Luigi Mangione

Luigi Mangione
Mangione following his arrest on December 9, 2024
Born	Luigi Nicholas Mangione (1998-05-06) May 6, 1998 Towson, Maryland, U.S.
Education	University of Pennsylvania (BSE, MSE)
Known for	Suspect in the killing of Brian Thompson
Height	5 ft 11 in (1.80 m)
Criminal status	Incarcerated at Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn without bond
Relatives	Nicholas Mangione (grandfather) Nino Mangione (cousin)

Luigi Nicholas Mangione (/luˈiːdʒi ˌmændʒiˈoʊni/ ^ⓘ loo-EE-jee MAN-jee-OH-nee; born May 6, 1998) is an American man who was identified as the person of interest and later a suspect in the killing of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.

Mangione was arrested and arraigned in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on December 9, 2024. After waiving extradition in Pennsylvania, he appeared in a federal court in New York City on December 19. On December 23, Mangione was arraigned in the New York Supreme Court and pleaded not guilty to his state charges. Mangione has been indicted on eleven state charges and faces four federal charges. These include first-degree murder, murder in furtherance of terrorism, criminal possession of a weapon, and stalking. The federal murder by firearm charge makes him eligible for the death penalty, although federal prosecutors have yet to indicate if they will pursue it.

Since his arrest, Mangione has received support online, with some celebrating him as a folk hero. Opinion polls found a majority of American adult respondents held a negative view toward Mangione, with younger respondents and liberals more likely to support him. The support Mangione has generated has been connected to negative views of the health insurance industry and harmful claim denial practices. The case has spurred growing calls for health insurance reform.

Family background

Mangione was born in Towson, Maryland, on May 6, 1998, to Kathleen (née Zannino; born 1964) and Louis Mangione (born 1953). He has two sisters: MariaSanta and Luciana.

Mangione belongs to an upper-class local family of Italian descent. His paternal grandfather, Nicholas Mangione (1925–2008), was born to poor Sicilian immigrant parents in the Little Italy neighborhood of Baltimore; he had 10 children (five sons and five daughters) and 37 grandchildren, one of whom (i.e. a cousin of Luigi) is Nino Mangione, a member of the Maryland House of Delegates. After Nicholas Mangione's death, his children took over his businesses; Luigi's father, Louis, now runs the Mangione Family Enterprises. The family also owns Hayfields Country Club, Turf Valley Resort, Lorien Health Services, the WCBM radio station, as well as the Mangione Family Foundation.

Education and career

Mangione attended Gilman School, an all-boys private school in Baltimore, where he graduated as valedictorian in 2016. Mangione received a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) in computer engineering from the University of Pennsylvania in 2020 and later received a Master of Science in Engineering (MSE) in computer and information science. His undergraduate studies included a minor in mathematics, and his graduate curriculum was concentrated in artificial intelligence. He was a UI programming intern with the video game company Firaxis Games from May 2016 to August 2017 while he was an undergraduate student.

Mangione began to work remotely in November 2020 as a data engineer for TrueCar, a car retailing website company headquartered in Santa Monica, California. His employment there ended at some point during 2023, according to the company. His last known residence was in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Alleged role in the killing of Brian Thompson

For broader coverage of this topic, see Killing of Brian Thompson.

Background

Brian Thompson, CEO of the American health insurance company UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on December 4, 2024. The shooting occurred early in the morning outside an entrance to the New York Hilton Midtown hotel. Thompson was in the city to attend an annual investors' meeting for UnitedHealthcare's parent company UnitedHealth Group. The suspect, initially described as a white man wearing a mask, fled the scene.

The gunman was masked and had come to New York via a bus from Atlanta. The words delay, deny, and depose were written on the spent cases and an ejected cartridge. The three words are similar to the phrase "delay, deny, defend", a well-known phrase in the insurance industry alluding to insurance companies' efforts to not pay out claims. The suspect possibly left the city, being seen at a bus terminal afterward. Anger erupted on social media platforms at Thompson, UnitedHealth, and the health insurance system generally, with many praising the killing.

Arrest

On December 9, 2024, local police arrested Mangione at a McDonald's restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, responding to a call from an employee made in response to a customer who recognized Mangione from images of Thompson's alleged killer released by the NYPD. Altoona is about 280 miles (450 km) west of New York City. The police reported that he was "visibly shaken" when they asked him if he had recently visited New York City.

Upon searching Mangione, police said they found a similar 3D-printed gun and 3D-printed suppressor to the weapons used in the shooting, and a fake driver's license from New Jersey with the name "Mark Rosario", the same name used by the alleged shooter to check into a Manhattan hostel. The police also said that when they arrested Mangione, they found a 262-word handwritten document partly about the American healthcare system, which was characterized as a manifesto by multiple media outlets. Mangione had no prior criminal record.

State and federal charges

Mangione was charged in Blair County, Pennsylvania, with carrying a gun without a license, forgery, falsely identifying himself to the authorities, and possessing "instruments of crime" on December 9, 2024. He was arraigned at around 6 p.m. at Blair County Courthouse on firearms charges and questioned by the New York City Police Department, and was denied bail. As he was led into the courthouse, a reporter shouted "Luigi, did you do it?" before Mangione shouted to the gathered cameras: "[Unintelligible] and it's completely out of touch and is an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience."

Later that day, Mangione was charged in Manhattan with second-degree murder, three counts of illegal weapons possession, and forgery, and was sent to the State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon, a close-security state correctional facility in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania.

People v. Mangione
Court	New York Supreme Court
Full case name	People of the State of New York v. Luigi Mangione
Citation	CR-036031-24NY

On December 17, 2024, Mangione was indicted on eleven New York state charges by the Manhattan district attorney's office.

1. Murder in the first degree (murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism as defined under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001)
2. Murder in the second degree as a crime of terrorism (a crime of terrorism under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001, in the form of murder)
3. Murder in the second degree (murder as such – intentional killing)
4. Criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree (possession of a loaded firearm with intent to use the same unlawfully against another)
5. Criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree (unlicensed carrying of a loaded firearm)
6. Criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree (possession of an "assault weapon" under the gun laws in New York)
7. Criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree (silencer)
8. Criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree (Glock magazine)
9. Criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree (Magpul magazine)
10. Criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree (3D-printed gun)
11. Criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second degree (fake ID)

United States v. Mangione
Court	United States District Court for the Southern District of New York
Full case name	United States of America v. Luigi Nicholas Mangione
Docket nos.	1:24-mj-04375

On December 19, 2024, Mangione received an additional four federal charges. Possible remedies for murder by firearm include execution.

1. Stalking (interstate via traveling from Georgia to New York) (18 U.S.C. ss. 2261A(1)(A) and 22661(b)(1))
2. Stalking (interstate via use of a cellphone and the Internet) (18 U.S.C. ss. 2261A(1)(A) and 22661(b)(1))
3. Murder through use of a firearm (18 U.S.C. s. 924(j)))
4. Firearms offense (18 U.S.C. s. 924(c)(1)(A)(i), (ii), (iii) and (c)(1)(B)(ii))

Mangione was extradited to New York, and is currently being held at Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn.

In a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office Southern District of New York concerning the unsealing of the Complaint charging Mangione, they state "The charges contained in the Complaint are merely accusations, and the defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty."

On December 23, Mangione was arraigned in the New York Supreme Court and pleaded not guilty to his state charges.

Defense

Mangione's Pennsylvania attorney Thomas Dickey said that Mangione would plead not guilty to all the charges against him. Mangione hired Karen Friedman Agnifilo, former prosecutor at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and former legal analyst with CNN, as his New York case defense attorney on December 13. Ten days later, Mangione was flown to New York after waiving his right to an extradition hearing.

On December 13, the crowdfunding platform GoFundMe removed a fundraiser created by Mangione's supporters to cover his legal costs. The site's Terms of Service prohibits fundraisers for the legal defense of violent crimes, and it was removed; a GiveSendGo fundraiser has remained live, and by December 24, 2024, it had raised more than US$200,000.

Personal life

Mangione is alleged to suffer from spondylolisthesis and Lyme disease. He allegedly underwent a spinal fusion surgery in July 2023. Police stated that Mangione was not insured by UnitedHealthcare.

In the summer of 2024, Mangione stopped posting on social media. On November 18, 2024, his mother reported him missing to the San Francisco Police Department, saying the family had not heard from him since July of that year, shortly after a trip to East and Southeast Asia. Mangione's mother contacted the San Francisco Police Department because she believed that Mangione lived in San Francisco and still worked for TrueCar, which had an office there.

Views

Handwritten document

Upon his arrest, police said they found in his possession a 262-word handwritten document that, according to New York Police Department commissioner Jessica Tisch, allegedly spoke to Mangione's "motivation and mindset". Excerpts of the document included, "I do apologize for any strife or trauma, but it had to be done" and "These parasites had it coming". The document further expressed disdain for corporate greed and power. It also said that the United States had the most high-priced health care system in the world, and corporate profits continued to rise while the life expectancy of Americans did not.

Ken Klippenstein is the only journalist to publish what was alleged to be the entire document police said was found on Mangione. However, the Complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney's office states "The Feds Letter also stated: 'P.S. you can check serial numbers to verify this is all self-funded. My own ATM withdrawals.'" which is not shown in the document that was released by Klippenstein.

Analysis of social media presence

Several news outlets analyzed Mangione's social media in the wake of his arrest, and drew conclusions on his social, political and religious views. His posts were found to express concerns over the implications of pornography, DEI programs, falling fertility rates, wokeism, secularization, and the decline of Christianity, and he promoted traditionalist ideas. He leans in favor of religion in general on evolutionary grounds, opposing New Atheism and has expressed interest in Japan's indigenous religion, Shintoism. Mangione showed a skeptical attitude towards both Joe Biden and Donald Trump, while showing apparent support for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s run for president in 2024. Multiple sources have reported that he followed Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as well as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others, labelling him as politically uncategorized and "anti-system".

According to Business Insider, Mangione's since-deleted social media posts supported the idea that "his worldview was influenced by reactionary right-wing thinkers". Time magazine said it could not discern whether his political views were left-wing or right-wing. The Spectator wrote that his worldview "wasn’t pinned to a standard left-right axis." Jacobin stated that he held "a hodgepodge of views and political beliefs that don’t neatly map onto any one category on the political spectrum".

Mangione posted a Goodreads review of Ted Kaczynski's Industrial Society and Its Future, describing Kaczynski as "rightfully imprisoned" and was critical of his use of violence against innocent individuals. The review was quoted as writing, "Clearly written by a mathematics prodigy. Reads like a series of lemmas on the question of 21st century quality of life", and "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 [...] but it's simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out." The review, which gave the manifesto four out of five stars, also contained a quote that the reviewer claimed to have found online. The quote contained the lines "'Violence never solved anything' is a statement uttered by cowards and predators" and "when all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive."

Robert Evans described Mangione as being associated with a loosely-defined online subculture called the "gray tribe" or the "rationalist movement", whose members he described as "self-consciously intellectual and open-minded, [and] preoccupied with learning how to overcome their own mental biases. They're deliberately eclectic in their information diet, invoking esoteric ideas from many different fields, [and are] often systems thinkers, who take pride in attributing social problems not to individual evil but to complex interplays of incentives and institutions".

Public image

Following the Thompson shooting, the suspected shooter was viewed as a folk hero by many social media users. Look-alike contests have been held in New York City's Washington Square Park and the University of Florida.

After Mangione's arrest, he received support and praise on social media, and received over 460,000 followers after his identification on Twitter. According to the Network Contagion Research Institute, variations of "#FreeLuigi" have been shared over 50,000 times on Twitter after his arrest. The support Mangione has generated has been connected to the public's often negative view of the health insurance industry and what many consider to be unfair claim denial practices that inflict harm. The case has spurred growing calls for health insurance reform. A December 2024 NORC at the University of Chicago poll found that a majority of American adults believe that health insurance company denials for health care coverage and/or profits made by those companies share a moderate amount or a great deal of responsibility for Thompson's death.

"Deny Defend Depose" graffiti in New York City

Street art, graffiti, and signs in support of Mangione appeared on buildings, streets, highways, and other places. A billboard with the words "Free Luigi" was seen in Riverside County, California. Images and memes of Mangione depicted as a Roman Catholic saint have circulated online. Items and merchandise in support of Mangione were posted on Etsy, Amazon, and other e-commerce sites before being removed. Some merchandise were reportedly the subject of copyright and DMCA takedown requests from an entity purporting to be UnitedHealth Group Inc. Other social media users linked Mangione's jail commissary account soliciting donations for "snacks, sodas, an iPad, etc." The Independent reported that during his time in custody in Pennsylvania, Mangione had received over 100 pieces of mail.

Mangione has been noted for his perceived physical attractiveness, and Kara Alaimo, writing for Time, stated that he has become "somewhat of an online sex symbol". After Mangione's Manhattan courtroom appearance on December 23, Maison Margiela trended on Twitter and Threads after social media users misidentified the brand of the burgundy sweater that Mangione was wearing. Users later determined that he was wearing a "washable Merino crewneck sweater" from Nordstrom, which social media users nicknamed 'Mangione Merino', and was quickly sold out. A criminal justice professor, speaking about Mangione's online popularity, told WWD that “What we see with Mangione is he has quickly become a folk hero and a fashion folk hero."

Perp walk

After being transported from Pennsylvania to New York on December 19, Mangione received a highly publicized perp walk, escorted by a large number of heavily armed law enforcement officials and Mayor of New York City Eric Adams. Stanford Law School professor Robert Weisberg said that "The FBI and NYDA could have transported Mangione discreetly, but they opted for a public show", and some legal experts stated that the perp walk was a "blatant and unnecessary attempt at self-promotion". Policy director for the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School Jorge Camacho noted that "in a case like Mangione’s, where the suspect has garnered some sympathy and applause from people frustrated with greedy health-care insurance companies, the tactic can backfire."

Social media users shared memes and compared Mangione's perp walk to the arrest of Jesus, scenes from the Superman movies, and Renaissance paintings. On December 23 during Mangione's New York court hearing where he pled not guilty to the state charges, his defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo said that Mangione might not receive a fair trial due to publicity from law enforcement presentations of him, blaming Mayor of New York City Eric Adams for the "unnecessary" and "utterly political" perp walk. She added, "The mayor should know more than anyone about the presumption of innocence", suggesting Adams was attempting to distract from the charges he himself is facing.

Opinion polls

An Economist/YouGov poll conducted from December 15 to 17 surveying 1,553 U.S. adult citizens found that 43% of American citizens had a "somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable" view of Mangione, while 21% had a "somewhat favorable or very favorable view of him." 37% were unsure. Mangione received the most support from citizens aged 18–29, who viewed him favorably by a 39%–29% margin, and very liberal citizens, who viewed him favorably by a 47%–31% margin. Mangione was viewed least favorably by citizens aged 65 and older (65%–5% unfavorable) and very conservative citizens (62%-8% unfavorable).

The Center for Strategic Politics ran an online poll with 455 American adults on December 11 and found that "61% of respondents said they have a strong or somewhat negative perception of Mangione", 19% had a positive or somewhat positive view, and 21% did not know. Opinions on Mangione vary "dramatically" by age, with respondents under 45 holding a more positive view of him than those over 45. Additionally, they indicated that men were more likely to support Mangione than women, and Black and Hispanic respondents were more likely to support him than White respondents. The poll also found that young Americans view Mangione "far more favorably" than they viewed Thompson and UnitedHealthcare.

A poll of 6,000 U.S. adults was conducted by CloudResearch on December 19, utilizing artificial intelligence (AI). The poll found that roughly one in four respondents were sympathetic to Mangione.

In popular culture

Mangione was referenced in various season 50 skits of the American sketch comedy late-night television series Saturday Night Live (SNL). He was mentioned in the Weekend Update with anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che; in his opening monologue, comedian Chris Rock joked about the capture of Mangione; in another skit, Nancy Grace (played by Sarah Sherman) expressed outrage at the online support of Mangione and interviews a regular Pennsylvania McDonald's customer (played by Kenan Thompson) and an alleged Mangione look-alike (played by Emil Wakim).

Vulture reported that documentaries about Mangione are in development. One documentary is being developed by Alex Gibney and Anonymous Content, and the other by Stephen Robert Morse. On December 19, 2024, ABC aired the ABC News documentary Manhunt: Luigi Mangione and the CEO Murder - A Special Edition of 20/20.

Political impact

In the aftermath of the publicity around the Mangione case and United Health, there are additional questions and increased public pressure on Congress for health reform legislation in 2025.

External links

• Commonwealth v. Mangione
• Ken Klippenstein: Read the NYPD’s Mangione report the media won't publish