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Luigi Mangione was arrested at a McDonald’s in the town of Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Monday and charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson – video footage captured Thomas being gunned down on a sidewalk in Manhattan last week.

The execution of the CEO is strange in many ways and keeps getting stranger. On Tuesday, Mangione cried out to reporters outside a Pennsylvania courthouse, “It’s completely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people and the lived experience!”

That same evening, his lawyer appeared on NewsNation and claimed there’s no evidence his client shot Thompson.

(Video Credit: NewsNation)

Attorney Thomas Dickey also quoted the iconic 1982 movie Airplane II when asked at an earlier press conference what his “first impressions” of Mangione were.

“I’m not– like the Airplane movie said, ‘Hey, give us your impression,’ and the guy says, ‘I don’t do impressions.’ So, I don’t– I wasn’t looking for impressions,” Dickey said.

In Airplane II: The Sequel, a prosecutor asks the character Dr. Stone, who was played by the late actor John Vernon, “Dr. Stone, would you give the court your impression of Mr. Striker?”

“I’m sorry, I don’t do impressions. My training is in psychiatry,” Dr. Stone replied.

Coincidence or not, Tuesday marked the 42nd anniversary of the classic film’s release:

Dickey was asked at the press conference if Mangione was worried and the attorney said it was common sense to suggest that he is.

“Well, you know, I’m not gonna speculate on that, but like I said, use your common sense, Dickey said. “If you were in a jail or confined in a state where supposedly there’s rumors going around, you’re going to be charged with murder, use your common sense.”

In another strange twist, police obtained what they called a three-page handwritten “claim of responsibility” from Mangione. The manifesto showed that the former Ivy League student considered using a bomb and “included to-do lists of tasks that needed to be completed to facilitate a killing,” according to CNN.

“In one notebook passage, Mangione wrote about the Unabomber who CNN has previously reported Mangione wrote about in posts online as well. In the passage in the notebook, Mangione concludes that using a bomb against his intended victim “could kill innocents” but shooting would be more targeted, musing what could be better than “to kill the CEO at his own bean counting conference,” CNN reported.

Tom Tillison
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