An Upstate New York man was charged Wednesday with sending threatening voicemails to the wife of slain UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson mere hours after his chilling murder on a Midtown sidewalk.
Saratoga County resident Shane Daley, 40, gloated about Thompson’s cold-blooded killing in three vile voicemails left on the work phone line of a Minnesota woman — who court papers make clear was Thompson’s wife Paulette — on Dec.4, 2024, the night of his death.
“Your [family member] got lit the f–k up because he’s a f–king asshole,” Daley said in one of the expletive-filled message, federal court papers allege. “Profiting off the… backs of poor Americans.”
Daley — who later conceded to an FBI agent that he’d been drinking when the calls were made — claimed in an unhinged message left three minutes later that Thompson’s children deserved to die as well, according to a criminal complaint.
Federal prosecutors in Albany and Manhattan did not identify the woman who received the calls by name, calling her “Victim-1” in the filing. But the criminal complaint says that Daley, in his third voicemail that night, mocked Paulette Thompson’s statement calling her husband “an incredibly loving, generous, talented man who truly lived life to the fullest and touched so many lives.”
“The caller was mocking Victim-1’s public statement regarding Thompson’s murder,” the complaint reads.
The Galway, NY man yet again called the mourning woman on the night of Dec.7, leaving a final voicemail wishing the Thompson family suffering and reiterating that the killed CEO “deserved to f–king die,” court papers alleged.
The feds traced the profane voicemails to Daley’s phone, and an FBI agent who interviewed him recognized his voice from the messages, the criminal complaint reads.
Daley initially denied making the calls, but later “asserted that he’d been drinking during that period and conceded that it was possible that he made such calls,” court papers say.
Daley faces up to five years in prison if convicted of one count of felony cyberstalking.
He made his first appearance in Albany federal court Wednesday afternoon in front of USMagistrate Judge Daniel J. Stewart. It was not immediately clear whether he had entered a plea. His attorney didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Luigi Mangione, 27, was charged with Thompson’s murder after a dramatic, days-long manhunt.
Mangione is fatally shooting Thompson at close range on the morning of UnitedHealthcare’s annual investor conference in what prosecutors call a targeted “act of terror” meant to prompt public outcry about what the accused killer says is a predatory healthcare industry.
He has pleaded not guilty.
Christopher Raia, who runs the FBI’s New York office, said in a statement Wednesday that “the recurrent calls and messages in the days following Brian Thompson’s murder were more than callous and cold-hearted harassment – they were threatening and terrified a family already suffering following the violent death of their loved one.”
“The FBI will continue to bring to justice any individual attempting to stalk and harass innocent Americans,” Raia said.
Acting US Attorney for the Northern District John Sarcone, and interim US Attorney for the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton said in a joint statement that their offices collaborated on Daley’s case.