NEW YORK — Attorneys for accused UnitedHealthcare CEO killer Luigi Mangione are questioning the validity of a damning statement allegedly made by Mangione’s mother, and have raised the possibility that the statement was made up by the head of the NYPD’s Detective Bureau, who repeated the statement at a press conference, recently released court filings revealed.

In a Manhattan Supreme Court filing made on Wednesday, attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo claims she hasn’t received any documents from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office to corroborate a statement made by Mangione’s mother, Kathleen Mangione, that shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson “might be something that she could see him doing.”

NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny claimed at a press conference that Mangione’s mom made the statement at a Dec. 7 interview with San Francisco detectives, “but fortunately we apprehended him before we could act on that.”

Luigi Mangione was arrested two days later on Dec. 9.

“To date there has been no documentation provided in discovery that confirms the Chief of Detective’s statement as to Mrs. Mangione’s alleged statement,” Agnifilio wrote. “In fact, all the discovery provided so far indicates that she did not make such a statement.”

Mangione, 27, sparked a nationwide manhunt after allegedly gunning down Thompson outside the Hilton Hotel in Midtown Manhattan in the early morning hours of Dec. 4, 2024, as the health executive was walking to an annual investors conference.

After the killing, which authorities claim Mangione had been planning for months, the shooter slipped away from the scene and rode a bike to Central Park, before taking a taxi to a bus depot that offers service to several nearby states.

Five days later, a tip from an employee at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa, about 230 miles west of New York, led police to arrest Mangione. He has been held without bail ever since.

Mangione’s mother allegedly made the statement to police in San Francisco, where she reported her son missing around the time of the shooting.

Kenny’s statement regarding Mangione’s mother had been repeatedly reported in the media, as well as in books on the killing and the court case, Agnifilio said in her court filing.

“If it is true that Mrs. Mangione never made this statement, then it is shocking and unconscionable that the District Attorney’s Office and the NYPD have never corrected this highly prejudicial false statement,” she wrote.

Agnifilio did leave room for the possibility that the statement was true, “but for some unexplained reason,” she said, “the District Attorney’s Office has failed to provide this statement to counsel as part of its discovery obligations.”

“This failure would itself demonstrate that the People’s Certificate of Compliance (which claims the prosecution has handed over all the evidence in the case) is not valid,” she wrote. “We ask that the court direct the District Attorney’s Office to state for the record whether Mrs. Mangione made this statement to law enforcement.”

The NYPD and D.A. Alvin Bragg’s office will be responding to this court filing in the next few weeks. Both agencies did not immediately respond to email requests seeking comment.

In his state and federal court cases, prosecutors allege Mangione’s motive was made clear by markings on shell casings recovered at the scene, which read “DENY,” “DELAY” and “DEFEND” — an apparent reference to the healthcare industry routinely denying insurance claims to boost its bottom line.

Prosecutors also cited Mangione’s writings in the weeks and months before the killing, which authorities have described as a manifesto. One page outlined a plan to “wack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention,” they allege.

In September, a Manhattan judge dismissed terrorism offenses against Mangione, finding that prosecutors presented “legally insufficient” evidence.

The ruling was a significant win for Mangione, who no longer faces a potential life sentence without the possibility of parole on charges of first- and second-degree murder in furtherance of terrorism.

After the terrorism charges were dismissed, Mangione’s lawyers asked that the death penalty be taken off the table, too, as a result of public comments by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi. In April, Bondi directed prosecutors in New York to seek the death penalty, calling the Thompson’s killing a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.”

In October, attorneys in Mangione’s federal case said that officer body-worn camera footage from his arrest in Altoona shows that he was never given his Miranda rights and that no warrant was obtained before cops searched his backpack and found the gun he used to kill Thompson, as well as some ammunition.

Mangione’s attorneys claimed in other court filings that authorities prejudiced their client’s case by turning his arrest into a “Marvel movie” spectacle — including a moment when Mangione was flown to New York City via helicopter and cops paraded the suspect down a Manhattan pier under armed guard.

These actions, attorneys claim, “have violated Mr. Mangione’s constitutional and statutory rights and have fatally prejudiced this death penalty case,” his lawyers argued in a court filing.

Mangione is still facing a second-degree murder count in New York State, unrelated to terrorism allegations and lower-level offenses.

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