Luigi Mangione Allegedly Gave Police Officer This Chilling Warning When He Was Being Frisked

Luigi Mangione allegedly gave a chilling warning to a police officer as he was being frisked just prior to his arrest.

“He told me he had a jar of peanut butter in his coat pocket,” Officer Stephen Fox of the Altoona, Pa., Police Department testified on the stand in Manhattan Supreme Court on Tuesday, Dec. 9 — one year to the day after Mangione was arrested on suspicion he murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York.

“He told me he had a knife in his right pants pocket,” Fox continued.

Fox frisked Mangione at the McDonald’s on East Plank Road in Altoona as he was being detained for allegedly handing police a fake ID bearing the name Mark Rosario.

The officer, who serves with his K9 Blue, seemed to follow the case much more closely than other arresting officers who testified over five days of marathon evidence suppression hearings, where Mangione’s lawyers hope to get crucial evidence tossed ahead of his trial.

Fox said the killing was a “violent act of cowardice” and believed it was a “clear targeted assassination of an individual in the hierarchy of healthcare,” he testified.

Fox was one of two officers who searched Mangione’s large black backpack at the McDonald’s, along with Christy Wasser. Per police body camera footage played in court, the officers found a magazine fully loaded with bullets wrapped in a pair of wet underwear, at which point Fox can be heard saying “It’s f—ing him, 100%.”

Both Fox and Wasser worried the backpack could contain an explosive, the officers testified, and thus wanted to search the bag at the McDonald’s instead of transporting it.

“You don’t want to blow Blue up,” Fox said in the footage, referring to his K9 partner. “You can blow me up.”

The search is the key point of contention in the evidence suppression hearings, as Mangione’s attorneys argue it was illegally conducted without a warrant. The prosecution, and Altoona police, argue it was a legal search “incident” to Mangione’s arrest on suspicion of forgery charges, though at least one officer was heard on footage questioning whether a warrant was necessary.

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Authorities claim that when police returned to the station, they discovered a handgun, a silencer and a notebook allegedly containing a “manifesto” expressing a desire to “wack” a health insurance CEO.

The defense has also latched onto a hand-off of evidence between the McDonald’s and the police precinct, which wasn’t captured on bodycam footage.

Fox said the exchange between him and Wasser when he was called back to the restaurant took about 10-12 seconds, but defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo suggested on Monday that the pair may have surreptitiously searched the backpack at that time and found the gun — or potentially planted it.

Fox also testified that he helped transport Mangione to the Blair County Courthouse for his arraignment, where they were met with a huge scrum of media amid intense interest in the case. He said Mangione turned to him as they were leaving and said “All these people here for a mass murderer, why?”

Mangione then tripped because his legs were shackled and Fox was walking him too fast, the officer testified. He testified that he apologized, and Mangione replied “It’s okay, I’m going to have to get used to it.”

On cross examination, Agnifilo portrayed Fox as improperly giving Mangione his Miranda warnings, suggesting he Mirandized him before he was actually under arrest in the hopes he’d make a statement. Fox denied this suggestion.

Mangione has pleaded not guilty to murder charges at the state and federal level as well as forgery charges in Pennsylvania. He is being held pretrial at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn and is expected to go to trial in 2026.

Previous testimony has come from other officers in the Altoona Police Department who were involved in Mangione’s arrest and interrogation, plus two prison guards who said they chatted with him while he was in solitary confinement.