A San Francisco police sergeant has clarified that he was not the investigator who allegedly heard a controversial comment from the mother of Luigi Mangione, the man accused of assassinating a health insurance executive. According to a recent report, the mother reportedly remarked that she could imagine her son committing the crime, although this statement is hotly contested.
Luigi Mangione faces charges for allegedly stalking and fatally shooting Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a father of two, as Thompson was outside a Manhattan hotel last year.
During a press briefing on December 17, 2024, which was shortly after Mangione’s arrest, NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny addressed reporters, noting that Kathleen Mangione seemed to suggest she thought her son might be capable of such an act. This conversation purportedly took place on December 7, just days before Mangione was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania.
“In their discussion, she did not specifically identify her son as the person in the photograph, but she did express that it might be something she could envision him doing,” Kenny explained to the media. “This information was intended to be passed to detectives the following day, but we fortunately captured him before any further steps could be taken.”
Luigi Mangione, standing trial for the murder of Brian Thompson, appeared in Manhattan’s State Supreme Court for an evidence suppression hearing related to his case on Friday, December 12, 2025.
Kenny’s comments were extensively covered by major media outlets, including Fox News Digital, and have even been mentioned in at least one book.
However, after turning over discovery to the defense, Mangione’s lawyers said in court filings they found no record of the remark police attributed to their client’s mother.
Sgt. Michael Horan, of the San Francisco Police Department, took a missing person report from Mangione’s mother weeks before the murder, on Nov. 18, 2024. She couldn’t find her son, who had apparently gone off the grid for months.
Kenny said the detective working that case, later identified as Horan, called his NYPD counterparts and said the person he was looking for “bears a resemblance” to the picture of the smiling suspect seen checking into a Manhattan hostel before Thompson’s murder.
Luigi Mangione allegedly killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. (AP Photo/UnitedHealth Group via AP)
However, Horan in a new interview denied taking part in any conversation where the mother said she could have seen her son carrying out an assassination.
“That was never from us,” he told Rolling Stone in an interview published last week.
Horan said he took the missing person report before the murder and never spoke with Kathleen Mangione after her son was identified as a suspect.
“After we made the connection between our case and the New York case, we never spoke with the mother again,” Horan told the magazine. “I do believe that the FBI spoke with the mother that weekend while they were trying to confirm, so that might have been a conversation that they had with her.”
Luigi Mangione, charged with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, appears in State Supreme Court in Manhattan during an evidence suppression hearing in his case on Friday, Dec. 12, 2025. (William Farrington for New York Post via Pool)
He said San Francisco police did speak with one of Mangione’s sisters, however, but she didn’t bring it up.
Mangione’s attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo, told reporters outside a Manhattan courthouse earlier this month that Kenny’s claim about Kathleen Mangione was incorrect.
“There is no such statement,” she said. “It was never made. In fact, what Mrs. Mangione said was that she could never see her son being a risk to himself or others.”
Luigi Mangione pictured in a booking photo taken shortly after his arrest in Altoona, Pennsylvania. (Pennsylvania Department of Corrections)
Neither the Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office nor the NYPD responded to requests for comment on the filing from Fox News Digital.
Mangione has pleaded not guilty to charges in New York, Pennsylvania and federal courts.
He could face the death penalty if convicted of the most serious federal charges and life in prison in the Empire State.
