Was a hidden tunnel with cryptic codes on its walls found in the basement of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson's home after his death? No, that's not true: This is a conspiracy theory with no factual basis -- the images used to illustrate the false narrative have nothing to do with Thompson's home and came from news reports about other places. Lead Stories found no information about a tunnel under Thompson's home on the websites of any news outlets indexed by Google News.
The false narrative was posted on TikTok on December 12, 2024. The same audio track resurfaced in a video posted (archive here) on X on December 24, 2024 with alternative images. Its caption is:
Tunnel Found Under CEO Home: Bizarre Twist
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Source: X screenshot taken on Thu Dec 26 16:07:30 2024 UTC)
The image above shows a hatch door in a red concrete floor. A wooden ladder goes down into a dark room with a floor that appears to be concrete. There is no public reporting that the police found a hidden tunnel in Thompson's Maple Grove, Minnesota, home. Lead Stories did a search using keywords on Google News (archived here) that found no results that would confirm the claim. At 10 seconds into the video posted on X, the narrator tells this false story:
Police discovered a hidden tunnel that could change the course of the case. Thompson, allegedly murdered by Luigi Mangioni, is now at the center of new suspicions. The tunnel uncovered beneath a carpet in the basement leads to an isolated area and contains traces of fresh dirt, tools, and recent footprints. Tire marks suggest it was used for clandestine transport.
This same image appeared over a year ago in a February 12, 2023, report (archived here) from Fresno, California, Fox News station kmph.com. The article, titled, "Urban Legend: Downtown Visalia area honeycombed with tunnels," includes an embedded video of the broadcast segment about the urban legend. The hatch door opening to the tunnel appears at the 1:07 mark of the news video. The reporter explains:
You'll find concrete tunnels below the Fox Theater. They were built in 1929 as part of the air conditioning system. Cool air would flow through the tunnels below the theater seats. The head of maintenance says the tunnels were part of the air conditioning system and didn't connect to any neighboring buildings.
The December 12, 2024, video posted on TikTok (archived here) contains the same false narrative about the hidden tunnel in Thompson's home, but with different images. In the Lead Stories composite image below, the screenshot shows the 20-second mark in the video (below left) with a different hatch door. A reverse image search with Google Lens (archived here) returned results from iStock showing a 2019 photo (archived here) that was taken in Italy (below right).
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with TikTok and iStockphoto.com screenshots taken on Thu Dec 26 20:13:17 2024 UTC)
Another aspect of the false narrative is the claim that there were cryptic documents found on the walls of the tunnel. The narrator says:
But the most disturbing discovery was what investigators found on the tunnel walls. Cryptic handwritten codes and symbols that matched classified documents previously found in Mangione's home. This direct link between the two raises darker questions -- Was Thompson the true target of a larger conspiracy or was he more involved than anyone suspected?
The images included in the videos do not match "classified documents" found in Mangione's home. The images match documents that already have an established history unrelated to this case.
The writings pictured at 32 seconds into the X video (below left) are an 18th-century religious poem, "Jubilate Agno" by Christopher Smart (here on Wikimedia Commons) and at 36 seconds an 18th-century diagram from the notebook (here on Wikimedia Commons) of Léonard Joseph Prunelle de Lière's Élus Coëns, showing the "indication of seals of spirits, the good angels and evil demons" is shown (below center). The image at 31 seconds into the TikTok video (below right) appears in a 2019 BBC News Brazil article (archived here) about Bruno Borges, a young man who in 2017 disappeared and then months later reappeared, having left behind a mysteriously decorated bedroom full of encrypted messages on the walls.
(Source: Lead Stories composite image with X and TikTok screenshots taken on Thu Dec 26 20:13:17 2024 UTC)
Additional Lead Stories fact checks on claims associated with the murder of the United Healthcare CEO can be found here.
