Police in California gave the FBI a tip about alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione a number of days before he was finally tracked down and captured, according to two senior officials.
The tip provided by the San Francisco Police Department was general in nature and was based off a missing persons report that had been filed in November by Mangione's family, the senior officials told NBC New York. It was among the hundreds of tips and possible leads investigators were assessing and working on when Mangione was found in a McDonald's in Pennsylvania.
Two sources familiar with the investigation said local police shared with the FBI in San Francisco that based on the missing persons report, the wanted poster images of the wanted killer may look similar to Mangione. Agents in San Francisco then alerted the FBI in New York about the general tip before telling an NYPD field officer, according to sources.
Get top local stories in Connecticut delivered to you every morning. >Sign up for NBC Connecticut's News Headlines newsletter.
The tip was based on physical appearance only, two sources told News 4, and there was no information at the time to suggest Mangione might be in New York or was a threat. Because of that, the tip was treated as one of many similar ones being sorted through at the time.
After the FBI received the tip about the missing person information from San Francisco on Friday, Dec. 6, law enforcement spoke to Mangione's mother on Sunday in connection to the investigation, according to two sources familiar with the matter. The mother said the photo of the suspect could be her son.
Just two days later, on Monday, as law enforcement was working that lead and many others, Mangione was spotted at the McDonald's location in Altoona and arrested shortly after by local police.
The FBI's New York office acknowledged in a statement Friday that it had received a tip from the SFPD "regarding the possible identity of the suspect" in the aftermath of the midtown Manhattan shooting.
"FBI New York conducted routine investigative activity and referred this and other leads to the New York City Police Department as part of our assistance to them in their investigation," the statement read, and credited "extensive sharing" of the photos by law enforcement as leading to Mangione being identified by a citizen at the restaurant.
Police have detailed some of the evidence they said links Mangione to the scene of the shooting, including fingerprints and ballistic evidence.
Roughly a half hour before the shooting, video from a Starbucks location in midtown Manhattan showed the masked-up killer buying a bottle of water and a KIND bar. Police said five fingerprints on a water bottle and and two fingerprints on a KIND bar wrapper found near the scene of the shooting matched Mangione's.
The gun found on the suspect when he was arrested Monday was sent to the NYPD, according to Tisch. The department confirmed there was a ballistics-related match as well, with shell casings from the scene of the shooting matching those found in the weapon.
"We brought [the gun] to our forensics laboratory, where we were able to match that gun to the three discharge shell casings were recovered at the scene. So it was a ballistics match," NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny told NBC New York in an exclusive interview Thursday.
Kenny said during that interview that there was "no indication" he ever was a client of UnitedHealthcare, and that he may have targeted CEO Brian Thompson outside a hotel the morning of Dec. 4 simply due to the size of the company and because he knew there was a conference taking place at the hotel that day.
"We have no indication that he was ever a client of United Healthcare, but he does make mention that it is the fifth largest corporation in America, which would make it the largest healthcare organization in America. So that's possibly why he targeted that that company," said Kenny.
In his alleged writings, Mangione wrote about wanting to use a gun to target a CEO of a big corporation, like UnitedHeathcare, at a conference.
“What do you do? You wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents," writings inside a notebook believed to belong to him stated.
Between the writings and posts on social media he made about what Kenny called a "life-altering injury" that required screws being inserted into his spine, police were looking into what could point to a possible motive for the alleged shooting.
While police said they got some DNA recovered from a cellphone believed to be Mangione's, they won't be able to compare it to anything until he is extradited back to NYC and they can get a court-ordered sample. They also have not been able to get into the cellphone found in an alleyway, according to Kenny.
Mangione is next scheduled to appear in court on gun charges in Pennsylvania on Dec. 30th. Kenny said the NYPD hopes Mangione will be returned to NYC "within the next 30 days."
