Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Crime Roundup with Nancy Grace: The Mangione Case | Zone 7

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

Listen and follow Zone 7 - available on all audio platforms: https://link.podtrac.com/Zone7 Today Nancy Grace and Sheryl McCollum discuss the latest on the Luigi Mangione case. They explain the legal nuances of the charges against him, the premeditation and intent behind his actions, and the implications of his crimes on victims and society. Nancy and Sheryl also examine broader issues, such as the public's controversial support of Mangione, the legal distinctions between murder charges, and the growing concern over ghost guns. Listen and follow Zone 7 - available on all audio platforms: https://link.podtrac.com/Zone7 Show Notes: ● (0:00) Welcome! Nancy and Sheryl introduce this week’s crime roundup ● (0:10) Sheryl introduces the updates on the Luigi Mangione case ● (1:00) Public reaction and outrage ● (3:00) Legal breakdown of murder 1 vs. murder 2 ● (8:00) Human trafficking and poaching routes ● (9:30) Evidence and investigation details ● (14:00) Connection to past infamous cases ● (17:00) Family impact and emotional toll ● (23:30) Ghost guns and legal implications ● (30:00) Personal reflections and closing thoughts   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Welcome to the Crime Roundup. I'm Cheryl McCollum, and I am joined today, like always, with the one and only, the peerless Nancy Grace. Good morning, honey. You know what? I can't even speak after I found out that an anchor at my old TV home, CNN, of course, I was at HLN, the sister network,

actually had the control room remove the lower banner, you know, the lower third, as they call it, so she could get a better look at Luigi Mangione's body. I mean, I'm just, what the hell is wrong with these people? They say, I cursed. That's where I'm at right now. If any situation called for that, it's right now. Nancy, I have been just gobsmacked by the people that are supporting him.

They're calling him the new Robin Hood. He's a martyr. He's a hero. It is just, it's disgusting to me because I'm going to tell you, that was somebody's father. That was somebody's husband. That was somebody's father. That was somebody's husband. That was somebody's son. And, you know, any time that people somehow say that this murder is justified because

of X, whatever the X factor is for you, I caution you, change it. If you want to say Robin Hood stole from the rich to give to the poor, change the word rich to any other group and tell me that doesn't sound freaking pathetic. If you change rich to elderly or African-American or lesbian, change the group. It sounds heinous. The fact they think he's sexy, the fact they think he did something right, the fact they think he's some type of, you know, now heroic figure, every bit of it bothers me on every level. How can these people literally come out and say, hey, look at this guy with his six pack. Look at this, you know, handsome man that is now our new hero. It's baffling. Well, OK, I'm going to try to focus off idgits that are glorifying Luigi Mangione. And I am going to talk about the only thing that I

can really do. And that's the evidence and the law surrounding this case. Many people have asked me, well, there's a lot of legal issues coming up, but they tend to get really boring. So to try to briefly rush through them, many people have asked me online and on camera, why is Mangione charged with murder two and not murder one? First of all, reality check. It's New York. There is no death penalty. I feel recently, but it was several years ago, covered a case where I think four people were gunned down and left in a fridge at Wendy's. I think so the perp could rob the cash register.

Really? You kill four people? I'm like, basically, you can kill as many people as you want to in New York, and there is no death penalty. You don't have to worry about that. So whether it's murder one or murder two, there is no death penalty. But I had to look long and hard at the New York law, Cheryl, because murder one, the elements to prove it sound a lot like murder two. You know, there's something called like voluntary manslaughter where let's just say you're DUI and you run over somebody. You didn't have the

intent to kill. He just got drunk and ran over somebody. In my mind, it's still murder, but that is not murder one. That's voluntary manslaughter in a lot of jurisdictions. Then you have involuntary manslaughter, which a lot of people can get probation on. But there's something called mens rea, the requisite intent to do the act or the intent to kill. Guess what? Murder one and murder two in New York both have intent to kill. So what is the difference? It seems to me that murder one in New York is reserved for when you kill a cop, when you kill law enforcement, when you kill a judge, when you kill a witness. And I also notice it's reserved when there's torture involved.

So, you know, the penalty is a little bit stiffer, but you can still get life. You can still get life for murder two. Murder one offers life without the possibility of parole. Murder two is life. So that's the difference. It's the same legal elements and intent is required. I also noticed that it refers to depraved heart, an abandoned and malignant heart, often called a black heart. What that is, just example, driving through a festival on 3rd Avenue at 90 miles an hour with the little vendors and the children with balloons and face painting, and you hurl yourself through it 90 MPH. That is an abandoned and malignant heart with no regard for human life, and a death occurs. That can be prosecuted and get life. Okay, it's right up there with malice murder, and then there's also felony murder,

which gets the same penalty of life. And that is very simply put, a death occurs in the commission of a felony. What does that mean? Cheryl and I go rob a bank again. And I say, Cheryl, don't get crazy. Instead, Cheryl gets crazy, pulls a gun and shoots the bank tell her dead. Guess what? I'm on the hook for felony murder because a death occurred during the commission of a felony bank robbery.

That's how that works. So all three of those, he may later be charged in the alternative with felony murder or other types of murder. But right now, he's charged with murder, too. He's charged with gun too he's charged with gun charges for having a ghost gun which does not have serial number on it or having uh live ammo in a gun let me think what else oh yeah a forged document which i guess is his fake passport and fake uh driver's license those are his charges currently philly uh sorry say philly pennsylvania Unfortunately, Philly, Pennsylvania, actually around Altoona, also has charges on him. But they have agreed that the murder charge in New York will take precedence. And we're just waiting on extradition.

And this ding dong is apparently going to fight extradition. Of course. Nancy, thank you for explaining all that, because I'm one of those people, as soon as I hear murder, too, I'm like, what? That's no way. So thank you for explaining all that because i'm one of those people as soon as i hear murder two i'm like what that's no way so thank you for that cheryl i did the same thing i'm like murder two my rear end this needs to be murder one then i'm like okay what is murder one in new york i had to research and research and research to figure out why not murder one well i just appreciate knowing because it makes you you know feel better that they're doing the right way, the right thing. But I'm going to ask your opinion.

Let's say he does get life and he is at some point eligible to be released. If he is ever released from prison, if he's convicted, if he's ever released, does that mean that Pennsylvania would immediately get him and go to trial and then he would do time there as well? Yeah, I think how that will probably work is while I wait 50 years, I go ahead. And as soon as he's convicted in New York, God willing, I would get him sent back to Altoona, tried right then and have it to run consecutively to the New York sentence and then ship him into a CI, Correctional Institute. You don't stay at the county jail forever. Think about Andy of Mayberry and Otis would just wander in and out. That's the county jail.

Not in a big metropolitan area like Fulton County, where you and I practice, or, of course, MDC, Metropolitan Detention Center. But in a lot of smaller jurisdictions, it's, you know, very loose, almost friendly, right? Because you don't get a lot of hardcore criminals there. So he will be in a CI where he belongs once he is convicted in New York. But I would take him immediately to PA to get that conviction put to bed, done and done. I would not wait, you know, until he finishes his sentence in New York, for Pete's sake. Oh, H-E-L-L-N-O, I'd want that conviction locked in now while the witnesses are still around. Brilliant. Absolutely. So I want to clarify, we did a program about human trafficking and the routes used by human

traffickers in certain parts of the world are the very same route, age old routes of poachers. And we're trying to make the connection of how to stop human trafficking by finding these poaching routes. I know it sounds esoteric, but if you're being human trafficked, it's not. It's real. That's right. You know what? I'm so excited about Mangione. I'm going to have to crack open a can here. Hold on. Okay, hold on. It takes me a second. I guess you want to know what I'm drinking? I do. The hard stuff. V8, low sodium.

What are we going to do about Mangione? Because, of course, we've got the fingerprints matching to Mangione. We're going to have DNA because idiot drank out of a water bottle and threw it down. I'm very curious who he was talking to, excuse me, to whom he was talking on his way to the murder. Because again, to me, there are limited people you can call at 630 in the morning. Wait, we talk all the time at 630 in the morning, usually by text. Yes, you and I, but my group is you and my sister Sheila that gets up at five. I can't call anybody else at 630 in the morning.

You know, now I'm seeing the headlines about where he's being housed. Of course, it's at Huntington. And, you know, everyone is talking about, is his facility nice enough? I mean, what? Let's get to it, Nancy. This guy took great time to build a gun that could not be traced. He took time to travel to New York, spent 10 days. He got monopoly money. He got fake IDs. He got a fake passport. He made sure that he had things to cover his face, different jackets. He took time to write a manifesto.

It is, again, baffling to me that anybody is going to champion that any group, whether it's CEOs, the homeless, people with mental illness, that any group deserves to be murdered. Because I'm going to say again, you change the word CEO with any other group and it sounds disgusting. And I have no gray area when it comes to murder. None. Many people often wonder why the sentence is lesser for voluntary manslaughter, for instance, as opposed to murder one. Such as a DUI manslaughter. Why do you get 20 on that in life for murder one? Because the victim is dead in both cases. The families are distraught. Well, I'll tell you why. Because there is a degree of coldness, of calculatedness in murder. And you were just talking about how he wrote the manifesto, how he stalked the health boss, how he traveled this circuitous route from Atlanta by bus under a fake name, just all of the measures he took

not to get detected. Along each one of those steps, he could have said, what am I thinking? I'm taking a human life. Somebody's going to bleed out on the sidewalk. There are going to be children left without a father. You know, much has been made about the wife living in a separate home from Thompson, that they had been, quote, estranged, but getting along to raise children. You know what? How do I know she didn't hope for a reconciliation one day? How do I know that he

didn't work all the time and it hurt their marriage and she separated. But you never know what's going on. People might say, oh, she didn't care. They were split. That is not true. We don't know that. We don't know what she's going through trying to explain to her children that some unknown assailant attacked their father and shot him down like a dog on the sidewalk and let him bleed out in the dark. And each step of the way, he had the opportunity not to do this thing.

Murderers, I've looked at so many of them, Cheryl. Some of them are just idiots. Some of them are extremely intelligent, like Mangione. He's smart. He ain't got no street smarts. And here's the deal. He is a walking contradiction. He is such a piece of crap that he's going to sit there and pretend that he's going to

take somebody out because of their greed. But he comes from money. He is going to say, I'm a tech genius, but I'm going to use a spiral notebook for my manifesto. He's going to say I've got back pain and can't have sex with anybody, but I can run. I can ride a bike and I can ride a bus for five and a half hours. He's going to get this attorney that tells him don't say nothing. And then he's going to make all these outbursts. Day one, when you and I talked, this case made me think of DC Sniper and Eric Robert Rudolph for two reasons.

Both of those things have come to be. It makes perfect sense to me that he thinks he's avenging himself or his mama, just like Eric Rudolph thought he was doing. Eric was going to build these bombs. They say this kid said he was going to blow some people as well, but chose to do the firearm instead. Again, a lot of time was taken. And to your point, a year ago, six months ago, three months ago, he could have stopped. Somebody might could have gotten to him and say, you know, what are you doing?

There is no doubt in my mind, his family recognized him, college people recognized him, high school people possibly. It took a stranger in a McDonald's to turn him in. So again, these people that are champion for him, great, didn't work. It's never going to work. Good over evil every time, every time. One person did this, but how many New York City police officers responded? How many folks in Pennsylvania responded? How many citizens responded by sharing his picture? Love wins every time. I understand that the FBI and others are trying to impede the investigation they are not under any duty to come forward and identify Mangione so they I hate for them to spend time trying to figure that out because there's not going to be a prosecution on that at all ever what do you think after well let me just go back I think even. I think even before, I think he went ghost. I think he stopped

communicating with people. I think the family knew there was a problem. I think he's been very vocal about what he thought was wrong with the insurance industry. He hasn't hidden it. His manifesto isn't the only thing he's ever written down. Not the only thing he's ever said publicly with his outbursts now. This is not anything new. Friends and family, I believe, had to have known that he was in this direction with his anger, misplaced or not. Then I think you're talking around Thanksgiving. He's just MIA. So when his picture's out there, whether he made contact with

them, I can't believe they didn't try to get in touch with him. I can't believe mama wasn't trying to figure out where is he? Is he okay? There ain't no question she knew who it was. I'm just thinking about his family, and I'm not going to think about them very long because I'm more concerned with the victim's family. But imagine, Cheryl, well, as you do with your two, you work your whole life to help them, to get them through school, to get them into the best college they can get into, to get them through. Oh, Lord, I remember just getting the twins through Bible challenge, for Pete's sake. That took three years. I had to learn.

Oh, my goodness. There was a song, and we would sing it and march around the house. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. That's how we learned. Oh, and then anyway, and I would go over and over and over the 23rd song with lucy oh my stars three years they finally graduated bible challenge forget that what getting them into you know high school and the college search and the orthodontist and the there's a lot and you do it gladly happily willingly you support all your time all your money or at least in our case all our money not in Mangione's case all your love and you know know, dreams I once had, of course, my dreams were just putting bad guys

in jail. I didn't really have a dream past that. Right. But all your dreams are now for them. What is Lucy going to do? What is John David going to do? What is going to make them happy and fulfilled? Who are they going to marry if they marry? And it's what can I do to push them forward or help them? Just a quarter of an inch. And then you see that picture and you realize your son, Luigi Mangione, is the health boss assassin. I mean, oh, bomb, bomb. You know, Nancy, I tell people a lot of times, and you know this because you and I used to talk about it. When you have a murder trial,

the victim's family, absolutely, you can point them out. No question about it. The grief, the heartache. But you can also do that with a defendant's family. They are broken as well, because not only are they going to lose a child because of the freedom being taken, but this child of theirs that you say correctly, they've poured all their love into, has taken the life of an innocent person. And in a way, your life is forever altered.

Because everything you are looking forward to, like, you know what I'm looking forward to? The twin school made it to the state championships. And I'm looking forward to going to that game and watching Lucy be a football manager and looking up in the stands and seeing Don David in some crazy fan hat. I'm looking forward to that, you know, and I'm looking forward to Christmas and every minute I have with him. And I just don't know how empty life would be if I didn't have that to look forward to. And that is the position his parents are in. The CEO's wife, everybody in the world is coming to her.

Friends, family, neighbors, work associates, everybody's giving her whatever support they can. His family, people are distancing themselves. That's the reality, too. What he has done to his family is unforgivable. So not only has he broken their heart by murdering somebody senselessly, they are losing friends. They are losing family members. They are losing neighbors as support. It's horrible. Murder, nobody wins. It's not a solution. Again, for these people that think he's done something so great, that CEO was replaced before they got him off the sidewalk. You've done nothing.

You've accomplished nothing. It's just senseless and just the devil at work. That's all there is to it. You know what he could have done? He could, with all his brains and money, he could have started a foundation for insurance victims. He could have lobbied Congress. He could have raised awareness. I mean, his family owns part of a radio station. He could have taken calls every day at noon about insurance scams or insurance pitfalls. There's so many things he could have done. You know the starfish story about the man that's picking them up and throwing them back in the ocean? And the person says, what are you doing? And he's like, well, I'm saving this starfish.

I'm throwing it back in the ocean. And you can't save all of them. But he says, but I can save this one. What Mangione could have done with all of his wealth, he could have picked one person a year to pay their medical bills. You can't save them all, but he could have saved one. You know, it's interesting. After my fiance, Keith, was murdered, I thought, okay, when this guy gets out of jail,

do I have to go kill him? Is that my duty? Do I have to go kill him? Is that my duty? Do I need to go kill him? How can I do it and not get caught? Is that what I need to do? Instead of focusing on that, assumed he would be in jail for life and flung myself into law school and trying to help other crime victims. Then as time passed, of course, I've got the twins. I would never, ever jeopardize one minute

of being with them. That's why I start work in the morning at five, Cheryl, so I can be with them if they can be with me when they get off of school. That's right. You know, there's other ways, other ways to make the world a better place. There are ways than to hunt someone down and shoot them dead. I'm just sick about the whole thing, and I don't want to dwell on Mangione's family, but I can only imagine what the mother and father are going through. Hey, can I talk to you about that ghost gun?

Did you notice? It looks like a Glock. It looks like a Glock 1909 semi, but there's no Glock logo on it. Right. And the grip is different. I've been looking into it, researching it, and it's a free-to-download 3D printed design. And it's known as the FM, as in mother, D Delta A Alpha F Frank, FMDA 19.2. Chairman Wan remix. Now, the guy who designed it, I guess it's a guy, Chairman Wan, does not want to be linked

to this shooting at all. But he has stated he was shocked when he saw photos of the pistol and he acknowledged that it was his design. Then he got so worried he deleted the post. Now, Biden, and I am not pro-Biden or anti-Biden, I don't care. To me, they're all the same in the White House. Biden had proposed regulating these components that are used in homemade guns. Did you know there are over 25,000 privately made firearms that were discovered in one seizure in 2022? 25,000! All untraceable, Cheryl. Well, I know, I mean, here at the police department, I have a couple of ghost guns that we've taken into evidence, but they are rare for us. They are super rare, which tells me a couple of things. I know they exist. I know they're out there.

So they're usually in the hands of somebody that's not the 15-year-old gang member, not the crackhead burglar. This is somebody that has gone to great expense, great time, again, to get this gun. A lot of the guns that we are going to seize from different burglaries, robberies, things like that, are going to be somebody that stole the weapon in the first place out of somebody's car or home. And they either drop it because it's no good to them anymore,

or, you know, we get it when they are arrested but the ghost guns i would venture to bet are less than one percent of what i've got in there so let me let me talk to you about how long it would take him to make a ghost gun i've got 20 to 40 hours to make one ghost gun which adds to the um-planning. And great expense because Nancy, Huck and Caroline have a 3D printer that they got years ago and they can make little toys and things like that. But there's a lot of material. I mean, this isn't something you just can buy one little box of something and make it. There's a lot of parts. There's a lot of materials and a ton of time for that machine to work. So how does that factor into evidence? They are going to be able to take that

gun because one, it was on him. And that is so critical. They didn't find it in the woods. They didn't find it in the water. And you and I talked. We knew he was going to have that gun on him because it meant so much to him. No way he was going to throw that away. It was like his little baby. It's like his baby. And the fact that it was on him is paramount. The ammunition is going to be the same. The shell casings at the scene are going to be the same as the ones that are inside the gun.

They're going to have the handwriting on there with the permanent marker. So those are going to have fingerprints and DNA on them as well. The gun's going to have DNA all over it. So that gun is tied to him. Period. Don't need a serial number at all. I mean, Cheryl, what a wackadoodle. This guy living off his parents in a high-rise in Honolulu with a group that does nothing but surf. And they're living in this luxury high-rise.

I mean, you know how much that irritates me. But and all the hours he spent researching this and making the 3D printed gun and just it had to be hundreds and hundreds of hours that he spent. That's right. And again, he's he's got this whole thing in his head about what's right, what's wrong, who's good, who's bad. And he's the only one committing crimes. It's just unreal. And, you know, again, like D.C. Sniper wanted to leave the death card. He wanted to leave Monopoly. It's their twisted view of the world. And, you know, Nancy, you and I talked, too, about him, you know, being a big fan of the Unabomber. If you look at who these criminals research,

like Koberger researching Bundy and researching BTK, it'll tell you about them. Him wanting to research the Unabomber will tell you about him. And, you know, my favorite quote from the Unabomber is when he said, I believe in nothing. And I think this is true of this young man. He doesn't know what he believes in because his actions make no sense. What he put together makes no sense. He's a walking contradiction that is way out of bounds with his thinking. I'm curious why he didn't just have another back surgery to get out of the pain he allegedly was in. He could have made all kind of decisions

that were different. It's a real shame. I noticed that on an ex account that's been linked to him. He talks about the negative impact of smartphones. He talks about healthy eating, exercise. He quotes an Indian philosopher, Ganesh Damartya about the dangers of being quote, well, adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Yeah. Okay. Full of crap.

Where was he caught? In a McDonald's. Yeah. Hogging a, what was it? A hash brown. Give me a freaking break. You can go get a power bar if you want to, but you ain't fooling anybody. Because again, when you were caught, Mr. Contradiction, you're enjoying, you know, a big old biscuit and hash browns and whatever. You don't know what you believe in. You don't know what you're about. You do know we're in the weeds

right now. Okay. Cause we're talking about his hash brown and his quote, big old biscuit, as you put it, when we could be analyzing the facts and the evidence. So on that note, I will bid you adieu, and I will finish my V8. Did you know today's my mother's 93rd birthday? Nancy, tell her happy birthday amazing i will i will well y'all go celebrate that listen can i tell you something it's not that amazing when you're up with her three or four times a night just to check on her this morning i went in there with hot coffee i have to make it just right she b-i-t-c-h-e-d to hell and back the the other day because David took it upon himself to bring her a cup of coffee and it was too strong. I'm like, David, you have to give her one third of a teaspoon of decaf black. If it's any more than that, she will totally spit it out. Okay. I wonder what is going

to hit him. He did not sign up for this, this but anyway I took her coffee and I made her homemade biscuits with melted butter okay and apple jelly on the side okay she has to have it in a little dish on the side and the first thing she said was before I could even say happy birthday was I can't get Andrea on the TV you know who that is right yes yeah that's fantastic Andrea Bocelli I'm pretty sure she thinks they're in a relationship because very often very often you'll have a stunning woman. There's always somebody different come in and sing duets with him. And she hates the woman, whoever they are. She always hates them. Just like hate, hate, hate.

Like, why is she singing with Andrea? She is ruining it for me. My mother has a crazy TV crush on Andrea Michelli. I love her. Listen, y'all go celebrate big. She is an absolute gift. Do you do remember her and my father coming to a lot of my trials? Of course.

I sat next to her. Remember when you did the mason jar? He was so proud of you because you timed that so beautifully. Of course, I remember. I remember having all the dinners at Mary Mac's. Of course. Of course. I remember going to her house.

She gave Zoe a piano lesson right then and there. Oh, yes. And another thing, you know, she worked so hard to help us. You know, she had a full-time job. She would get home, you know, between six and seven at night, and I would hear her toot the car horn coming up the driveway. And that was the highlight of my day. And I would run out to help her, and she'd get out of the car, and she would have a stack of papers that would go, they'd be in her arms and they go up to cover her face. And on top of that would be a plug-in calculator

with the cord dangling down. And I'd run, help her carry all of her stuff in. And I can remember just like it happened yesterday that she would stand in the kitchen making dinner, and she would want me to stand at the kitchen table where we would eat supper and state, you know, give, deliver my 4-H demonstration. And I could not look down at cards. I had to make eye contact and know like a five minute presentation by heart. Okay. About whatever it was that I was talking about, forestry or canning food or home decorating

or I don't know what, you know, whatever, landscaping. But she did it all, Cheryl. She did it all. So I do not mind one bit. Okay. Taking her one third of a teaspoon of decaf, black and hot. Carol, she did it all. So I do not mind one bit. Okay. Taking her one third of a teaspoon of decaf, black and hot. Okay.

Right on. Give her my love, please. I will. Bye, my love. Bye, honey. This is an iHeart Podcast.