted for murder in New York, I'll buy you a hoagie at your favorite sandwich shop.
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That's my colleague, Aaron Katerski, chief investigative correspondent at ABC News. He's been following this case closely from the very beginning. In state court, he heard officers testify about the McDonald's call. Officer Detweiler, a veteran on the force, said he spent the morning driving around Altoona with rookie cop Tyler Fry. Detweiler was training Frey in traffic stops when they got the call. They arrived at the McDonald's around 9:29am it was decked out for the holidays.
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The Christmas tree painted on the window matched the golden arches. There was Christmas music playing in the background.
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We reviewed body camera footage from when the officers first walk in. And if you listen closely, you can hear that Christmas music. As the officers walk inside, you can see touch screens for self checkout, garland decorating the registers and signs for $5 meal deals. The officers head past the registers and booths straight to the back corner of
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the restaurant, an area by the restroom where there's a lone individual with a mask against a white subway tile wall.
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There's a brown McDonald's bag and a napkin on the table in front of him. Detwiler asks the customer to pull down his mask.
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Yeah, sure.
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Appreciate it.
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Thank you.
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Okay, thanks. The man pulls down his mask and leaves it just under his ch. He's looking up at Detwiler from the metal restaurant chair as he fiddles with the mask loop around his ear.
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And he testified that almost immediately he recognized him as the individual wanted for the murder of Brian Thompson in New York City.
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The man tells the officers his name is Mark.
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B
Mark what?
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Rosario.
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Rosario.
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Someone called.
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They thought you were suspicious. Did you have your IV on you?
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Yes.
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Thanks.
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He hands him a driver's license. It says he's Mark Rosario from Maplewood, New Jersey. Please call the IDN to dispatch and establish. It's a fake. And this man isn't Mark Rosario from Maplewood, New Jersey. But you already knew that, didn't you? The man sitting up against that subway tile wall is identified by authorities as Luigi Mangioni, the man accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York City sidewalk just five days earlier. Police and prosecutors say Mangione's their guy. He faces charges in both New York state and federal court. Mangione says he's innocent. People have all kinds of opinions about this alleged killer. Is he a cold blooded murderer or a hero vigilante? But we're going to start at the very beginning of this story. Before there was talk of heroes or villains, before this case threw the spotlight onto America's broken health care industry, before most people knew the names Brian Thompson or Luigi Mangione. We're going back to when this was just about finding a gunman who vanished in the middle of Manhattan. From ABC Audio In 2020, I'm Brian Buckmire, an attorney and ABC News legal anal and this is Burden of Proof. Luigi Mangione. Episode one, Christmas Time in Altoona. It was the morning of December 4, 2024. Preparations were underway for the annual Christmas tree lighting in Rockefeller Center. Millions of tourists were streaming in from around the country and and the world. Just a few blocks away, UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, which is the biggest health insurer in the country, was holding an investors conference at the Midtown Manhattan Hilton. Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was in town from Minnesota to attend. Meanwhile, police say a man at a youth hostel on the Upper west side of Manhattan was getting ready to commit murder. And by the way, what you're about to hear is based on law enforcement's sequence of events. After examining hours of surveillance footage and leapfrogging from camera to camera across New York City, they say they've pieced together the whereabouts of this man on this day in 2024, here's Aaron Katerski again.
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It's about 5:30 in the morning, before dawn.
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Surveillance footage shows that the man leaves the hostel, gets on an E bike and rides downtown. He arrives at the Hilton hotel's north entrance. Eleven minutes later, he's at West 54th street between 6th and 7th Avenue.
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He's seen walking, seemingly talking on a cell phone. He goes to Starbucks where he buys a water and a granola bar, a
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Kind bar, police say to be Specific. The details matter here.
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And then eventually, he circles around back toward the Hilton Hotel. And there is where police say he was lying in wait for his target.
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He allegedly lingers outside, masked, wearing a black hooded jacket and a distinctive gray backpack. What happens next will be captured on surveillance cameras, released to the public and played all over the news. At 6:44am, Brian Thompson comes out of the hotel where he was staying wearing a crisp blue suit. He crosses 6th Avenue toward the Hilton, where he's set to present in about an hour. Why is he leaving so early? We don't know. Maria Kramer reports on crime and the NYPD for the New York Times and covered this case from the start.
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He's all by himself, does not seem to be aware that he's terrible danger.
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Up to this point, the masked man has been ignoring everyone passing by him on the street.
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But it's at that moment that he fixates on Brian Thompson and crosses the street, steps out from behind a car, pulls up a weapon.
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He aims at Brian Thompson's back as a CEO is walking away from him and fires. The gun seems to jam, but the shooter appears to clear the malfunctions. In total, he fires at his victim three times from about 10 or 12ft
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away, striking him in the calf and striking him in the back. And Brian Thompson barely has time to whirl around to see what's happened when he collapses on the sidewalk, crumbling against a wall nearby.
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It's still early in the morning. There are only a few people out on the street, but in the surveillance footage, you can see one woman on the sidewalk. She sees the shooting and bolts, unharmed.
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The gunman, however, just seems very calm, very composed, and he walks towards Brian Thompson, who's now dying and bleeding on the sidewalk, and appears to fire his gun again. And then he runs across the street.
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It was a brazen assassination style killing,
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and this happened on an avenue of fancy hotels and banks right in the heart of New York City. Right by Radio City Music hall and Rockefeller center, right by Broadway's glitzy theaters and Fifth Avenue's designer stores like Gucci, Coach and Chanel. Now it's a race against the clock for emergency personnel to respond to the scene, for the police to investigate, and for the shooter to not get away.
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As soon as the shots were fired, the killer escapes 54th street through an alleyway, a short alleyway onto West 55th street, and somewhere hops on a bicycle, an E bike stashed somewhere nearby.
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While the killer is fleeing, police call in the shooting over the radio. Confines of Midtown north getting unconfirmed shots
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fired, possible person shot having in the Americas.
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Police are on the scene. By 6:48am Officers tend to Thompson until an ambulance arrives. Eight minutes later, they rush Thompson to a nearby hospital. At the same time, surveillance footage shows the gunman riding into Central park just six blocks away.
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And from there, the trail goes cold. Because as many cameras as there are covering New York City streets, there are not as many in Central Park. And so his trail goes a bit cold until he's seen exiting the park on the bike and pedaling in the Upper west side of Manhattan.
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From there, things unfold quickly.
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By 7am the suspect is seen ditching the bike, according to police. And at 7:04 he's in a cab heading uptown. And police say he was headed to the bus terminal by the George Washington Bridge.
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By 7:12am, Brian Thompson is pronounced dead at Mount Sinai West Hospital. In a city full of cameras and people and subways, how could someone kill a CEO in the middle of Midtown Manhattan, then just disappear? Where could he have gone? By the time most people are waking up and getting ready to head to work, a national manhunt is underway. The NYPD will work with the FBI and eventually members of the small but now famous Altoona Police Department in Pennsylvania. Over the course of the search, officers will deploy drones, K9 units and scuba divers. They'll pour over surveillance footage from across Manhattan. They'll sort through hundreds of tips from the public, all to find one man. Brian Thompson was a 50 year old corporate executive from Minnesota. In one of the widely circulated pictures of him, he's wearing a light blue collared shirt under a quarter zip black sweater. He's got a closely trimmed beard with some specks of gray on his chin. He was a husband and a father of two. Why would someone shoot him on a midtown street? The NYPD police commissioners said from the start that it was a deliberate assassination. I want to be clear at this time. Every indication is that this was a premeditated, pre planned targeted attack. Thompson wasn't just any CEO. He was an executive at a health insurance company and one of the biggest companies in the United States. The police cycled through lots of potential theories on the shooter's motive. Was it a vendetta against Brian Thompson personally? Did he owe people money? Was it a drug thing, an alcohol thing?
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The police determine there's none of that.
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That's chief investigative reporter Josh Margolin, who was also following this investigation for ABC News.
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It looks to them in the earliest hours that this is something having to do with UnitedHealthcare. Now, they didn't know if it was going to be some sort of a grudge against the company by somebody who, you know, was an insurance customer, or maybe it was somebody inside the company who had been denied a promotion or some sort of a workplace thing. Cause that happens also. But they felt confident that this was going to be something associated with Brian Thompson for his workplace.
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And that's because of an early clue police say they found at the crime scene.
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At the scene, we recover three live 9 millimeter rounds and three discharged 9 millimeter shell casings.
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Bullets and shell casings. Here's Aaron Katerski again.
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There were words written in Sharpie on each of them. Delay, deny. The pose one word on each shell casing that had been meticulously handwritten. And instantly police believed that was meant to send a message.
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Delay, deny. Depose words used by insurance critics to describe how companies avoid paying claims. The words also echo the title of a book. Delay, deny why insurance companies don't pay claims and what you can do about it. Maria Kramer, the New York Times reporter, says police determine the message on these shell casings seemed like it was left there by a person with an ideology.
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The police have a sense that the person who has done this has a problem with corporate America, specifically the health care industry. This is motivated very much by who Brian Thompson was, maybe not as a person, but certainly what he represented as an industry leader.
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In addition to those shell casings, investigators find a cell phone, a water bottle, and a kind bar wrapper at the scene. They lift DNA and fingerprints, hoping to identify the shooter, but they don't get any hits. They also examine the shooter's demeanor and method. Could he be a hitman? Ultimately, they reject that theory.
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First of all, they noticed how far away the shooter was from Brian Thompson. Detectives were saying to us that if this had been somebody who was really a trained assassin, he wouldn't have fired from 10 or 12ft away. He would have fired from 5 or 7ft away. He also, not to be gruesome about it, but he took off before he made sure that his victim was dead. And trained assassins would not do that. Like you see in the movies, they're gonna make sure that they put the final kill shot into the victim. And that didn't happen.
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Also, Josh points out, according to experts, the killer was too sloppy to be a hired hitman. There were too many things left at the scene, things that could have been traced back to him. A hired assassin wouldn't do that. Authorities also look for clues in the grainy CCTV footage of the shooting. The murder weapon looks to authorities like a really rare gun. So they look up recent sales of this type of gun and spot a sale at a Connecticut gun store. But that lead doesn't go anywhere either. As the days go on, police turn to the public to help identify the killer. The day after the shooting, they start releasing photos of the gunman from around the city. We're encouraging New Yorkers to go about
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their daily lives and their daily business,
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but to be alert. We put the picture out.
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You're putting the picture out.
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We want people to take a look if they see anything suspicious.
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If they hear anything suspicious, we ask them to call 911 out to our detectives.
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There are two pictures from the Starbucks in Midtown taken right before the shooting. The man with his hood over his head, that distinctive gray backpack over his shoulders, and a mask across his face. There's another two pictures of the suspect getting into a cab. His distinct eyes and thick eyebrows are visible above his medical mask. And then there are two photos from the hostel where he was allegedly staying for a few days before the shooting. He's still got his hood on in these pictures, but you can see his whole face. A young face, square jaw, neutral in one, smiling in the other. This moment when he was checking into the hostel is the only time we see him unguarded, the only time he took his mask down, according to police. Some people online speculate he was smiling because he had been flirting with the clerk behind the hostel counter. Others think he was just obliging her, checking his id. When the photos are released, people on the Internet take notice. They say he's a little easy on the eyes. They compare him to Jake Gyllenhaal and Zayn Malik. Oh, my God.
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He's fit.
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He's fit.
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He's fit.
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Call everybody back in right now.
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He's attractive. He's attractive.
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He's attractive. Some people online seem to revel not just in the suspect's handsomeness, but in the murder itself. Let's see what the comments have to say. Is the hospital in network? Did he really need to go to the er?
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It's not covered.
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Why didn't he try urgent care? Sending prior authorization, denied claims, collections and
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prayers to his family.
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My condolences are out of network. Unless you about to raise everybody's medical debt or give us universal health care, you are not finding this. Mother, promise you that. Instead of helping law enforcement hunt for the shooter, some people seem to be rooting for him to get away.
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You have this whole community on social media and on the Internet that's out there saying they don't want the suspect caught. This explosion of sarcasm they're talking about, he went that away. He went that away. There are people who are saying, I'll hide the guy. I'm him. I'm gonna help him on the run.
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The Altoona McDonald's eventually got swept up in all of this. It was flooded with one star Yelp reviews about employees talking too much. One person wrote, more like Narc Donald's. While things unfold online on the ground, officers continue their sprawling search for the suspect.
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NYPD deploys an army to Manhattan. They have cops all over the crime scene, in the area around the crime scene, going door to door, talking to people, trying to get video. You have cops by the hostel where he stayed. You have cops uptown around the area where he comes out of the park and he's seen on the bike. You have scuba divers in Central park diving looking for the bike. Maybe he ditched it into the lake. You have drones overhead trying to see what they can tell. Is there something over the park, Is there something on the street.
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Two days after the shooting, they find something by the Central park bandshell. A gray backpack. It looks like the one the shooter is wearing in the surveillance footage from outside the Hilton.
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And that backpack included a Tommy Hilfiger jacket and Monopoly money. And the play money, to detectives, seemed like some kind of message the killer was trying to send, literally toying with investigators. Play money.
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There's no helpful evidence, nothing tying anyone to the crime, just the Monopoly money. Like something straight out of a Batman comic with the Riddler leaving a stack of play money behind. Police are also trying to figure out where the suspect might have fled. They only learn later that he did not leave from the George Washington Bridge uptown bus terminal, that he actually went back downtown on the subway to Penn Station, about seven miles away.
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Penn Station is one of the busiest places in New York. You've got trains going to Washington, D.C. boston, Philadelphia.
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But in the early days of the manhunt, investigators think if they can figure out where the gunman came from, they can figure out where he went. So they say they rewind surveillance footage all the way back to 10 days before the shooting. And when they do that, they see the gunman arriving in New York through the Port Authority Bus Terminal. His Greyhound bus originated in Atlanta. The first thing he did when he arrived, according to police, was go straight to the Hilton to, quote, case the joint. So law enforcement fans out all along the bus route starting in Atlanta.
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They sent police to every single jurisdiction along the way. 13 stops coming up to New York. And they wanted to find out, did anybody see him? When did he get on, when did he get off? Did he say anything to anybody from that search?
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The police tell ABC News privately they had two possible persons of interest, but they didn't end up arresting either of those people.
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Turns out the police really weren't any closer to catching the shooter than they had been.
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No arrest is made. The manhunt continues. The NYPD offers a $10,000 reward. Then the FBI joins in and offers a $50,000 reward. Hundreds of tips come in, but they're no help. One day passes, two days, three, four, five. Still no arrest over the weekend. Saturday Night Live pokes fun at the reactions to the shooting.
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The guy was murdered in cold blood, and the two main reactions were, yeah, well, health care stinks. And also, girl, that shooter hot.
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And pokes fun at the ongoing search for the shooter. Josh Margolin says that after five or six days pass in a search like this, police fear that the hunt might not end until the suspect makes a mistake or they get a lucky break. Well, on the sixth day, they do get a lucky break. That call from the McDonald's and Altoona, Pennsylvania. Five days after the murder, Officer Detwiler and Officer Fry are in the Altoona McDonald's. They're beginning to question the customer that the manager called about. The one we now know is Luigi Mangione. To officers at the time, Mangione wasn't Mangione yet. He was just a man at a fast food restaurant eating his breakfast. A man who allegedly handed over a fake license when officers asked for his id. You heard a brief body camera recording earlier in the episode, but the rest of the hour long encounter hasn't been released to the public yet. But lucky for us, Aaron Katerski was in court for a pretrial hearing where attorneys played and replayed the body camera video in its entirety over and over
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and over again, every angle from every officer that came to the McDonald's in response to this man sitting in the corner eating his breakfast.
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After the man handed over the Mark Rosario id, Officer Detweiler testified that something crucial happened, something that sort of sealed the deal on the officer's suspicion.
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There's a question that Detweiler asks the man, which is, have you ever been in New York? And at that point, the man falls silent and doesn't really answer the question.
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Court records say Mangione begins to shake. Watching the video in Court. Aaron didn't quite see it that way. He thought Mangione was more mellow than panicked. But he does agree Mangione fell silent,
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and that seemed to firm up the officer's suspicion that this is exactly who they're looking for.
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According to court documents, Detwiler asked Mangioni to put his hands on his head, and the officers frisk him before ordering him to sit back down. He's got a black backpack with him. Officers at this point move the backpack away from Mangione. And then at around 9:45 in the morning, about 15 minutes into the interaction, the officers establish his real identity.
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He says his name, and at first, none of the officers can quite get it. Luigi. Luigi. Luigi. How do you spell it? And then Mangioni. Mangi what? And then it's written down by Officer Fry in a small notebook you'd keep in your back pocket.
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It's then that officers read Mangione his Miranda warnings. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in court, etc. They place him under arrest. Handcuff and zip tie his wrist. And in an ironic twist, as Luigi
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Mangione is being formally placed under arrest, the speakers above are blaring Bing Crosby singing I'll Be Home for Christmas. I'll be home for Christmas.
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You can plan.
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And at that point, it becomes clear that Mangione will not be home for Christmas.
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Once police have a name Luigi Mangioni, they run it through their databases, and things accelerate. Officers search him again and find nothing.
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And then his backpack is moved a bit farther away from him as the officers call supervisors and start to figure out how to handle this guy.
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At this point, it's not just Detwiler and Fry dealing with Mangione. Lots of officers show up. Aaron says they're positioned near the restroom. Eventually, they're standing around Mangione, kind of filling in this whole corner where he's seated.
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And eventually, there are more than a dozen officers that come to the McDonald's and participate in one way or another,
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a substantial portion, nearly a fifth of the entire Altoona Police Department. Next, body camera footage shows that they search Mangione's backpack. They search him again, too, checking his jacket and frisking him, say defense attorneys.
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He's wearing multiple layers of clothing. Big puffy coat and then a thinner jacket, shirt undershirt. He's got several pairs of pants on. And one of the officers begins to search the backpack. And as she does, she pulls out a pair of. As she described it wet gray underwear. And wrapped in that article is a
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magazine ammunition, a loaded gun magazine wrapped in wet underwear. Plus, police say they found approximately $7,800 in cash in his wallet, along with some foreign currency and a passport. They say they searched the backpack right then and there without getting a warrant to make sure there wasn't a, quote, bomb or anything in here. For a guy who's surrounded by over a dozen cops getting searched and questioned, Mangioni appears to keep a pretty calm demeanor.
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He does seem calm, and at one point, as the officers are checking his id, even as they're arrayed around him, he carries on eating his breakfast and finishes the sandwich, wipes his mouth, crumples up the paper, collects his trash and puts it all in the bag.
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Eventually, Mangione gets transported to the Altoona police precinct and brought to an intake area. And let me tell you, as a defense attorney who's seen the intake process many, many times, in general, it's a pretty miserable scene. Your pockets get emptied, eventually there's some fingerprinting, photos get taken, and then you get put in a jail cell, that loud clanking, door closing behind you. But Mangione also went through another layer of search.
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What's done, the Altoona police said, per their protocol, is effectively a strip search. And so he is made to take off most of the layers of clothing and eventually all of it so they can do a thorough search of his person. And then they go through item by item in the backpack and place it all on a table.
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And what gets laid out on the table, police say, is really damning stuff.
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And those are the items that prosecutors now say prove the crime.
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A 9 millimeter handgun with a 3D printed receiver and a homemade silencer.
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There are other items that prosecutors are quite interested in, including scraps of paper where it appears Mangioni wrote notes to himself. Prosecutor says some of those notes indicated escape routes where there are crude maps drawn where you could get out of Pittsburgh or Columbus, Ohio, or something like that. There's also a note labeled to do list.
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According to court documents, the alleged to do list included notes to alter his appearance, change hat, shoes, pluck eyebrows, and bust a pen station. It also said keep momentum, break cam
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continuity, as if he knew there were cameras following his movements. And another telling bit of writing, especially to prosecutors, FBI slower overnight. And these were little reminders, perhaps to himself, the way prosecutors see it, to try and stay on the run and out of sight as long as possible.
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There were two other handwritten items that for police were bombshell pieces of evidence. One, the contents of a red hardcover notebook authorities say Mangioni used as his diary.
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The target is insurance. It checks every box was one phrase. There was another phrase he used to called the parasitic bean counter convention.
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The exact language was, what do you do? You whack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean counter convention. It's targeted, precise, and doesn't risk innocence. And two, a brief letter labeled to the feds. It references failures of the American healthcare system and says, quote, I do apologize for any strife or trauma, but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A judge has since determined that some of the items police say they found in Mangione's backpack will be inadmissible in court. Other items will be allowed. We'll get into all of that in a later episode. Back to December 2024. The Altoona Police department has got all of these items, but the murder didn't happen in their jurisdiction. They can't charge Mangione for something he allegedly did in New York. They can, however, charge him for crimes he allegedly committed in Pennsylvania. And that's exactly what they do. They charge him with forgery, carrying firearms without a license, possessing instruments of a crime, tampering with records and false identification. To authorities, Manjoni has pled not guilty to all of those charges.
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And they send word back to New York. We think we have your persons of interest.
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That's ABC's Josh Margolin.
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Again, the New York police in the middle of a rainstorm, they start racing from Manhattan west on the interstate to get out to Altoona, Pennsylvania through the morning. We start hearing that police think it looks good, that they're optimistic that this is the person they've been looking for. The mayor and the police commissioner have a press conference midday.
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Good afternoon.
[36:17]
E
And the mayor says that this is a strong person of interest.
[36:21]
C
Someone a McDonald's employee did. Something we ask every American to do. If you see something, say something. But most importantly, do something. The chief of detectives shares what police knew about their strong person of interest.
[36:37]
D
A man was taken into custody today at Altuda, Pennsylvania.
[36:40]
E
This morning, he has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione. He's a male, 26 years old. He was born and raised in Maryland. We know he have taught.
[36:50]
D
He has ties to San Francisco, California, and his last known address was Honolulu, Hawaii.
[36:56]
E
Soon.
[36:56]
C
Authorities also say there is no indication that Mangione was ever a customer of UnitedHealthcare, something the company confirmed. That's all police knew about Mangione back in the very early days of this case. But quickly Luigi Mangione became a household name and according to journalists and some people who have followed the story closely, a symbol.
[37:19]
D
What happened was that shooting really laid bare this wound in American culture.
[37:27]
A
They feel like this guy is standing up to a system and they're celebrating it.
[37:33]
C
How did a young man who friends say was brilliant and funny become the person prosecutors say he is? A cold blooded killer. Someone who planned and pulled off a daring public murder.
[37:47]
D
This kid that I knew from high school is now the most high profile killer allegedly in the country. It's so surreal.
[37:58]
C
And how did a well respected corporate executive who largely kept to himself become a victim of what police considered a targeted assassination?
[38:08]
A
It is unfair that one person, this man who's been murdered, is being held responsible in the public's eyes for the failings of an entire industry. And frankly, a system, a murder is a murder.
[38:23]
D
I cannot reconcile that there is such a thing as a just murder.
[38:30]
C
What put these two men on a collision course? What put them at the heart of a national frenzy far bigger than both of them? Burden of proof luigi mangione is a production of abc audio and 2020 hosted by me, brian buckmire. Produced by vika aronson and audrey mostek. Our lead producer is camille peterson. Edited by tracy samuelson. Music by evan viola. Mixing by bob mallory. Special thanks to katie dandas, sasha aslanian, michelle margulis, tanya simpson, aaron katerski, josh margolin, peter harolambus, jared kofsky, jake lefferman and katie maldoni. Josh cohan is our director of podcast programming. Eamon mcniff is our executive producer.

Summary6 min read

Infamous Podcast: "Burden of Proof: Luigi Mangione"

Episode 1: Christmas Time in Altoona
Original air date: August 10, 2026
From ABC Audio, produced by Campside Media / Sony Music Entertainment
Host: Brian Buckmire, with reporting by Aaron Katerski, Maria Kramer, and Josh Margolin

Episode Overview

This special episode features the premiere of ABC Audio's five-part series, "Burden of Proof: Luigi Mangione." The series examines the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in December 2024 and the subsequent national manhunt for his accused killer, Luigi Mangione. The story serves as a lens on American attitudes toward healthcare, vigilante justice, and public outrage, combining gripping investigative storytelling with analysis of the socio-political impact of the crime.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Altoona McDonald's Arrest

[01:33–03:10]

The story opens in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on December 9, 2024.
A McDonald’s manager calls police after customers suspect a man (later identified as Mangione) in the restaurant might be the "CEO shooter" from recent headlines.
Officers Detweiler and rookie Tyler Fry respond skeptically, with Detweiler even wagering, "If it really turns out to be the guy wanted for murder in New York, I'll buy you a hoagie at your favorite sandwich shop." [03:29, Aaron Katerski]
Body cam audio and a festive, everyday atmosphere (Christmas decorations and music) sharply contrast the gravity of the arrest.

Sequence of the Manhattan Murder

[07:30–12:39]

December 4, 2024: Brian Thompson attends an investors' conference at the Midtown Manhattan Hilton.
Law enforcement reconstructs the shooter’s morning using surveillance:
- The suspect leaves a youth hostel at 5:30am.
- Rides an E-bike downtown, purchases a granola bar ("the details matter here." [09:01]), and lurks outside the Hilton.
- At 6:44am, Thompson is ambushed. The killer, masked and calm, fires from behind with a gun that briefly jams, hitting Thompson in the calf and back.
- The shooter's composed demeanor is noted: “He walks towards Brian Thompson, who's now dying and bleeding on the sidewalk, and appears to fire his gun again. And then he runs across the street.” [11:00, Maria Kramer]
The murder takes place in an “avenue of fancy hotels and banks right in the heart of New York City.” [11:24]

The National Manhunt & Investigation

[12:39–26:52]

The NYPD and FBI launch a multi-state search using drones, K9 units, and hundreds of public tips.
Early clues at the scene:
- Shell casings with the words "Delay," "Deny," and "Depose" written in Sharpie—terms associated with insurance claim denials.
- “Delay, deny, depose… that was meant to send a message.” [16:27, Aaron Katerski]
A rare firearm, left items (cell phone, wrapper), and a gray backpack (eventually found in Central Park with Monopoly money inside) hint at both care and recklessness from the perpetrator.

Social Media’s Reaction

[19:15–21:45]

The public becomes obsessed with the case, creating memes about the suspect’s looks—likened to Zayn Malik and Jake Gyllenhaal—and making dark jokes about America’s healthcare system.
Sarcastic online comments demonstrate public resentment against insurance:
- “Is the hospital in network? Did he really need to go to the ER?… My condolences are out of network.” [21:00]
Some social media users openly root for the suspect to evade capture: “There are people who are saying, I'll hide the guy. I'm him. I'm gonna help him on the run.” [21:21, Josh Margolin]

The Capture in Altoona

[26:52–34:04]

The McDonald's police response becomes a pivotal moment:
- Mangione hands officers a fake ID (“Mark Rosario”).
- Officers grow suspicious after Mangione cannot confirm having been in New York and falls silent. (“At that point, the man falls silent and doesn't really answer the question.” [27:14, Katerski])
- His real identity is established, and he’s arrested as "I'll Be Home for Christmas" plays: “As Luigi Mangione is being formally placed under arrest, the speakers above are blaring Bing Crosby.” [28:50, Katerski]
- Police find a loaded magazine wrapped in wet underwear, $7,800 cash, foreign currency, and a passport in his backpack.
- He remains unusually calm: “He carries on eating his breakfast and finishes the sandwich, wipes his mouth, crumples up the paper, collects his trash and puts it all in the bag.” [31:27, Katerski]
- A partial strip search at the police station uncovers further items, including a 3D-printed handgun with silencer, maps of escape routes, and a diary calling the Hilton event "the annual parasitic bean counter convention." [34:17, Katerski]

Evidence and Symbolism

[34:04–36:55]

Key writings from Mangione discovered:
- "The target is insurance. It checks every box." [34:17, Katerski]
- In a letter: “I do apologize for any strife or trauma, but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.” [34:29, Buckmire]
Legal debate emerges: Some evidence is later ruled inadmissible.
Mangione is charged in Pennsylvania for gun and forgery offenses while the NYPD and New York prosecutors prepare for the murder indictment.

Shifting the Conversation: Social Implications

[36:55–38:29]

Authorities point out that Mangione had no known history with UnitedHealthcare.
The murder spotlights public animosity toward the healthcare industry and transforms Mangione into a symbol:
- “That shooting really laid bare this wound in American culture.” [37:19, Katerski]
- “They feel like this guy is standing up to a system and they're celebrating it.” [37:27, Host]
Unanswered questions loom: Was Mangione a vigilante or a cold-blooded killer? Was Thompson targeted for his industry, not his actions?
- “It is unfair that one person, this man who's been murdered, is being held responsible in the public's eyes for the failings of an entire industry. And frankly, a system, a murder is a murder.” [38:08]
- “I cannot reconcile that there is such a thing as a just murder.” [38:23, Katerski]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On public reaction to the suspect’s looks:
“He's fit… Call everybody back in right now. He's attractive. He's attractive.”
— [20:41–20:48, Katerski & Buckmire]
On the killer’s possible motive:
“Delay, deny, depose… instantly police believed that was meant to send a message.”
— [16:27, Katerski]
On the societal wound:
“That shooting really laid bare this wound in American culture.”
— [37:19, Katerski]
On the arrest scene:
“As Luigi Mangione is being formally placed under arrest, the speakers above are blaring Bing Crosby singing I'll Be Home for Christmas.”
— [28:50, Katerski]
From Mangione’s writings:
“The target is insurance. It checks every box.”
— [34:17, Katerski]
“What do you do? You whack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean counter convention. It's targeted, precise, and doesn't risk innocence.”
— [34:29, Buckmire]

Timestamps for Key Segments

McDonald's 911 call & Altoona arrest: [01:33–06:00]
Day of the Manhattan murder: [07:30–12:39]
Discovery of motive and coded messages: [16:10–17:56]
Social media reactions: [19:15–21:45]
Investigation and national manhunt: [22:04–26:52]
In-custody search and evidence found: [30:08–34:04]
Mangione’s writings and symbolism: [34:04–36:55]
Societal aftermath and questions raised: [36:55–38:29]

Conclusion

This episode intricately weaves the factual chronology of events, law enforcement tactics, public sentiment, and big national questions into a compelling narrative. The case of Luigi Mangione and Brian Thompson is not just about one murder, but about what happens when a high-profile crime exposes bitter truths about American healthcare, justice, and the media spectacle.

Listeners are left with profound questions:

Can an act of murder ever be separated from its context or motivation?
Who, or what, is truly on trial—the alleged killer, the system, or both?

If you enjoyed this episode, the full series "Burden of Proof: Luigi Mangione" is available wherever you get your podcasts.

Loading summary

Transcript145 lines

[00:00]
A
Hey listeners. Vanessa here. I'm sharing something special with you this week and it's from our friends at ABC Audio and 2020. This comes from their new podcast, Burden of Proof Luigi Mangione. So on September 8, Luigi Mangione will be in a Manhattan courtroom standing trial for the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was shot dead in New York City in December 2024. So in this five part podcast series, ABC News legal analyst Brian Buckmire examines this case. It captivated the country. And he explores how Thompson's murder affected the conversation around healthcare in America. You've likely heard of Brian Buckmire before because he previously covered the case of Sean Diddy Combs in season one of this show, Bad the Case Against Diddy. Now he's back covering another high profile case that has obsessed the American public. Whatever you feel or think you know about the case of Luigi Mangione and Brian Thompson, this podcast will make you think more critically. Keep listening to hear episode one and if you like it, follow Burden of Proof Luigi Mangione on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Apple Podcasts by subscribing to 2020 True Crime Plus. Again, that's burden of Proof Luigi Mangione. Now here's the episode.
[01:33]
B
What is the address of Your emergency?
[01:36]
C
It's December 9, 2024 in Altoona, Pennsylvania, a small town between Pittsburgh and Harrisburg.
[01:44]
B
It's not really an emergency. I just, I'm a manager at Plank Road McDonald's out here on the Boulevard.
[01:50]
C
A McDonald's manager says there guy eating a hash brown and steak McMuffin in the corner of her restaurant. He's sitting by the bathroom wearing a tan beanie and a blue medical mask.
[02:02]
B
I have a customer here that some other customers were suspicious of, that he looks like the CEO shooter from New York.
[02:10]
C
Okay, the CEO shooter from New York. The one whose face has been all over the news for five days ever since he allegedly shot and killed an executive in midtown Manhattan. She says she's not sure it's him, but she's calling it in anyway because she says customers keep bringing it up to her.
[02:30]
B
So they're just really upset and they're like coming to me. And I was like, well, I can't approach them, you know, no, of course not. I have to try to calm them down a little bit. And I'm like, guys, it's kind of hard to tell with his eyes and his eyebrows. I was like, I don't know what to do here, guys. You're fine. You're fine.
[02:48]
C
Less than five minutes into the call, the operator tells the manager that police officers have been notified. Two patrolmen are on the their way to the plank road McDonald's.
[02:58]
B
Just keep an eye on him. If he leaves, just give us a call back and let us know. Okay? Alrighty. Will do. All right. Thank you. Thanks. Bye. Bye. Bye.
[03:10]
C
When Patrolman Joseph Detweiler gets the call to respond to the McDonald's, he's also skeptical. Someone snacking on a McDonald's sandwich in Detweiler's small town. He thinks, no way this guy's the CEO's shooter. In fact, he is so sure, he says he makes a bet with his supervisor.
[03:30]
D
If it really turns out to be the guy wanted for murder in New York, I'll buy you a hoagie at your favorite sandwich shop.
[03:36]
C
That's my colleague, Aaron Katerski, chief investigative correspondent at ABC News. He's been following this case closely from the very beginning. In state court, he heard officers testify about the McDonald's call. Officer Detweiler, a veteran on the force, said he spent the morning driving around Altoona with rookie cop Tyler Fry. Detweiler was training Frey in traffic stops when they got the call. They arrived at the McDonald's around 9:29am it was decked out for the holidays.
[04:11]
D
The Christmas tree painted on the window matched the golden arches. There was Christmas music playing in the background.
[04:19]
C
We reviewed body camera footage from when the officers first walk in. And if you listen closely, you can hear that Christmas music. As the officers walk inside, you can see touch screens for self checkout, garland decorating the registers and signs for $5 meal deals. The officers head past the registers and booths straight to the back corner of
[04:46]
D
the restaurant, an area by the restroom where there's a lone individual with a mask against a white subway tile wall.
[04:57]
C
There's a brown McDonald's bag and a napkin on the table in front of him. Detwiler asks the customer to pull down his mask.
[05:07]
E
Yeah, sure.
[05:07]
C
Appreciate it.
[05:09]
B
Thank you.
[05:10]
C
Okay, thanks. The man pulls down his mask and leaves it just under his ch. He's looking up at Detwiler from the metal restaurant chair as he fiddles with the mask loop around his ear.
[05:24]
D
And he testified that almost immediately he recognized him as the individual wanted for the murder of Brian Thompson in New York City.
[05:34]
C
The man tells the officers his name is Mark.
[05:37]
B
Mark what?
[05:38]
C
Rosario.
[05:39]
E
Rosario.
[05:40]
B
Someone called.
[05:40]
C
They thought you were suspicious. Did you have your IV on you?
[05:45]
D
Yes.
[05:45]
B
Thanks.
[05:47]
C
He hands him a driver's license. It says he's Mark Rosario from Maplewood, New Jersey. Please call the IDN to dispatch and establish. It's a fake. And this man isn't Mark Rosario from Maplewood, New Jersey. But you already knew that, didn't you? The man sitting up against that subway tile wall is identified by authorities as Luigi Mangioni, the man accused of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York City sidewalk just five days earlier. Police and prosecutors say Mangione's their guy. He faces charges in both New York state and federal court. Mangione says he's innocent. People have all kinds of opinions about this alleged killer. Is he a cold blooded murderer or a hero vigilante? But we're going to start at the very beginning of this story. Before there was talk of heroes or villains, before this case threw the spotlight onto America's broken health care industry, before most people knew the names Brian Thompson or Luigi Mangione. We're going back to when this was just about finding a gunman who vanished in the middle of Manhattan. From ABC Audio In 2020, I'm Brian Buckmire, an attorney and ABC News legal anal and this is Burden of Proof. Luigi Mangione. Episode one, Christmas Time in Altoona. It was the morning of December 4, 2024. Preparations were underway for the annual Christmas tree lighting in Rockefeller Center. Millions of tourists were streaming in from around the country and and the world. Just a few blocks away, UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare, which is the biggest health insurer in the country, was holding an investors conference at the Midtown Manhattan Hilton. Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was in town from Minnesota to attend. Meanwhile, police say a man at a youth hostel on the Upper west side of Manhattan was getting ready to commit murder. And by the way, what you're about to hear is based on law enforcement's sequence of events. After examining hours of surveillance footage and leapfrogging from camera to camera across New York City, they say they've pieced together the whereabouts of this man on this day in 2024, here's Aaron Katerski again.
[08:33]
D
It's about 5:30 in the morning, before dawn.
[08:37]
C
Surveillance footage shows that the man leaves the hostel, gets on an E bike and rides downtown. He arrives at the Hilton hotel's north entrance. Eleven minutes later, he's at West 54th street between 6th and 7th Avenue.
[08:53]
D
He's seen walking, seemingly talking on a cell phone. He goes to Starbucks where he buys a water and a granola bar, a
[09:02]
C
Kind bar, police say to be Specific. The details matter here.
[09:06]
D
And then eventually, he circles around back toward the Hilton Hotel. And there is where police say he was lying in wait for his target.
[09:16]
C
He allegedly lingers outside, masked, wearing a black hooded jacket and a distinctive gray backpack. What happens next will be captured on surveillance cameras, released to the public and played all over the news. At 6:44am, Brian Thompson comes out of the hotel where he was staying wearing a crisp blue suit. He crosses 6th Avenue toward the Hilton, where he's set to present in about an hour. Why is he leaving so early? We don't know. Maria Kramer reports on crime and the NYPD for the New York Times and covered this case from the start.
[09:57]
F
He's all by himself, does not seem to be aware that he's terrible danger.
[10:02]
C
Up to this point, the masked man has been ignoring everyone passing by him on the street.
[10:07]
F
But it's at that moment that he fixates on Brian Thompson and crosses the street, steps out from behind a car, pulls up a weapon.
[10:18]
C
He aims at Brian Thompson's back as a CEO is walking away from him and fires. The gun seems to jam, but the shooter appears to clear the malfunctions. In total, he fires at his victim three times from about 10 or 12ft
[10:35]
F
away, striking him in the calf and striking him in the back. And Brian Thompson barely has time to whirl around to see what's happened when he collapses on the sidewalk, crumbling against a wall nearby.
[10:49]
C
It's still early in the morning. There are only a few people out on the street, but in the surveillance footage, you can see one woman on the sidewalk. She sees the shooting and bolts, unharmed.
[11:00]
F
The gunman, however, just seems very calm, very composed, and he walks towards Brian Thompson, who's now dying and bleeding on the sidewalk, and appears to fire his gun again. And then he runs across the street.
[11:19]
D
It was a brazen assassination style killing,
[11:24]
C
and this happened on an avenue of fancy hotels and banks right in the heart of New York City. Right by Radio City Music hall and Rockefeller center, right by Broadway's glitzy theaters and Fifth Avenue's designer stores like Gucci, Coach and Chanel. Now it's a race against the clock for emergency personnel to respond to the scene, for the police to investigate, and for the shooter to not get away.
[11:56]
D
As soon as the shots were fired, the killer escapes 54th street through an alleyway, a short alleyway onto West 55th street, and somewhere hops on a bicycle, an E bike stashed somewhere nearby.
[12:11]
C
While the killer is fleeing, police call in the shooting over the radio. Confines of Midtown north getting unconfirmed shots
[12:18]
B
fired, possible person shot having in the Americas.
[12:21]
C
Police are on the scene. By 6:48am Officers tend to Thompson until an ambulance arrives. Eight minutes later, they rush Thompson to a nearby hospital. At the same time, surveillance footage shows the gunman riding into Central park just six blocks away.
[12:39]
D
And from there, the trail goes cold. Because as many cameras as there are covering New York City streets, there are not as many in Central Park. And so his trail goes a bit cold until he's seen exiting the park on the bike and pedaling in the Upper west side of Manhattan.
[13:00]
C
From there, things unfold quickly.
[13:03]
D
By 7am the suspect is seen ditching the bike, according to police. And at 7:04 he's in a cab heading uptown. And police say he was headed to the bus terminal by the George Washington Bridge.
[13:19]
C
By 7:12am, Brian Thompson is pronounced dead at Mount Sinai West Hospital. In a city full of cameras and people and subways, how could someone kill a CEO in the middle of Midtown Manhattan, then just disappear? Where could he have gone? By the time most people are waking up and getting ready to head to work, a national manhunt is underway. The NYPD will work with the FBI and eventually members of the small but now famous Altoona Police Department in Pennsylvania. Over the course of the search, officers will deploy drones, K9 units and scuba divers. They'll pour over surveillance footage from across Manhattan. They'll sort through hundreds of tips from the public, all to find one man. Brian Thompson was a 50 year old corporate executive from Minnesota. In one of the widely circulated pictures of him, he's wearing a light blue collared shirt under a quarter zip black sweater. He's got a closely trimmed beard with some specks of gray on his chin. He was a husband and a father of two. Why would someone shoot him on a midtown street? The NYPD police commissioners said from the start that it was a deliberate assassination. I want to be clear at this time. Every indication is that this was a premeditated, pre planned targeted attack. Thompson wasn't just any CEO. He was an executive at a health insurance company and one of the biggest companies in the United States. The police cycled through lots of potential theories on the shooter's motive. Was it a vendetta against Brian Thompson personally? Did he owe people money? Was it a drug thing, an alcohol thing?
[15:29]
E
The police determine there's none of that.
[15:32]
C
That's chief investigative reporter Josh Margolin, who was also following this investigation for ABC News.
[15:38]
E
It looks to them in the earliest hours that this is something having to do with UnitedHealthcare. Now, they didn't know if it was going to be some sort of a grudge against the company by somebody who, you know, was an insurance customer, or maybe it was somebody inside the company who had been denied a promotion or some sort of a workplace thing. Cause that happens also. But they felt confident that this was going to be something associated with Brian Thompson for his workplace.
[16:10]
C
And that's because of an early clue police say they found at the crime scene.
[16:15]
D
At the scene, we recover three live 9 millimeter rounds and three discharged 9 millimeter shell casings.
[16:23]
C
Bullets and shell casings. Here's Aaron Katerski again.
[16:27]
D
There were words written in Sharpie on each of them. Delay, deny. The pose one word on each shell casing that had been meticulously handwritten. And instantly police believed that was meant to send a message.
[16:47]
C
Delay, deny. Depose words used by insurance critics to describe how companies avoid paying claims. The words also echo the title of a book. Delay, deny why insurance companies don't pay claims and what you can do about it. Maria Kramer, the New York Times reporter, says police determine the message on these shell casings seemed like it was left there by a person with an ideology.
[17:15]
F
The police have a sense that the person who has done this has a problem with corporate America, specifically the health care industry. This is motivated very much by who Brian Thompson was, maybe not as a person, but certainly what he represented as an industry leader.
[17:33]
C
In addition to those shell casings, investigators find a cell phone, a water bottle, and a kind bar wrapper at the scene. They lift DNA and fingerprints, hoping to identify the shooter, but they don't get any hits. They also examine the shooter's demeanor and method. Could he be a hitman? Ultimately, they reject that theory.
[17:56]
E
First of all, they noticed how far away the shooter was from Brian Thompson. Detectives were saying to us that if this had been somebody who was really a trained assassin, he wouldn't have fired from 10 or 12ft away. He would have fired from 5 or 7ft away. He also, not to be gruesome about it, but he took off before he made sure that his victim was dead. And trained assassins would not do that. Like you see in the movies, they're gonna make sure that they put the final kill shot into the victim. And that didn't happen.
[18:29]
C
Also, Josh points out, according to experts, the killer was too sloppy to be a hired hitman. There were too many things left at the scene, things that could have been traced back to him. A hired assassin wouldn't do that. Authorities also look for clues in the grainy CCTV footage of the shooting. The murder weapon looks to authorities like a really rare gun. So they look up recent sales of this type of gun and spot a sale at a Connecticut gun store. But that lead doesn't go anywhere either. As the days go on, police turn to the public to help identify the killer. The day after the shooting, they start releasing photos of the gunman from around the city. We're encouraging New Yorkers to go about
[19:16]
D
their daily lives and their daily business,
[19:18]
C
but to be alert. We put the picture out.
[19:20]
D
You're putting the picture out.
[19:21]
C
We want people to take a look if they see anything suspicious.
[19:24]
D
If they hear anything suspicious, we ask them to call 911 out to our detectives.
[19:29]
C
There are two pictures from the Starbucks in Midtown taken right before the shooting. The man with his hood over his head, that distinctive gray backpack over his shoulders, and a mask across his face. There's another two pictures of the suspect getting into a cab. His distinct eyes and thick eyebrows are visible above his medical mask. And then there are two photos from the hostel where he was allegedly staying for a few days before the shooting. He's still got his hood on in these pictures, but you can see his whole face. A young face, square jaw, neutral in one, smiling in the other. This moment when he was checking into the hostel is the only time we see him unguarded, the only time he took his mask down, according to police. Some people online speculate he was smiling because he had been flirting with the clerk behind the hostel counter. Others think he was just obliging her, checking his id. When the photos are released, people on the Internet take notice. They say he's a little easy on the eyes. They compare him to Jake Gyllenhaal and Zayn Malik. Oh, my God.
[20:40]
D
He's fit.
[20:41]
C
He's fit.
[20:42]
D
He's fit.
[20:43]
C
Call everybody back in right now.
[20:46]
D
He's attractive. He's attractive.
[20:48]
C
He's attractive. Some people online seem to revel not just in the suspect's handsomeness, but in the murder itself. Let's see what the comments have to say. Is the hospital in network? Did he really need to go to the er?
[21:00]
B
It's not covered.
[21:01]
C
Why didn't he try urgent care? Sending prior authorization, denied claims, collections and
[21:05]
B
prayers to his family.
[21:06]
C
My condolences are out of network. Unless you about to raise everybody's medical debt or give us universal health care, you are not finding this. Mother, promise you that. Instead of helping law enforcement hunt for the shooter, some people seem to be rooting for him to get away.
[21:22]
E
You have this whole community on social media and on the Internet that's out there saying they don't want the suspect caught. This explosion of sarcasm they're talking about, he went that away. He went that away. There are people who are saying, I'll hide the guy. I'm him. I'm gonna help him on the run.
[21:45]
C
The Altoona McDonald's eventually got swept up in all of this. It was flooded with one star Yelp reviews about employees talking too much. One person wrote, more like Narc Donald's. While things unfold online on the ground, officers continue their sprawling search for the suspect.
[22:04]
E
NYPD deploys an army to Manhattan. They have cops all over the crime scene, in the area around the crime scene, going door to door, talking to people, trying to get video. You have cops by the hostel where he stayed. You have cops uptown around the area where he comes out of the park and he's seen on the bike. You have scuba divers in Central park diving looking for the bike. Maybe he ditched it into the lake. You have drones overhead trying to see what they can tell. Is there something over the park, Is there something on the street.
[22:38]
C
Two days after the shooting, they find something by the Central park bandshell. A gray backpack. It looks like the one the shooter is wearing in the surveillance footage from outside the Hilton.
[22:49]
D
And that backpack included a Tommy Hilfiger jacket and Monopoly money. And the play money, to detectives, seemed like some kind of message the killer was trying to send, literally toying with investigators. Play money.
[23:07]
C
There's no helpful evidence, nothing tying anyone to the crime, just the Monopoly money. Like something straight out of a Batman comic with the Riddler leaving a stack of play money behind. Police are also trying to figure out where the suspect might have fled. They only learn later that he did not leave from the George Washington Bridge uptown bus terminal, that he actually went back downtown on the subway to Penn Station, about seven miles away.
[23:39]
F
Penn Station is one of the busiest places in New York. You've got trains going to Washington, D.C. boston, Philadelphia.
[23:48]
C
But in the early days of the manhunt, investigators think if they can figure out where the gunman came from, they can figure out where he went. So they say they rewind surveillance footage all the way back to 10 days before the shooting. And when they do that, they see the gunman arriving in New York through the Port Authority Bus Terminal. His Greyhound bus originated in Atlanta. The first thing he did when he arrived, according to police, was go straight to the Hilton to, quote, case the joint. So law enforcement fans out all along the bus route starting in Atlanta.
[24:25]
E
They sent police to every single jurisdiction along the way. 13 stops coming up to New York. And they wanted to find out, did anybody see him? When did he get on, when did he get off? Did he say anything to anybody from that search?
[24:38]
C
The police tell ABC News privately they had two possible persons of interest, but they didn't end up arresting either of those people.
[24:46]
E
Turns out the police really weren't any closer to catching the shooter than they had been.
[24:54]
C
No arrest is made. The manhunt continues. The NYPD offers a $10,000 reward. Then the FBI joins in and offers a $50,000 reward. Hundreds of tips come in, but they're no help. One day passes, two days, three, four, five. Still no arrest over the weekend. Saturday Night Live pokes fun at the reactions to the shooting.
[25:23]
D
The guy was murdered in cold blood, and the two main reactions were, yeah, well, health care stinks. And also, girl, that shooter hot.
[25:33]
C
And pokes fun at the ongoing search for the shooter. Josh Margolin says that after five or six days pass in a search like this, police fear that the hunt might not end until the suspect makes a mistake or they get a lucky break. Well, on the sixth day, they do get a lucky break. That call from the McDonald's and Altoona, Pennsylvania. Five days after the murder, Officer Detwiler and Officer Fry are in the Altoona McDonald's. They're beginning to question the customer that the manager called about. The one we now know is Luigi Mangione. To officers at the time, Mangione wasn't Mangione yet. He was just a man at a fast food restaurant eating his breakfast. A man who allegedly handed over a fake license when officers asked for his id. You heard a brief body camera recording earlier in the episode, but the rest of the hour long encounter hasn't been released to the public yet. But lucky for us, Aaron Katerski was in court for a pretrial hearing where attorneys played and replayed the body camera video in its entirety over and over
[26:52]
D
and over again, every angle from every officer that came to the McDonald's in response to this man sitting in the corner eating his breakfast.
[27:04]
C
After the man handed over the Mark Rosario id, Officer Detweiler testified that something crucial happened, something that sort of sealed the deal on the officer's suspicion.
[27:14]
D
There's a question that Detweiler asks the man, which is, have you ever been in New York? And at that point, the man falls silent and doesn't really answer the question.
[27:27]
C
Court records say Mangione begins to shake. Watching the video in Court. Aaron didn't quite see it that way. He thought Mangione was more mellow than panicked. But he does agree Mangione fell silent,
[27:41]
D
and that seemed to firm up the officer's suspicion that this is exactly who they're looking for.
[27:48]
C
According to court documents, Detwiler asked Mangioni to put his hands on his head, and the officers frisk him before ordering him to sit back down. He's got a black backpack with him. Officers at this point move the backpack away from Mangione. And then at around 9:45 in the morning, about 15 minutes into the interaction, the officers establish his real identity.
[28:14]
D
He says his name, and at first, none of the officers can quite get it. Luigi. Luigi. Luigi. How do you spell it? And then Mangioni. Mangi what? And then it's written down by Officer Fry in a small notebook you'd keep in your back pocket.
[28:31]
C
It's then that officers read Mangione his Miranda warnings. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in court, etc. They place him under arrest. Handcuff and zip tie his wrist. And in an ironic twist, as Luigi
[28:50]
D
Mangione is being formally placed under arrest, the speakers above are blaring Bing Crosby singing I'll Be Home for Christmas. I'll be home for Christmas.
[29:07]
C
You can plan.
[29:11]
D
And at that point, it becomes clear that Mangione will not be home for Christmas.
[29:18]
C
Once police have a name Luigi Mangioni, they run it through their databases, and things accelerate. Officers search him again and find nothing.
[29:30]
D
And then his backpack is moved a bit farther away from him as the officers call supervisors and start to figure out how to handle this guy.
[29:42]
C
At this point, it's not just Detwiler and Fry dealing with Mangione. Lots of officers show up. Aaron says they're positioned near the restroom. Eventually, they're standing around Mangione, kind of filling in this whole corner where he's seated.
[29:57]
D
And eventually, there are more than a dozen officers that come to the McDonald's and participate in one way or another,
[30:08]
C
a substantial portion, nearly a fifth of the entire Altoona Police Department. Next, body camera footage shows that they search Mangione's backpack. They search him again, too, checking his jacket and frisking him, say defense attorneys.
[30:25]
D
He's wearing multiple layers of clothing. Big puffy coat and then a thinner jacket, shirt undershirt. He's got several pairs of pants on. And one of the officers begins to search the backpack. And as she does, she pulls out a pair of. As she described it wet gray underwear. And wrapped in that article is a
[30:56]
C
magazine ammunition, a loaded gun magazine wrapped in wet underwear. Plus, police say they found approximately $7,800 in cash in his wallet, along with some foreign currency and a passport. They say they searched the backpack right then and there without getting a warrant to make sure there wasn't a, quote, bomb or anything in here. For a guy who's surrounded by over a dozen cops getting searched and questioned, Mangioni appears to keep a pretty calm demeanor.
[31:28]
D
He does seem calm, and at one point, as the officers are checking his id, even as they're arrayed around him, he carries on eating his breakfast and finishes the sandwich, wipes his mouth, crumples up the paper, collects his trash and puts it all in the bag.
[31:50]
C
Eventually, Mangione gets transported to the Altoona police precinct and brought to an intake area. And let me tell you, as a defense attorney who's seen the intake process many, many times, in general, it's a pretty miserable scene. Your pockets get emptied, eventually there's some fingerprinting, photos get taken, and then you get put in a jail cell, that loud clanking, door closing behind you. But Mangione also went through another layer of search.
[32:22]
D
What's done, the Altoona police said, per their protocol, is effectively a strip search. And so he is made to take off most of the layers of clothing and eventually all of it so they can do a thorough search of his person. And then they go through item by item in the backpack and place it all on a table.
[32:45]
C
And what gets laid out on the table, police say, is really damning stuff.
[32:50]
D
And those are the items that prosecutors now say prove the crime.
[32:55]
C
A 9 millimeter handgun with a 3D printed receiver and a homemade silencer.
[33:02]
D
There are other items that prosecutors are quite interested in, including scraps of paper where it appears Mangioni wrote notes to himself. Prosecutor says some of those notes indicated escape routes where there are crude maps drawn where you could get out of Pittsburgh or Columbus, Ohio, or something like that. There's also a note labeled to do list.
[33:27]
C
According to court documents, the alleged to do list included notes to alter his appearance, change hat, shoes, pluck eyebrows, and bust a pen station. It also said keep momentum, break cam
[33:42]
D
continuity, as if he knew there were cameras following his movements. And another telling bit of writing, especially to prosecutors, FBI slower overnight. And these were little reminders, perhaps to himself, the way prosecutors see it, to try and stay on the run and out of sight as long as possible.
[34:05]
C
There were two other handwritten items that for police were bombshell pieces of evidence. One, the contents of a red hardcover notebook authorities say Mangioni used as his diary.
[34:18]
D
The target is insurance. It checks every box was one phrase. There was another phrase he used to called the parasitic bean counter convention.
[34:30]
C
The exact language was, what do you do? You whack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean counter convention. It's targeted, precise, and doesn't risk innocence. And two, a brief letter labeled to the feds. It references failures of the American healthcare system and says, quote, I do apologize for any strife or trauma, but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A judge has since determined that some of the items police say they found in Mangione's backpack will be inadmissible in court. Other items will be allowed. We'll get into all of that in a later episode. Back to December 2024. The Altoona Police department has got all of these items, but the murder didn't happen in their jurisdiction. They can't charge Mangione for something he allegedly did in New York. They can, however, charge him for crimes he allegedly committed in Pennsylvania. And that's exactly what they do. They charge him with forgery, carrying firearms without a license, possessing instruments of a crime, tampering with records and false identification. To authorities, Manjoni has pled not guilty to all of those charges.
[35:48]
E
And they send word back to New York. We think we have your persons of interest.
[35:52]
C
That's ABC's Josh Margolin.
[35:54]
E
Again, the New York police in the middle of a rainstorm, they start racing from Manhattan west on the interstate to get out to Altoona, Pennsylvania through the morning. We start hearing that police think it looks good, that they're optimistic that this is the person they've been looking for. The mayor and the police commissioner have a press conference midday.
[36:15]
C
Good afternoon.
[36:17]
E
And the mayor says that this is a strong person of interest.
[36:21]
C
Someone a McDonald's employee did. Something we ask every American to do. If you see something, say something. But most importantly, do something. The chief of detectives shares what police knew about their strong person of interest.
[36:37]
D
A man was taken into custody today at Altuda, Pennsylvania.
[36:40]
E
This morning, he has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione. He's a male, 26 years old. He was born and raised in Maryland. We know he have taught.
[36:50]
D
He has ties to San Francisco, California, and his last known address was Honolulu, Hawaii.
[36:56]
E
Soon.
[36:56]
C
Authorities also say there is no indication that Mangione was ever a customer of UnitedHealthcare, something the company confirmed. That's all police knew about Mangione back in the very early days of this case. But quickly Luigi Mangione became a household name and according to journalists and some people who have followed the story closely, a symbol.
[37:19]
D
What happened was that shooting really laid bare this wound in American culture.
[37:27]
A
They feel like this guy is standing up to a system and they're celebrating it.
[37:33]
C
How did a young man who friends say was brilliant and funny become the person prosecutors say he is? A cold blooded killer. Someone who planned and pulled off a daring public murder.
[37:47]
D
This kid that I knew from high school is now the most high profile killer allegedly in the country. It's so surreal.
[37:58]
C
And how did a well respected corporate executive who largely kept to himself become a victim of what police considered a targeted assassination?
[38:08]
A
It is unfair that one person, this man who's been murdered, is being held responsible in the public's eyes for the failings of an entire industry. And frankly, a system, a murder is a murder.
[38:23]
D
I cannot reconcile that there is such a thing as a just murder.
[38:30]
C
What put these two men on a collision course? What put them at the heart of a national frenzy far bigger than both of them? Burden of proof luigi mangione is a production of abc audio and 2020 hosted by me, brian buckmire. Produced by vika aronson and audrey mostek. Our lead producer is camille peterson. Edited by tracy samuelson. Music by evan viola. Mixing by bob mallory. Special thanks to katie dandas, sasha aslanian, michelle margulis, tanya simpson, aaron katerski, josh margolin, peter harolambus, jared kofsky, jake lefferman and katie maldoni. Josh cohan is our director of podcast programming. Eamon mcniff is our executive producer.