 "Who is Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old arrested in UnitedHealthcare CEO’s killing?")
The hunt for the killer of UnitedHealthcare CEO, Brian Thompson, has reportedly come to an end — six days after the daylight murder — with New York investigators arresting 26-year-old Luigi Mangione and charging him with possession of an illegal weapon, forgery and other crimes in Pennsylvania.
New York Police Department officials say he’s expected to be extradited to New York, where he’ll face additional charges.
Mangione is believed to have killed Thompson on a Manhattan street in broad daylight, shocking many Americans. The murder also led to many venting about the US’ healthcare industry , sharing their personal experiences.
As Mangione awaits his next appearance in court — scheduled for December 23 — let’s take a deep dive into who he is and what could have been his motive for the killing.
Who is Luigi Mangione?
Now 26 years of age, Luigi Mangione, according to the police, was born and raised in Maryland, has ties to San Francisco and his last known address is in Honolulu. CNN reports that Mangione, now the suspect in the Brian Thompson family, belongs to a famous Baltimore family — his grandfather, Nicholas Mangione is a famous Baltimore real-estate developer and grandmother Mary C Mangione is a philanthropist. He’s also the cousin of Republican Maryland state legislator Nino Mangione.
His LinkedIn page says that he has a bachelor’s and masters in science engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. Later, this was confirmed by the institution with a spokesperson saying that Mangione had graduated in 2022.
Earlier, in 2016, he graduated from Gilman School, an all-male high school in Baltimore. “This is deeply distressing news on top of an already awful situation,” Henry PA Smyth, Gilman headmaster, said in a statement. “Our hearts go out to everyone affected.”
In his valedictory speech, Luigi Mangione described his classmates’ “incredible courage to explore the unknown and try new things,” according to a post on the school website. He praised their collective inventiveness and pioneering mindset.
His LinkedIn page also shows that Mangione worked at TrueCar for the past four years. However, in a statement, TrueCar, Inc told The Guardian that Mangione has not been with the company since 2023. “While we generally don’t comment on personnel matters, we can confirm that Luigi Mangione has not been an employee of our company since 2023,” they said.
Many who know Mangione from college describe him as a “super normal” and “smart person”. His former roommate RJ Martin told CNN that it was “unfathomable that Mangione is the suspect in the in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson”.
Martin said the two lived together in a co-living and co-working community in Hawaii and weren’t just roommates, they were friends. “He was a very thoughtful person. Communicated really well, was friendly, had good relationships with everyone. He was even, in some ways, a bit of a leader,” Martin told CNN.
Martin added that Mangione “never once talked about guns, never once talked about violence.” “He was absolutely a not violent person, as far as I could tell,” Martin said.
What does social media reveal about Mangione?
Besides friends and roommates, Mangione’s social media activity reveals more clues about who he is and his thinking.
A profile that shares a similar picture and name on Goodreads show that Mangione read 65 different books, ranging from Elon Musk to dieting. However, the account didn’t have any record of him having read or commented on Delay, Deny, Defend , a book about the health insurance industry; the same words were found inscribed on the shell casings found at the scene of the Thompson murder.
Mangione, did, however, give a four-star rating to Industrial Society and Its Future, also known as the Unabomber Manifesto written by Ted Kaczynski. This served as the reasoning for Kaczynski’s mail bomb campaign that killed three people and injured 23 others.
“It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies,” Mangione wrote. “But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.”
His account on X shows a spike in activity after 2021, following thinkers such as neuroscientist and podcaster Andrew Huberman, author and social media critic Jonathan Haidt, and writer Tim Urban. Many of his posts focused on topics such as falling birthrates, the political gender divide and the compulsive use of social media.
He also retweeted posts on health and masculinity. He also shared content that made fun of and criticised inclusive and “ woke ” political views.
A look at his X profile also suggested that Mangione struggled with some kind of back pain — he had shared an image of an x-ray with four pins or screws visible in the lower back.
How was Mangione arrested?
Luigi Mangione was taken into custody on Monday (December 9) after police received a tip that he was eating at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
Court documents reveal that the police approached Mangione at the table, wearing a blue medical mask and looking at a laptop. When the officers asked him to pull the mask down, they were able to identify him from photos released to the media. “My partner and I recognised him immediately,” Altoona Patrolman Tyler Frye told reporters during a news conference Monday night. “Just from what we saw in the media, with photos, videos, we just didn’t even think twice about it, we knew that was our guy.”
Once detained, the police found on Mangione multiple fraudulent IDs, as well as a US passport. They also a sound suppressor, or silencer, “consistent with the weapon used in the murder”, said New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. Mangione, according to the police, also was in possession of clothes and a mask similar to those worn by the shooter in the Brian Thompson killing. He also had the same fraudulent ID that matched the one that was used by the shooting suspect to check into a New York hostel.
After Luigi Mangione was arrested, an officer searched a backpack he had with him and found “a black 3D-printed pistol.
On his arrest, the cops also found a three-page handwritten note in which he expresses “ill will toward corporate America”. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said, “The document “speaks to both his motivation and mindset.”
In the document, the author writes, “I do apologise for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done. These parasites had it coming.”
The New York Times citing a senior law enforcement official said the note found on Mangione mentioned UnitedHealthcare by name and noted the size of the company and how much money it makes. The official added that the document condemned the healthcare industry for prioritising profits over care.
What comes next for Mangione?
The 26-year-old has been charged in five matters — one count of murder, two counts of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, one count of second-degree possession of a forged document, and one count of third-degree criminal possession of a firearm.
Meanwhile, Mangione’s family has released a statement, which reads: “Our family is shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest. We offer prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved.”
With inputs from agencies
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