The saga of so-called CEO killer Luigi Mangione is the true crime story of the moment — the death of UnitedHealthcare boss Brian Thompson in the middle of Manhattan was headline-grabbing enough, but then his assassin turned out to be the most photogenic culprit the media could ask for. Mangione is now behind bars, of course, but for a moment there the hunt for the charismatic killer was so intense an innocent man was accused of committing the murder by… *checks notes* TMZ?
Journalist Sean Morrow took to social media in the wake of Mangione’s arrest to share his alarming tale of how he came to be sucked into the all-consuming speculation surrounding the identity of Thompson’s executor. Morrow revealed that, prior to the Mangione of it all, TMZ reached out to him, claiming that they had “multiple sources” alleging that he was the killer and even expressed surprise that the NYPD hadn’t slapped him in handcuffs yet.
“Now they’ve got the guy, I feel like it’s safe for me to tell the story,” Morrow begins in an Instagram reel, before detailing the “pretty wild” way TMZ went about investigating their crazy claims. First of all, the outlet emailed Morrow’s entire company looking for information, which led him to give them a call. He then shared exactly how that call played out…
According to the TMZ reporter on the other end of the line, they had received at least a “couple” of tips from people claiming Morrow was the CEO killer. Their reasoning? Because he had posted some YouTube videos in which he had “talked about health care.” As the TMZ reporter puts it, “anybody who’s spoken about [healthcare] is a possible suspect.”
Morrow explains that his YouTube videos are “journalistic investigations into the industry,” so they are not exactly filmed confessions of how he’s about to go kill a guy then smile at a barista and get some McDonald’s. As he concludes, “If me calmly explaining what your job is sounds like a threat, then your job should not exist.”
Reactions to Morrow’s revelations ranged from the sympathetic — “holy sh*t Sean this is so scary that people were trying to send NYPD after you” — to the sarcastic — “I’m sorry this is genuinely hilarious – guess it sucks to be a hot guy in New York!” Either way, TMZ doesn’t exactly come out of this anecdote at all well. Or, in the words of one reply: “wow tmz is a boil on humanity.”
While that must’ve been a scary moment for Morrow, at least he can rest easy knowing that the authorities now have the right man, as Mangione’s fingerprints have been found at the scene of the crime. Not that this has stopped the conspiracy theorists arguing that he was set up, nor has it stopped Mangione from becoming an almost instant folk hero figure for those of the “eat the rich” persuasion. Even so, Morrow’s experience raises a lot of alarm bells — it’s almost like a full-scale media manhunt without ethical perimeters is a bad idea. Who knew!
Published: Dec 12, 2024 5:35 PM UTC