Mangione: The Making and the Meaning by John H Richardson – Understanding a Criminal?
On the fifth of December 2024, a major newspaper ran the headline “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The article then noted that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was indeed both chilling and disturbing. But numerous US citizens reacted differently: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt cathartic. Online platforms erupted. One post stated: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who should live or perish. That’s the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company designed to maximize profits on your health.”
Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a master’s in computer science, was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on federal and state charges of murder, with prosecutors seeking the capital punishment. So what is his background? And what drove the alleged crime? These are the questions John H Richardson attempts to answer in an inquiry that explores broader themes, too.
Understanding the Person
A writer for a major publication, Richardson spent years researching the groups that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, producing articles about people “plagued by genuine concerns about an apocalyptic future”. To uncover “the making” of his subject, Richardson first reviews Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on Goodreads”. Their content ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson sifts through his correspondence with influencers and authors as well as his many updates on digital networks. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead present him as an unclear character. Richardson tries to justify this by suggesting that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Throughout the book, Richardson tries to frame his subject in symbolic roles.
Mangione is deeply anxious about the world around him, one where ‘change is rapid whether we like it or not’
Interpreting the Incident
As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson uses as a clue three words – “delay”, “deny” and “depose”, etched on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms occasionally employed by health insurance companies to reject claims. He looks at the evidence Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, which might have provided motive for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what meaning there is seems to lie in Mangione’s existential anxiety about the world around him, one where “everything is accelerating whether we like it or not, sliding faster and faster to the edge”; a world where the general belief seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either take control, or destroy us, or both.
Missing Pieces
Notably missing from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson made requests, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his family made it clear that they had decided against speaking to the press in prior to the trial. Another glaring gap is any detailed data about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from 2021 to 2023, UHC profits increased by 33%.
Ambiguous Findings
By book’s end, the audience has little insight of Mangione’s personality or what could have driven his alleged crimes. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the uncomfortable impression of having been exposed to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson delivers his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the insane ruler, the monster in the maze and the emperor without clothes.” In that fable “outlaw heroes come with a beautiful promise … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the population is in pain and everything is confusing anymore.”
One thing is clear: as Mangione’s defence team works to have charges that could lead to the death penalty dismissed, any reference of myths, Robin Hoods, champions or monsters will not be admissible as evidence in support for this handsome young man with a “features reminiscent of classical art” facing judgment for murder.
