Bullets in Mangione's bag convinced cops he was suspect

"It's him, dude. It's him, 100 per cent," an officer was heard saying on body-worn camera video from Mangione's December 9, 2024 arrest, punctuating the remark with expletives as the officer combing the bag, Christy Wasser, held up the magazine.

Wasser, a 19-year Altoona police veteran, testified on the fourth day of a pretrial hearing as Mangione sought to bar prosecutors from using the magazine and other evidence against him, including a nine millimetre handgun and a notebook found during a subsequent bag search.

The testimony shed light on the critical minutes after Mangione was spotted at the McDonald's.

Mangione's lawyers argue the items should be excluded because police didn't have a search warrant and lacked the grounds to justify a warrantless search. 

Prosecutors contend the search was legal and that police eventually obtained a warrant.

Wasse said Altoona police protocols require promptly searching a suspect's property at the time of an arrest, in part for dangerous items.

On body-worn camera video played in court, Wasser was heard saying she wanted to check the bag for bombs before removing it from the McDonald's. 

Despite that concern, she acknowledged in her testimony that police never cleared the restaurant of customers or employees.

Mangione, 27, has pleaded not guilty to state and federal murder charges.

He appeared in good health, pumping his fist for photographers and chatting with his lawyers as testimony resumed.

Prosecutors have said the handgun found in the backpack matches the firearm used in the killing and that writings in the notebook showed Mangione's disdain for health insurers and ideas about killing a CEO at an investor conference.

Thompson, 50, was killed as he walked to a Manhattan hotel for his company's investor conference on December 4, 2024.

Surveillance video showed a masked gunman shooting him from behind.

Police have said "delay," "deny" and "depose" were written on the ammunition, mimicking a phrase used to describe how insurers avoid paying claims.

Mangione was arrested in Altoona, about 370km west of Manhattan, after police there received a 911 call about a McDonald's customer resembling the suspect.

Wasser testified she began searching Mangione's bag as officers took him into custody on initial charges of forgery and false identification, after he acknowledged giving them a bogus driving licence, police said. 

The same fake name was used by the alleged gunman used at a Manhattan hostel days before the shooting.

By then, a handcuffed Mangione had been informed of his right to remain silent — and invoked it — when asked if there was anything in the bag that officers should be concerned about.

According to body-worn camera video, the first few items Wasser found were innocuous: a hoagie, a loaf of bread and a smaller bag containing a passport, cellphone and computer chip.

Then she pulled out a grey pair of underwear, unwrapping them to reveal the magazine.

Wasser resumed her search after an 11-minute drive to the police station and almost immediately found the gun and silencer - the latter discovery prompting her to laugh and exclaim "nice", according to body-worn camera footage.

Later, while cataloguing everything in the bag she found the notebook.

"Isn't it awesome?" Wasser said at one point during the search, according to the body-worn camera video. 

Asked to explain, she told Friedman Agnifilo on Monday that she was proud of her police department's work in helping to capture Thompson's suspected killer. 

A Blair County, Pennsylvania, prosecutor testified that a judge later signed off on a search warrant for the bag, a few hours after the searches were completed.

The warrant, she said, provided a legal mechanism for Altoona police to turn the evidence over to New York City detectives investigating Thompson's killing.