UnitedHealthcare CEO murder suspect Luigi Mangione is fighting extradition to New York

A general view of Hayfields Country Club in Cockeysville, Maryland on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024. Luigi Mangione's parents live on the property. (Derek Shook for Fox News Digital)

Cockeysville, Md. -- Alleged CEO killer Luigi Mangione's prominent Maryland family has been shaken to its core over his arrest, but friends and acquaintances of the Mangiones describe them as a "great" family.

Thomas Maronick Jr., a friend of the family and radio host in Maryland, said Mangione's arrest was "stunning," adding that they are a "deeply respected family." The Mangione family owns several golf courses and clubs across the state, as well as at least one radio station and other facilities.

"This just doesn't seem like anything associated with them," Maronick, whose radio station was owned by the Mangione family, told "Fox & Friends" on Wednesday. "They own golf courses, they own WCBM, they own a retirement home. They just couldn't be more involved in charity and respected in general."

Maronick said he does not remember any time he met Mangione in-person, but said he may have run into him "in passing." He described the family as very "tight-knit," with the patriarch, Nick Mangione Sr., passing down leadership of the family to his son, Nick Jr., who is Luigi's uncle.

An acquaintance of the family who requested not to be named said he was a longtime neighbor of Nick Jr. more than a decade ago. He praised the family in comments to Fox News Digital on Tuesday, talking about Nick Sr. as "the one who started it all," and reminiscing about giving popsicles to the family's youngest members.

"They are a great family, well I guess except for the one," the man said.

Attorney Alex Swoyer told ‘Fox & Friends First’ on Wednesday that “every state varies in how they handle their murder statutes” when it comes to the charges that Luigi Mangione now faces following the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. 

In New York, Mangione has been charged with second degree murder. 

“In New York, first degree murder is reserved for certain classifications of murder. For example, the murdering of a police officer,” Swoyer said. “The first narrative that we heard was that this could possibly be a hitman-style killing and that would have been first degree murder, murder for hire. Murder relating to a kidnapping, torture, that sort of thing. Second degree murder is what the state has charged it.” 

Swoyer also was asked to react to Mangione’s outburst yesterday while he was being escorted into a courtroom in Pennsylvania. 

“I think that he definitely has a message to get out there. One fact that we can look at to prove that is when [he] saw the cameras, he did perform as he did,” she said. “He also carried on his person, his manifesto, he seems to be outspoken, he wanted to speak out in the courtroom and actually respond to questions.” 

Suspect Luigi Mangione is taken into the Blair County Courthouse on Tuesday, Dec. 10, in Hollidaysburg, Pa. (Janet Klingbeil/AP)

Luigi Mangione faces a maximum sentence of life in prison if he is convicted on a charge of murder in the second degree in New York. 

Mangione is facing that felony charge, as well as charges including criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree and criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second degree in connection with the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last Wednesday. 

Mangione is alleged to have shot Thompson outside of a hotel in New York City. 

He is currently being held at a correctional facility in Pennsylvania and prosecutors in New York are seeking his extradition. 

Luigi Mangione will be pleading not guilty to charges he faces in Pennsylvania that are unrelated to the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, his attorney says. 

Mangione was denied bail during a court appearance Monday in Pennsylvania. He is also fighting his extradition to New York. 

Prosecutors in Pennsylvania have charged Mangione with possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police, according to the Associated Press. 

In New York, Mangione is facing charges that include murder in the second degree, criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree and criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second degree in connection with the killing, according to a warrant. 

Fox News' Bryan Llenas contributed to this report.

Surveillance footage released by the NYPD showed the shooting of UnitedHealth CEO Brian Thompson in New York City on Wednesday, Dec. 4. (NYPD)

UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson's alleged killer, once a private school valedictorian and an Ivy League graduate, may have been triggered by his age and an ObamaCare provision, according to a former investigator.

Thompson, 50, was shot from behind on the sidewalk outside a New York City Hilton hotel on Dec. 4 before a shareholder conference. After a five-day manhunt for Thompson's killer, Luigi Nicholas Mangione, 26, was taken into custody on Monday at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

"He's 26 years old, which is the year you get kicked off your family's insurance claim," retired FBI agent Scott Duffey told Fox News Digital. "Was he well insured or was he not? Those are the things that I would be asking as an investigator."

ObamaCare, also known as the Affordable Care Act, requires health plans that offer dependent child coverage to make the coverage available until the adult child reaches the age of 26, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. 

"I'm not so sure he has remorse," Duffey added. "I feel like whatever took place in his life relatively soon… he made a conscious decision to go down this road."

NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said Mangione may have sustained a back injury on July 4, 2023.

"He was posting an X-ray on his social media. Some of the writings that he had, he was discussing the difficulty of sustaining that injury," Kenny told Fox News on Tuesday. "So we're looking into whether or not the insurance industry either denied a claim from him or didn't help him out to the fullest extent."

The SCI Huntingdon State Correctional facility in Huntingdon, Pa., on Dec. 10, 2024. Luigi Mangione is being held at the detention center. (David Dee Delgado for Fox News Digital)

It is unlikely but not out of the question that Luigi Mangione, who is suspected of fatally shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson last week, will face federal charges, and it is "fair to be concerned" that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg will "mishandle this case," former prosecutors told Fox News Digital.

Mangione was arrested by police in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Monday morning after a five-day manhunt when a McDonald's patron recognized his face from wanted posters.

On Tuesday, Mangione refused to waive his right to an extradition hearing in a Pennsylvania court, and his attorney said he intends to file a writ of habeas corpus challenging Mangione's arrest. Bragg and Blair County District Attorney Peter Weeks are working to get the 26-year-old Ivy League graduate to New York.

"There is no obvious hook for a federal murder prosecution," James Trusty, who served as a prosecutor in Maryland for 27 years, told Fox News Digital, based on the publicly available details of the case. 

However, Trusty said, evidence for potential federal charges could be found on Mangione's laptop that was seized upon his arrest.

Although federal authorities can hand down murder charges, Trusty said "the types of things that could make it go federal is if [the murder] was in conjunction with organized crime, drug trafficking or a hate crime, which has a more narrow definition than just ‘I hate insurance companies,’" Trusty said.

Members of the Altoona Police Department wrote in a criminal complaint obtained by Fox News Digital that they found a "black 3D-printed pistol and a black silencer." Possessing such a "ghost gun" – a home-cooked weapon that is unserialized and therefore untraceable – is a federal offense, former Joint Terrorism Task Force head and Port Authority Chief Security Officer John Ryan told Fox News Digital.

Thomas Maronick Jr., a Mangione family friend, told "FOX & Friends" Wednesday that the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson “doesn’t seem like anything associated with them.”

“It’s just stunning, it’s shocking because I’ve known the Mangione family as I have been a talk show host from 2003 to 2023 on WCBM, the station they own. And I’ll tell you – this just doesn’t seem like anything associated with them. This is a very deeply respected family from Baltimore County,” he said.

“They own golf courses, they own WCBM, they own a retirement home, just couldn’t be more involved in charity and respected in general,” Maronick continued. “So when I saw the name I first had to do a double take -- is this the same people I’ve known and I’ve been on their station for so long, it really shocked me.”

Maronick said he found it surprising that Mangione’s family didn’t recognize Luigi in the numerous surveillance images released of him prior to his arrest Monday in Pennsylvania.

“I know that they were very close-knit,” Maronick added. “For a member of the family to sort have gone rogue is really surprising.”

The New York Police Department Chief of Detective Joseph Kenny said that there is a "sense of relief" following the apprehension of Luigi Mangione.

Mangione, an Ivy League-bred murder suspect, led law enforcement on a five-day manhunt until his apprehension and arrested in Altoona, Pennsylvania.

Kenny told WABC-TV that the relief came from his detectives and that the danger “had been mitigated.”

“Some of these detectives had not been home since Wednesday morning working on this case," he said. "So it was a sense of relief not only that the danger had been mitigated, that he had been apprehended, but it was a sense of relief from my detectives that they could finally catch a break.”

The McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania, where alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione was arrested, has been bombarded with negative reviews online following his capture, continuing a strange show of support for the accused murderer.

Dozens of negative reviews have been posted on the establishment's Yelp page within the past two days, most coming after Mangione was arrested on Monday.

He was arrested, initially on unrelated charges, after a McDonald's employee and customer called police because they thought he looked like the person wanted in the New York City shooting death of Brian Thompson.

Many of the reviews mention the restaurant having "rats," referring to snitches, and say they recommend avoiding the place at all costs.

"As a vegan, I give all McDonald's restaurants in the US as low a rating as possible but this particular location serves up some extra rotten meat with a side of snitching," one person wrote.

Another said, "Full of bootlickers and rats. McSnitches get McStitches, as one says. I hope you regret all your decisions."

Contributing to the backlash, another person wrote, "How could you snitch on the guy standing up for the people, to protect the corporate interests that kill us."

Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old Ivy League grad accused of gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in cold blood on a New York City sidewalk, was silent as he was walked out of a Pennsylvania courthouse Tuesday afternoon.

Mangione will fight extradition to New York, but DA Alvin Bragg's office has vowed to get Mangione to NYC to face justice as fast as possible.

Mangione's exit from court was significantly less dramatic than his entrance, where he screamed and thrashed violently as officers attempted to control him.

"It's completely out of touch, and an insult to the intelligence of the American people and its lived experience," Mangione shouted, prompting his detail of about 10 officers to hurry him inside.