Prosecutors highlighted “about $10,000 — $8,000 in U.S. dollars and then $2,000 in foreign currency that was found on his person,” CNN correspondent Danny Freeman said following the court hearing.
“Also they said that he had a Faraday bag,” which blocks cell signals, a move that prosecutors alleged marked “an indication of criminal sophistication and reason they should hold him on bail,” Freeman continued.
After prosecutors made the claims, Mangione said he would like to “correct two things.”
“I don’t know where any of that money came from — I’m not sure if it was planted. And also, that bag was waterproof, so I don’t know about criminal sophistication,” the suspect said in a statement that suggested police framed him.
Likely wearing similar clothes to the widely circulated photographs. Otherwise how did anyone recognize him?
Still had his ghost gun and manifesto on him.
Cops asked him for an ID and he gave them the same fake New Jersey ID that had been widely reported as what he used to check into a hostel in NYC.
Where these just common mistakes? Made by the same person who succeeded at avoiding so many others? But if he was trying to turn himself in, getting arrested at McDonalds doesn't seem like the method I would have chosen. Was he trying for suicide by police?
I'm leaning on the side of a normal human 'on the run' and making normal mistakes. But there is enough to make me doubt that.
Also if they ever make a movie out of this, James Franco's brother Dave Franco has a passing resemblance.
Most people sent to US prisons commit victimless crimes. Very few of them used guns and the chances that he meets someone who used a ghost gun is near zero.
Most of the people he would meet in prison are black and brown people who were targeted for the color of their skin. The priosns are for-profit in the US, so keeping the beds full is important for the shareholders' dividends.