Officer disputes key quote in CEO assassination case
A San Francisco police sergeant has publicly denied being the investigator who heard an allegedly incriminating remark by the mother of accused UnitedHealthcare CEO assassin Luigi Mangione, contradicting a 2024 statement by NYPD’s chief of detectives and bolstering the defense’s claim that the quote was fabricated. Sgt. Michael Horan, who took a November 18, 2024 missing‑person report on Mangione before Brian Thompson’s Manhattan shooting, told Rolling Stone he never spoke with Mangione’s mother after her son became a suspect and that any such comment may have come from an FBI interview, as Mangione’s lawyers say discovery files contain no record of the quote NYPD publicly attributed to her.
📌 Key Facts
- NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said at a Dec. 17, 2024 briefing that Mangione’s mother told an investigator the CEO ambush was something she could see her son doing.
- Defense attorneys later said discovery contained no documentation of that remark, and have accused police of fabricating the quote.
- SFPD Sgt. Michael Horan, identified as the detective who linked a missing‑person case to the NYPD suspect photo, now says he never had such a conversation with the mother after her son was identified and suggests the FBI, not SFPD, may have spoken to her that weekend.
📊 Relevant Data
In 2023, American Indian/Alaska Native people had an uninsured rate of 18.7%, Hispanic people 17.9%, Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander 12.8%, Black people 10.0%, Asian people 6.2%, and White people 6.6%, compared to the overall U.S. uninsured rate of 8.0%.
In a study of Medicare Advantage plans, initial claim denial rates were 7.3% for White beneficiaries, with higher rates observed for other racial and ethnic groups, contributing to disparities in access to care.
Medicare Advantage Denies 17 Percent Of Initial Claims — Health Affairs
Black people are 7.5 times more likely than White people to be wrongfully convicted of murder in the United States, with Black individuals comprising 53% of murder exonerations despite representing about 13% of the population.
Report: Black People 7.5x More Likely Wrongfully Convicted of Murder — Death Penalty Information Center
Official misconduct by police or prosecutors contributed to 54% of wrongful convictions in cases documented by the National Registry of Exonerations from 1989 to 2020.
Police misconduct among the leading causes of false convictions — USA Today