Uncovering Luigi Mangione’s Alleged Ghost Gun and Antisurveillance Technology
Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old suspect accused of killing UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson on a midtown Manhattan sidewalk, allegedly took several sophisticated-sounding steps to thwart detection. Thompson was killed in a highly surveilled urban setting, but his assailant wore a mask and hood and used a pistol equipped with a silencer to suppress the noise of gunshots. When Mangione was arrested a few days later at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa., officers say he showed them a fake ID. And his backpack contained a functional handgun made with 3D-printed parts: a so-called ghost gun.
Escape amid Surveillance
New York City is dense with cameras—more than 25,500 public and private ones watch over traffic intersections, according to an Amnesty International estimate. Mangione was allegedly recorded in multiple places: at a hostel where he stayed, at a coffee shop, on the sidewalk during the killing, on an electric bike while fleeing the scene, and in a taxi.
Despite all those images—some of which revealed most of his face—it is improbable that algorithms quickly identified Mangione from camera footage. Hollywood’s depiction of Jason Bourne–style, real-time biometric-based surveillance and tracking is a “skewed view of what’s really possible,” says Anil Jain, an expert in facial recognition at Michigan State University. Lacking a criminal record, Mangione was unlikely to be in the forensic databases against which the images would be compared.
What’s a Ghost Gun?
This may be the highest-profile U.S. killing to date that allegedly involved an unserialized ghost gun. Such weapons, however, are far from rare. In 2021 U.S. law enforcement reported 20,000 ghost guns to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF). That’s an increase by a factor of 10 since 2016.
Ghost firearms are made of metal and plastic parts that can be machined or printed at home using legally available equipment. A criminal complaint in Pennsylvania describes the weapon in Mangione’s possession as a black 3D-printed pistol, loaded with nine-millimeter rounds in a Glock magazine, with a handle made of plastic and a slide and a threaded barrel made of metal. The complaint notes Mangione was carrying a 3D-printed silencer as well.
Cash, a Faraday Bag, and a Fake ID
Mangione purportedly used a fake ID when he stayed in New York City in late November and early December. Investigators further say that when he was arrested, he was carrying thousands of dollars in cash—presumably because cash transactions are harder to trace than electronic payment methods. He may have also had a bag with the properties of a Faraday cage, the term for an enclosure (or even a small room) that uses a mesh of conductive material to shield enclosed objects, such as a smartphone, from sending or receiving electromagnetic signals. Whether that was meant for concealment is unclear. Mangione, for his part, told a judge the bag was simply waterproof.
