Prior to the Arrest of LM

Disclosure: I have personally verified the validity of this person’s story. I chatted with him and was sent irrefutable proof that he lived with LM.

u/Mang0Eat3r left several comments about LM in r/Hawaii - swipe to see them all.

Many of us are sick of reading the comments objectifying LM. From this point on, any comments or posts that solely focus on his appearance will be removed. Let’s have thoughtful discussions that are based on fact and not what we speculate.

This includes speculating about his sexuality, his prior love life, his appearance, his mental health, etc.

Thank you guys!

I just wanted to take a moment to give a massive shoutout to the mods of this subreddit. 🙏

With everything that's been going on regarding LM, it's easy for emotions to run high, and for people to jump to conclusions. But the mods have done an amazing job of keeping the focus on the important idea that LM is presumed innocent until proven guilty.

They've been consistently enforcing rules that promote respectful discussion, prevent harmful speculation, and ensure that everyone remembers the importance of due process. Their efforts in keeping the atmosphere civil and fact based make this community a space where we can all engage thoughtfully rather than get swept up in the noise.

Thank you mods for your hard work and dedication to keeping this space fair and respectful for all of us. You're doing an awesome job! 👏 Keep it up!

As if the timeline to the Hilton wasn’t impossible, let’s add at least 5 more minutes walking to the bike.

The image of the suspect with the battery is in the corner of Columbus and 103. Right in front of the Children’s Aid Frederick Douglas community Center. The second picture, with the suspect riding the bike, was taken at Central Park West and 103rd st. This means the bike was between those blocks.

This adds at least 5 more minutes of walking and setting the battery up as well.

• Also, where did the suspect get the bike?
• where is the bike now?

I was one of the few members of the public there in the courtroom on Monday and it was a horribly upsetting experience. Waiting outside, many of the others were making jokes/talking about how unjust the case has been. Then we entered the courthouse and went to the floor the arraignment would be on. We were lined up with a ton of reporters in the hallway outside the courtroom. It was organized so that reporters were on either side of a walkway where the lawyers and then the defendant would walk down to enter the courtroom. Like some sick kind of red carpet. There was sooo many press there. I started to feel really sick as I slowly realized they would be parading him down that walkway. Then they led us inside the court. We were sitting in the very back.

Then he was walked in by like 20 people with a cop holding each of his arms, shackled up wrists and ankles, with this huge chain around his waist that his wrists were shackled to. As if he could run away. I'm told this is standard for a murder trial but it was extremely upsetting to watch. He looked just like he does in all the photos; that was not an important part of this experience.

He looked SO pale. Scared, angry (but keeping it under control), and tense. It was incredibly upsetting to watch. We have no idea the kind of composure it must take to maintain that facade. He can’t do anything. Cameras were following him constantly, and flashing. Every move of his is watched and commented on, whether negatively by the media or obsessively by fans.

In about a second after I saw him, all the memes/thirsting/online discoveries about his good character were wiped away as I realized the significance of this young man's LIFE being at stake. I felt so inappropriate to me that I, a random stranger, felt the right to sit in on this arraignment.

They walked him in like he was a "spoil of war". The cops are parading him around like a pig on a stick. All of America is obsessing over him, digging up every possible trace of his online presence. And focusing on his appearance and personality instead of the danger he’s in in real life. For example, the sweater from court selling out. This isn’t a thirst trap or a joke, it’s this man’s LIFE!

I realized how sick and wrong this all is for me and everyone else there, and all the people obsessing over him online to be a voyeur to this terrible process. I felt like I was contributing to the problem by watching him be "put on display". For example, seeing the way the MSM wrote about the "dozens of fans who lined up in the early morning, mostly young women" minimizes the point of how unjust this guy's legal process has been.

I was nauseous the entire arraignment, and I felt depressed for several days after. I think if I were in his shoes, all of the attention from the public and the online obsession (even though it's supportive) over his personality, looks, and personal history would make me mad uncomfortable.

I think the priority should be on supporting him. And some people are saying that digging up all of his online info it could hurt the case. And I think that would be terrible for his fans to end up causing him more injustice. Also, putting up his personal private photos online — including when he was a child— seems really wrong and insensitive to me.

Which is why for now I'm going to focus on what people can do to concretely help: writing letters, maybe not sending books (because prisoners only get to take a few into their cells and the rest might be thrown away), calling for healthcare reform, helping with protests, and raising support in a non-creepy way.

PS: I would never go back to another hearing. It was horrifying. And I encourage anyone here to not go as well. I don't think it's the right way to help him.

I think my perspective is worth sharing as I had a very close view of this in person. 

I’m genuinely confused about something that just doesn’t seem right. I feel like the media plays a huge role in defamation of character and, in some cases, outright lying, especially with how they’ve handled this entire situation. I remember being on Twitter one day, and PopBase—a media account on Twitter—posted that the police had someone in custody for the shooting of Brian Thompson. At first, they didn’t release the name or picture of the person, just that they had a suspect in custody.

A few hours later, they posted a picture of LM, along with his name. After that, multiple articles started popping up from various tabloids and even reputable media outlets explaining why LM supposedly committed the crime. What shocked me was that none of these stories even used the word “allegedly.” They were stating as fact that he was guilty and providing reasons for his actions, like claiming it was because his grandmother was denied coverage or because his mother wasn’t properly treated in the hospital, or because of his back injury.

These weren’t just small tabloids making these claims; big names like CBS News, the Daily Mail, New York Post and other major outlets were publishing these stories. But here’s the thing—LM is innocent. He hasn’t been found guilty of anything and has even pleaded not guilty because he knows he didn’t commit the crime. It feels like he’s been falsely apprehended, yet the media already convicted him in the court of public opinion before the trial even started.

What confuses me most is: where were these stories coming from? Who was publishing them, and who was feeding them this information? All the reasons they were giving for why LM allegedly did this were false. Some outlets even claimed he confessed to these motives during interrogation, which is completely untrue. I can’t help but wonder if someone is paying these outlets to spread misinformation. It’s deeply troubling to see such widespread false reporting, especially from outlets people trust, and I’m struggling to make sense of it all.

source

i’ve got some some more but what the comments say may go against the sub rules so 🤫

TLDR: The RJ guy gives off weird opportunistic vibes, and seems to be exploiting LM by spreading lies in order to promote his communal living space co. 

Wanted to start off by saying thank you Mang0Eat3r for clearing a lot of things up!

Hi guys, first time posting on Reddit but I’ve been keeping up with LM’s case through this subreddit and just wanted to put my two cents in regarding the RJ communal living guy, because from the beginning I could tell he was lying straight through his teeth. 

I thought it was strange how quickly the RJ guy jumped to do a CNN interview https://youtu.be/JnSi-lPkWEQ the day of LM’s arrest. In the interview he kept talking about how he saw all his tenants as his “children”. He also talked about how he tried to reach out to LM multiple times this year. He said LM had called him, and he didn’t pick up the call but he wishes he “put more effort into communicating with him”. Something about his body language and responses felt really insincere, but I thought I was overthinking it. 

Until I saw that he did his own personal press tour, by interviewing with multiple stations/channels like MSNBC, Law&Crime Network, and Fox News, basically regurgitating the same few details that he “knew” about LM. In this interview https://youtu.be/ih_-zmaI9lA, he talks about how it has been a tough 24 hours, and it’s unimaginable that his close friend would m*rder someone. He claims he’s doesn’t follow a lot of media but was so quick to jump at the opportunity to air out LM’s personal business, not to mention that he keeps presuming L is guilty. He even went out of his way to tell Fox news that he was the one who suggested his book club (that he claims LM was in) to read Ted K.’s manifesto. 

When he told MSM that LM couldn’t be romantically involved with anyone due to his back I knew that lie came right out his mf ass. But unfortunately, that false information spread like wildfire, and now all these people claim that LM must have been going through it mentally if he couldn’t have sexual relations due to his back. It’s crazy! And his old landlord is beyond messed up for that. 

MSM outlets have even interviewed his former high school classmates?? I am not sure if other people are reaching out to stations to speak with them but I think it’s pretty clear that the RJ guy jumped at the first opportunity to profit off this situation.

I hope he stays away from MSM outlets, and keeps LM out of his mouth because he’s done enough damage.

I understand the concern for LM as a person, what he would feel like about the various types of support or attention he's been getting online, and also the factor of his privacy being violated after becoming a celebrity type of public figure overnight.

BUT, there's a lot to unpack:

1. LM had all his social media set on public, he was very open to conversations with people online and shared his personal notes/links etc. so that's why people were able to get access to all of it. He worked in computer science and knows all about cybersecurity, risks, all of it. I truly don't think his privacy should be the main point of "concern" because i don't even think that's *his* or his lawyer's current main point of concern at all.

1.1. LM became a celebrity overnight with no previous warning, so I'm not holding his public social media activity against him or saying it's ok to get access to everything because he consented while he probably didn't know he was going to get as famous as he did so he couldn't prepare for it... However, I think it's worth noting when many of you are trying to imagine what *he* would feel like, that the way he moved online should be taken into consideration if you're going to speculate about his personal opinions on anything at all, so right now, on the topic of privacy and public existence/accessibility online.

1.2. LM became a celebrity overnight, it happened, and there's nothing we can do to take that status back. What we can do is try to frame him in a positive light, especially when it comes to discrediting or correcting the biased misinformed points of view of the media.

1. I think the suggestion of censorship of certain fractions of the movement/fandom is unhelpful, reductive, and in most cases misogynistic. I mean the suppresion of media outlets such as tiktok edits being used to gather community around LM which get millions of views and likes and (through algorithm) brings millions of people to see related content, that's court related videos, people talking about the healthcare system, and more meaningful conversation. It's ONE part of a huge web that has LM's name attached to it, that's how the internet algorithms work.

2.1. I think it's ignorant to dismiss the impact this visibility has, especially furthering international conversation and gathering so many people around the case, getting so many eyes on the trial, and potentially putting pressure on the US authorities and system to be discussed WORLDWIDE.

All of this because of LM's celebrity status, and the surge of interest in him as a person and everything that involves or has his name attached to it. Unfortunately, a lot of people aren't keeping up with politics at all times, especially when they're on social media trying to get entertained after a long day of work/school. So for it to be a way to "lure in" a very wide audience that will thereafter discover a web of topics they otherwise wouldn't have discovered (because it wouldn't get as viral, or because it wouldn't seem as interesting/entertaining at first), is excellent. It is not a bad thing.

2.2. The media has been trying to make ANY and everything about LM seem negative, and you guys, LM "supporters" are falling for their tricks and pushing their narratives by claiming it's all about LM's looks to people when it's so evidently not the case at all. First of all, the edits and fanfics whatever is just a fraction of a very diverse movement with many types of conversations going on and relating to each other.

LM being an attractive, handsome, intelligent person fits the hero archetype tied to his (alleged) actions and it's the overall combination of all this factors that make people so attracted/attached to him. Everything only pushes the visibility of the case, and every single topic around it. At first, many people were pointing out how he is the ideal type to fulfill this role (doing what he allegedly did) while being white, male, conventionally attractive etc., precisely for these reasons I'm explaining.

2.3. The enthusiasm for the cause is a general one and I promise people who find him attractive can, and do, also focus on his humanness, his personality, his intelligence, and his wellbeing. As well as the values he (supposedly) embodies and the meaning/implications of his actions. Assuming that people (notably referred to as women or girls, "fangirls") can't be interested in a subject in more ways than one, or that sexual attraction/romantic feelings should be the opposite of intellectual interests and moral values is a misogynistic, archaic narrative. (The one the media is pushing).

2.4. Obviously, it's not only women and girls feeling attraction towards LM. *** So of course the motivation behind this assignment of female gender to every LM fraction of the movement being "obsessed" "cringe" and "childish" as opposed to a "neutral" "cerebral" and "mature" interest in the case is a deeply misogynistic one. Second, there's lots of women and men and other identities feeling supportive of LM without romantic types of attraction. And lastly, to criminalize and try to purify discourse around a heroic type of public figure is profoundly dishonest, and contrary to human nature and how things really work out in the real world. (I'm pretty confident to say LM would 100% understand this too given what he used to talk about online.)

2.5. Attraction and interest in him as a person and the display of all the information about his personality is what got the public humanizing him and interested in his wellbeing in the first place. Everyone is being dishonest about this situation, falling for media propaganda and probably unaware of how they got here in the first place. The only reason so many people are feeling empathetic to LM and interested in him as a person is because of what you guys are now critiquing, which is his face and thoughts being plastered on every social media for millions to see.

We got a glimpse of his whole life, childhood, adolescence, friends, family and so on, and that is what helped solidify him as a complex sort of character beyond a cold blooded m*rder suspect that would otherwise be the only tale told by legacy media. (I invite you to draw some parallels to the victim, BT, of whom we only saw that one LinkedIn picture.)

Also:

"CNN legal commentator EH says there is a high chance LM is found not guilty due to jury nullification:

“This is the highest chance of nullification that I have seen in a long time, given the fame and fandom that this guy has somehow gained over social media.”

I love reading fan fiction and when I was reading on Archives of Our Own, I noticed a LM fanfic in the sidebar.

Opened up the section and there are literally hundreds of fanfics created for LM. I read a couple out of curiosity but they made me cringe. One was about his lawyer being a young woman who ended up falling in love with him, another one was about a McDonald’s worker who spotted him, hooked up with him in the McDonald’s bathroom then helped him escape.

I wonder if people truly realize this is someone’s life??? Not fantasy fodder. Yes, he is attractive but this is crossing a line tbh. Honestly writing fan fiction of real people is always weird, but this even more so.

It’s also not helping the media’s case that LM’s supporters are deranged fans just simply lusting over him and don’t care about anything else.

This case, combined with the growing talk of a TikTok ban, has stirred a latent sense of unease in me—a feeling that something is deeply wrong and that it’s creeping closer to home.

I come from one of the safest and most stable countries in the world. In my homeland, citizens are cared for, almost free healthcare, injustices are swiftly addressed, and our justice system prioritizes rehabilitation over punishment.

despite this comfort, I can’t shake the fear that the inequalities and systemic failures I observe abroad are slowly seeping into my own country. First They Came by Pastor Martin Niemöller constantly echoes: injustice anywhere threatens justice everywhere.

America, a land of extremes, fascinates and terrifies me in equal measure. It’s a place of multiculturalism, innovation, and possibility—but also of poverty, addiction, systemic oppression, and a legal system riddled with wrongful convictions. Could it be a country that embodies both the best and worst of humanity. The contrast make it impossible for me to look away from this country.

When I first heard about the CEO’s murder, my reaction wasn’t shock… but a quiet amazement. If I am allowed to say. It seemed like a rare moment where frustration and anger were aimed at the powerful rather than the powerless.

Later LM entered the story and reminded me of myself—someone who thinks, questions, and has spent hours trying to make sense of our unjust world. Philosophers and questioners like him have always existed, trying to defy the status quo. That’s at least what I think make him relatable and universal.

But quickly this turned into a nightmare. He’s being slapped with terrorism charges, paraded like a trophy in perp walks, and vilified by corrupt politicians and media. The media coverage is also overwhelming and distorted, while the «evidence» doesn’t even seem to add up and it’s just very confusing. The system seem to not be seeking the truth; it’s grinding him down, and crushing him as a warning to others who… dare to question authority.

For me, this isn’t about LM personally, or as a alleged criminal, or some overall fascination with crime—it’s about how power treats those who challenge it. It’s about the danger of allowing authority go about unchecked.

Without TikTok, I wouldn’t even know this case existed. The platform has brought this story to light, I belive it is uniting people who see the injustice and care enough to speak up. If TikTok is silenced, how many more stories like this will go untold and will it get as much attention? Maybe it would’ve been better for LM? I don’t know.

And this brings me to another question: What is democracy? Is it simply a label—a binary concept where a country either has it or doesn’t? Or is it more like a scale, where justice by law and fairness are measures of how democratic a society truly is? I belive democracy is an ideal that exists on a spectrum, one that requires constant vigilance and effort to protect and strengthen.

For me, the conversations on Reddit, TikTok and other platforms show that people are watching, questioning, and refusing to accept injustice. This gives me hope

In the initial police criminal complaint (link in comments) filed regarding the arrest of LM in Altoona

It says police officers immediately recognized him as the CEO shooter suspect (which I find hard to believe but thats another story).

So what we have for now is that police believe they located an alleged killer who is the target of nationwide manhunt and who could potentially be carrying a weapon or anything dangerous.

They say LM was handcuffed and searched on scene but his backpack was searched only at the station.

So I researched an answer to question whether can police officers search belongings of the person that is being arrested and I found these answers

I am not a lawyer so I cant vouch for these answers, but these people have history of answering questions on Quora and I dont see why would they lie. Anyone who knows it is wrong information can correct me here.

This backpack search situation begs a question of why police offices, who believe they have the alleged CEO killer, would not search the backpack on scene? We all know murder weapon wasnt found yet so there had to be reasonable believe he might have a gun

They have a time to take a "mugshot" at McDonalds but not search the bag of an alleged murderer? (this photo is from inside McDonalds not police station

I am not saying this is gross incompetence but seems rather convenient to find items in backpack later at the station

All of this makes me believe notebook and gun were found in the original backpack that was ditched in Central Park

Hi everyone!

As requested, this thread will serve as a place to track the books that have been purchased and delivered to LM.

To both protect the identity of the purchaser and verify that the book was actually sent, please send a mod mail with an Imgur link with a screenshot of your order details. Please remove all identifying information - the only thing we need to verify is the book title, the address it was sent to, the date it was ordered, and if it was delivered (or the anticipated delivery date).

I will edit this post as the sent books are verified.

As a reminder, books can only be sent via the publisher’s website or Amazon.

https://imgur.com/a/comparison-lm-vs-uhc-suspect-yRDIp3

The real shooter is still out there, smh

I'm off for a week because of the holidays. I bet you can figure out what I've been doing!

I'll start out by saying I'm in no way a professional, my knowledge on court cases and how this is actually going to play out is pretty abysmal. I'm just a girl. Feel free to add, expand, comment, etc on anything.

I understand not all evidence they have is released to the public so I'm just speculating based on what is released and what I've read over the past few weeks. I've been following the updates of this case via the news (written and TV) since he was detained in PA, but not so much in the last week due to the holidays. So these are purely just my little old thoughts since this happened.

Let's start here (and I'll rattle the rest off down below as they come into my brain): the video of the crime is released. I can't help but remember how many times news was speculating this looked like a professional. This is something sticking with me. Before we even knew anything, this was suspected. The car driving past conveniently holds its brakes next to the victim, like it's showing the suspected shooter "here he is!" I also am not ruling out multiple people. See the next section.

Second: the suspect images. Gosh, there is a lot of speculation about these and rightfully so. I am confused too. One thing I want to say is that people can appear completely different in photos than what they actually look like. Especially low resolution pictures like what we have to work with, they're skewed. But I cannot seem to find similarity in the person at the Starbucks and LM other than the black neck warmer/mask thing (sorry the name escapes me atm) up over their nose, and around LM's neck in his first cursor mugshot at McDonald's. I have no doubt the hostel man is LM, I feel like the similarity between his non-smiling picture and him eating a hasbrown are undeniably similar. I'm about 50/50 on both cab photos, which I can explain my reasoning further if people are really interested. There seems to be a lot of discussion on this.

Third: I've seen some thoughts bouncing around about the posture and gait of the person doing the crime in the video. I don't have much to say about this but wanted to touch on it in case anyone else did. Given that we only see LM walking with shackles around his ankles, waist, and wrists, it's hard to judge. He appears to be in good posture, but that is something he could be doing on purpose or something he is forced to do because we don't know how they're holding him. Edit: I watched the valedictorian speech and I don't think his gait matched the gunman at all, granted this was almost 10 years ago. It looks extremely similar to how he's walking now in custody.

Fourth: Planted money. I've linked this earlier today. This was something I read either on CNN live or NY Times live the day he was apprehended. He claims he doesn't know anything about the cash found in the book bag on his person and it's planted. I'm sure this will be brought up in trial. My guess is it actually is his cash he's carrying around because of travel, but why say you don't know anything about that when you've got a weapon? Say you don't know anything about the weapon? It just makes me think he's telling the truth and maybe it is planted. It's an even amount of cash ($8,000 in us currency and $2,000 in foreign) and not something weird like $8507.34, unless they rounded. My alternate thought is that he was just given this backpack as the fall man, with the money inside being some sort of payment. Maybe he had orders to keep it on him until caught.

Fifth: Mental health. I'm just going to leave it at that. It breaks my heart a bit because I also went through the mid twenties (ironically a month before turning 26) mental health onset and it was an incredibly scary and confusing time. Newly 28 and just getting some clarity now. Feel free to expand on this.

Last, thoughts on the eyewitness reports? The men claiming someone was there loitering all night is interesting. However, maybe this could be dismissed as it was before any other info was released?

Edit: Just remembered, how could I forget? The manifesto. Saw around reddit somewhere it was poorly written and not in line with his normal style of writing. It could be because he was mentally ill and/or not in the right headspace during the last few months? If anyone knows anything about this let us know!

Has anything been reported at all about his travels or activities? Was he in the US the whole time?

https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTYsoSvfj/ This makes me sad, but I’m also glad he’s being segregated for his safety. If anyone has insight on the jail, please share. Why wouldn’t he be able to brush his teeth every day if he has a sink in his cell?

New article by Ken Klippenstein details LM sympathizers as extremists by NYPD document was spread across the US.

Good video correcting misinform about LM, from a lawyer perspective.

Hello everyone,

I saw someone bring up that LM has a bail and writ hearing in PA this upcoming Monday on December 30th, however I haven’t seen anyone talking about it. Will this still be happening ? Please let us know if you have any more information on this !

Here’s the link from the PA court:

https://www.pacourts.us/Storage/media/pdfs/20241212/214155-commonwealthofpennsylvaniavsluigimangione2024md1546.pdf

This article is stating that his only defense is probably through insanity. What do you think of that defense? Do you think LM should pursure it?