Luigi Mangione Pumps Fist in Court — Before Cop Says Ammunition Was Found in Pair of Wet Underwear By Ben Brachfeld 13

Luigi Mangione pumped his fist as he entered a Manhattan courtroom Monday, Dec. 8 — then looked down as bodycam footage showed officers find a loaded magazine wrapped in a pair of wet underwear in his backpack.

Mangione, 27, was back in court for the fourth day of marathon evidence suppression hearings Monday morning ahead of his trial for allegedly killing Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, last December in Midtown Manhattan — after he called in sick with an unspecified illness on Friday.

As he entered the courtroom wearing a grey suit and blue shirt, he flashed a pumped fist to pool photographers taking his picture.

But when Altoona, Pa., Police Officer Christy Wasser — the cop who conducted the initial search of his backpack — took the stand on Monday, Mangione struck a different demeanor. Mangione was looking down at court papers, writing things or talking to his lawyers as Wasser spoke and bodycam footage of the search played on televisions in the courtroom.

Previously, Mangione has intently watched bodycam footage of his arrest.

Wasser’s testimony could prove pivotal to the suppression hearings: authorities say they recovered a 3D-printed 9mm pistol and a “manifesto” against the health insurance industry while searching Mangione’s backpack. Mangione’s attorneys want to suppress those pieces of evidence, claiming they were recovered in an illegal, warrantless search.

Suppressing the evidence would be a crucial win for the defense, making it much harder to establish Mangione possessed the gun that allegedly killed Thompson or a motive to do so.

In bodycam footage, Wasser can be seen rifling through the black backpack with gloves as Mangione stands nearby in cuffs, grabbing a knife, a sandwich, a loaf of bread, a mobile phone and passport in a “Faraday bag” that blocks cell signals, and ultimately a fully loaded magazine wrapped in a pair of wet underwear.

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Wasser could be seen smiling while holding the magazine, as another officer says “it’s f—ing him, 100%.”

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Right after that, officers could be seen in the footage debating whether a warrant was needed for the search, though most concluded one wasn’t needed. In the footage and on the stand, Wasser said that she was worried the bag could contain a bomb — and didn’t want to mistakenly bring a bomb to the police station like another Altoona officer named Moser.

At the police station about 15 minutes later, Wasser puts the bag down on a chair and opens a side pocket, where she recovers a handgun. Later, she takes the bag into another room, where beneath the underwear she exclaims “oh my god” as she discovers a suppressor, and later finds a red notebook that she and prosecutors say contains Mangione’s manifesto.

Also found in the bag were SIM cards and a hand-drawn map of Pittsburgh, containing a checklist that included checking red-eyes to Columbus or Cincinnati and the need to break security camera “continuity.”

Mangione has previously watched as Altoona cops who arrested him and prison guards who watched him, and chatted with him, while in solitary confinement testified in open court.

The accused killer — and his supporters, mostly young women and many wearing green — have also watched as prosecutors have played surveillance footage of Thompson’s shooting, the fateful 911 call from McDonald’s that resulted in his arrest and bodycam footage from his arrest and interrogation.

Mangione has pleaded not guilty to both the state charges and concurrent federal murder charges, which could land him the death penalty if convicted. He is being held pretrial at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.