Luigi Mangione stripped naked for a three-minute 'in-depth search,' police testimony reveals

• Thursday was Luigi Mangione's third day of evidence suppression hearings in Manhattan.
• It was also the anniversary of the shooting death of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
• Mangione watched as bodycam video showed his arrest processing, including an "in-depth" search.

Luigi Mangione spent the one-year anniversary of the shooting of Brian Thompson in a Manhattan courtroom, watching video of his arrest after the UnitedHealthcare CEO's murder — including footage of his disrobing for an "in-depth" strip search.

"We don't do in-depth searches very often, no," Altoona Pennsylvania Patrolman Tyler Frye testified during a third day of state-level evidence-suppression hearings. The officer said he'd never before seen a strip search used for an arrest relating to forgery — Mangione's initial charge in the Keystone State, for what police there alleged was a false ID.

Before Mangione was strip-searched in the town's only police station, however, a small knife had been recovered from his pocket, according to bodycam footage aired on the courtroom's five overhead screens.

Moments later in the footage, an officer searching through Mangione's backpack could be heard saying, "There's a gun." A weapons possession charge would be added to his Pennsylvania arrest complaint.

Mangione's strip search followed, five minutes after the gun was found. When asked to describe the rarely conducted search, Frye only said, "He's naked, and they do a more thorough search."

The search was not recorded on police body cameras, as per protocol, Frye said in court.

Before the cameras were turned off, however, they recorded Mangione disrobing, a lengthy process given that he was arrested in a nearby McDonald's wearing multiple layers of clothing, including two heavy winter jackets, two pairs of jeans, and a pair of what police in the footage called "long johns."

Large blurry rectangles popped up at times inthe footage to obscure Mangione's torso, hips, and legs as he removed the multiple layers of clothing. Prior to being arrested, Mangioni had tried to throw police off his scent by claiming to be a homeless man named Mark, earlier testimony revealed.

As Mangione removed his clothing, an intake officer asked a series of questions.

"What's your date of birth, Luigi?" the officer asks, writing down the answer on an intake form — May 6, 1998.

"Are you right or left-handed?"

"Right," Mangione answers.

"What are the color of your eyes?"

"Brown."

When the officer asks, "Single?" Mangione answered, "Yeah."

Also Thursday, prosecutors with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office released evidence photos showing some of the belongings taken from Mangione's person that day, as he was repeatedly frisked.

This evidence included nearly $8,000 in cash — $7,700 in $100 bills, plus one $50 bill.

They also included a watch, flashlight, Sharpie, string, 67 cents in loose change, and a paper medical mask.

Thompson was fatally shot from behind on a Midtown sidewalk shortly after dawn on December 5, 2024, as the 50-year-old father of two from Minnesota was about to attend an annual investor conference. The assassination-style shooting sparked a nationwide manhunt that captivated the nation.

Federal and state prosecutors say that the 9 mm ghost gun Mangione had in his backpack when he was arrested five days later in the small Pennsylvania town matches the shell casings and single spent bullet recovered from the sidewalk.

In hearings set for this week and next, defense lawyers are challenging how Altoona police gathered evidence from Mangione. The lawyers have asked New York State Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro to bar prosecutors from showing the disputed evidence to a jury in Mangione's yet-to-be-scheduled 2026 murder trial.

Throughout the day on Thursday, Frye sat in the courtroom's witness chair, providing a narration as police body cam footage showed multiple angles of Mangione's arrest and post-arrest processing.

Frye, 26, told the judge, the prosecutor, and the crowded courtroom that he was still a probationary officer on the morning of December 9, 2024, when the call came in that a "suspicious male" at the Altoona McDonald's looked like "the New York City shooter."

The five-day, nationwide manhunt sparked by Thompson's shooting ended when Mangione lowered his face mask for the two cops as they surrounded his seat near the restrooms in the back of the restaurant.

"I knew it was him immediately," Frye's partner, Patrolman Joseph Detwiler, told the judge in testimony Tuesday.

Some of the footage screened in court Thursday showed police officers rummaging through Mangione's backpack at the McDonald's and later at the police station.

Defense attorneys, led by former Manhattan prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo, say that the police failed to get the requisite warrant before searching the bag, and that the contents — including the gun and what prosecutors say are incriminating writings — must be suppressed.

Prosecutors, led by veteran Assistant District Attorney Joel Seidemann, counter that Pennsylvania law allows law enforcement to search a suspect and their belongings as part of an arrest.

New York Supreme Court Justice Gregory Carro has not said when he will make a decision on what evidence can be shown to a jury. No trial date has been set in either Mangione's federal or state murder cases.

This story has been updated to include additional hearing details and prosecution evidence photos obtained by Business Insider late Thursday.