Mangione said during his arraignment, “I don’t know where all that money came from,” referring to “$8,000 in cash [and] $2,000 in foreign currency” that law enforcement claimed was on his person. Prosecution also referenced a “faraday bag” as part of their argument that Mangione engaged in “criminal sophistication”, while Mangione claimed the bag were merely “waterproof”. This was part of a larger argument to deny Mangione bail.

Edit: apologies for the TikTok, but I removed tracking from the URL and it comes from the official CNN TikTok.

    1. I lean towards believing him. Cops planting evidence, something they’re known to do, seems way more likely to me than him being the dumbest criminal alive after seeming to be the smartest criminal alive, and the cops managed to find him.

    I think they found the pictures of Luigi in the hostel, decided “That’s our guy” despite no link between hostel guy and the shooter, tracked him down because they had his face and evidence of where he was going, and planted the evidence when they found him. That “manifesto” was written by one of the cops on their drive to Altoona.

    The pictures of man in the hostel are very clearly a different fucking guy than the guy in the taxi who is also clearly a different guy from the shooter. They’re wearing different clothes and don’t even look that much alike.

    1. If Luigi was the shooter, I’m glad to see they’re going with the “I don’t know shit, they planted that, I’m not the guy” defense anyway, I think that’s his best shot. The only piece of evidence that actually connects him to the shooting is the shitty security footage of him shooting the guy. “That’s not me, that could be fucking anyone” is a great defense even if it was you.

    It’d be hard enough to find a jury willing to convict him if he looked into the camera and said “My name is Luigi Mangione and I am about to murder Brian Thompson for what he did to my mother,” it’ll be even harder to find a jury willing to convict him for a video of a video game character creation screen’s default white man shooting someone.