The headlines came after NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny held a press conference a week after Mangione's arrest in which he said Kathleen Mangione told law enforcement the crime "might be something that she could see him doing."
However, there hasn't been any evidence Mangione's mother ever said this to law enforcement.
Mangione's lead defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo brought the comments up last week on the final day of his suppression hearings in New York City. She asked either the New York Police Department, the San Francisco police department, or the Manhattan district attorney's office to "correct this very prejudicial statement that was never said." (Mangione has pleaded not guilty to all state and federal charges against him.)
The SFPD, who had conversations with Mangione's mother when she filed a missing person's request for him in November 2024, has so far stayed quiet about these comments attributed to her. But on Friday, Rolling Stone spoke with a San Francisco police officer to clarify their conversations with the Mangione family.
San Francisco Sergeant Michael Horan was the detective who first identified Mangione as the prime suspect in the United Healthcare shooting. Horan was looking through Mangione's social media photos while investigating a missing person's case filed by Mangione's mother, Kathleen, who lives in Maryland. In November 2024, she filed the report in San Francisco, because she'd lost touch with her son earlier in the year and thought his employer was headquartered in the city. On Dec. 5, Horan was going through Mangione's case file when he was struck by how much the young man looked like the crime photos that were circulating by the NYPD. (He detailed this surprising discovery in a conversation with Rolling Stone last spring.)
In an interview with Rolling Stone on Friday, Horan says he and his colleagues never spoke with Mangione's mother at all after he identified Mangione as resembling the UHC shooter. When specifically asked if he knew anything about Kathleen saying that to police at all, Horan adds, "That was never from us."
"After we made the connection between our case and the New York case, we never spoke with the mother again," Horan says. "I do believe that the FBI spoke with the mother that weekend while they were trying to confirm, so that might have been a conversation that they had with her."
Horan says the only Mangione family member the SFPD spoke with once Horan raised his suspicions was one of Mangione's sisters, and they did not mention during that conversation anything about the crime photos that were circulating. "We were just kind of curious if she would have volunteered it, since [the crime photos were] all over the news, but it just never came up," Horan says.
It's unclear where NYPD Chief of Detectives Kenny received this information that Kathleen supposedly said she could see her son "doing something like that." (The NYPD did not respond to requests for comment.)
During his 2024 press conference, Kenny also said, "Part of that vetting process was that they reached out to Mangione's mother in San Francisco, very late on the seventh. They had a conversation where she didn't indicate that it was her son in the photograph, but she said it might be something that she could see him doing."
Kenny mentions law enforcement reached out to Kathleen late on Saturday Dec. 7, 2024 in San Francisco, but Mangione's mother lives in Maryland, not California. He is also unclear if the "they" he is referring to is SFPD, FBI, or NYPD.
Kenny added that the information they'd gathered would be passed along to detectives "the next morning" -- which would have been Dec. 8 -- but Mangione was apprehended before they could act on it. However, Mangione wasn't arrested until Monday, Dec. 9, 2024. Kenny also said there are NYPD officers embedded with the FBI, but NYPD Detective David Leonardi testified last week that he hadn't even heard of Luigi Mangione's name until the Altoona arrest, days after the FBI received the tip and began vetting it.
Horan reiterated to Rolling Stone that he doesn't know the specific details of Kathleen Mangione's conversation with the FBI over that December 2024 weekend. The SFPD's interactions with Kathleen in November of that year were purely about her search for her son. "She was just a concerned mother that just really wanted to find her son," Horan said back in the spring. He said Kathleen had called the SFPD repeatedly to ask for updates on the missing person's case.
In court, Friedman Agnifilo said that Kathleen had told the SFPD that her son was not a risk to himself or others, and Horan clarified this was not a conversation that happened after the Thompson crime. Instead, it was likely a conversation the SFPD had with Mangione's mother when she first filed the missing person's report on Nov. 18. Horan explains that asking someone if a person is a risk to themselves or others is standard operating procedure when filing a missing person's report.
After Mangione was apprehended on Monday, Dec. 9, Horan remembers speaking once again with Special Agent Gary Cobb, the FBI agent he'd given the tip to on Thursday the 5th. Cobb told him, "Good job," remembers Horan. That's also when Cobb told Horan they'd spoken to Mangione's family over the weekend, before he was detained.
