Luigi Mangione

Luigi Mangione
Pennsylvania Department of Corrections image of a detained Mangione, December 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 10 in (1.78 m)
Criminal status	Incarcerated at Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn without bond
Parents	Louis Mangione (father) Kathleen Zannino (mother)
Relatives	Nicholas Mangione (grandfather) Nino Mangione (cousin)

Luigi Nicholas Mangione (/ˌmændʒiˈoʊni/ 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 United Healthcare. 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. 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.

Since his arrest, Mangione has received support and has been viewed as a folk hero by many online.

Early life and education

Mangione was born in Towson, Maryland, on May 6, 1998, to a family of Italian (specifically Sicilian) descent. He is the son of Louis Mangione and belongs to a prominent Maryland family. He has two sisters.

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

Career

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.

Personal life

Mangione suffers from spondylolisthesis and Lyme disease. He underwent a spinal fusion surgery in July 2023. Mangione was never insured by UnitedHealthcare, and was instead insured by Blue Cross Blue Shield.

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 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.

Alleged role in the killing of Brian Thompson

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

Background

Brian Thompson, the 50-year-old 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 UnitedHealth Group, the parent company of UnitedHealthcare. 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. When asked by the police if he had been to New York City recently, he was reportedly "visibly shaken".

Upon seaching Mangione, police said they found a 3D-printed ghost gun and a 3D-printed suppressor which they said are consistent with the weapon used in the shooting, and a falsified New Jersey driver's license with the same name as the one used by the alleged shooter to check into a Manhattan hostel. The police also said that when they arrested Mangione, they found a three-page, 262-word handwritten document about the American healthcare system, which they characterized as a manifesto.

Mangione had no prior criminal record.

State and federal charges

The December 17, 2024, New York state charges indictment document

The December 18, 2024, federal charges document

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 lead into the courthouse, he shouted to the gathered cameras:

"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.

On December 17, 2024, Mangione was indicted on eleven state charges.

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 (ghost gun)
11. Criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second degree (forged ID)

On December 19, 2024, Mangione received an additional four federal charges, which included two counts of stalking, a new firearms-related offense, and murder through use of a modified firearm. The murder by firearm charge opens up the possibility of the death penalty if convicted. Mangione was extradited to New York and is currently being held at Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn.

Defense

Mangione's attorney Thomas Dickey said that Mangione will plead not guilty to all the charges against him, and will fight a prospective interstate extradition to New York. 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. On December 18, Mangione's attorney said that Mangione will waive extradition.

Crowdsourcing fundraisers were started by supporters of Mangione to cover his legal costs on GoFundMe, before being removed. A GiveSendGo fundraiser has remained live; as of December 21, it has raised nearly $175,000.

Views

Handwritten document

Upon his arrest, police said they found in his possession a three-page handwritten document that, according to New York Police Department commissioner Jessica Tisch, allegedly speaks to Mangione’s "motivation and mind-set" Excerpts of the document included, "These parasites had it coming" and "I do apologize for any strife or trauma, but it had to be done". The document compared health care companies to parasites, and 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 that that profits continued to rise while the life expectancy of Americans did not.

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. His religious views were considered to be generally secular and scientifically oriented. He leans in favor of religion in general on evolutionary grounds, 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 left a four-star rating on the Unabomber manifesto on literary social cataloging site Goodreads, and 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."

Io Dodds, writing for The Independent, quoted journalist and extremism expert Robert Evans describing 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".

Mangione was found to have back pains since childhood, which was speculated by observers as a possible cause of anger towards the healthcare system, towards which he was found to have expressed frustration and skepticism.

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 praise on social media, and garnered over 460,000 followers after his identification on X. According to the Network Contagion Research Institute, variations of "#FreeLuigi" have been shared over 50,000 times on X after his arrest.

Items and merchandise in support of Mangione were posted on Etsy, Amazon, and other e-commerce sites before being removed. Other social media users linked Mangione's jail commissary account soliciting donations for "snacks, sodas, an iPad, etc."

Mangione was transported via helicopter from Pennsylvania to New York on December 19. After landing, he received a highly publicized perp walk, escorted by a large number of heavily armed law enforcement officials and New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Stanford Law School professor Robert Weisberg said it seemed "particularly staged" and that "The FBI and NYDA could have transported Mangione discreetly, but they opted for a public show. This one looks designed to send a message." 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 compared Mangione's perp walk to the arrest of Jesus and Superman movies.

Mangione has been noted for his physical attractiveness, and Kara Alaimo, writing for Time, stated that he has become "somewhat of an online sex symbol".

External links

• Quotations related to Luigi Mangione at Wikiquote