🔗 Share this article

On the fifth of December 2024, a major newspaper published the headline “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The report went on to state that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was indeed both cold and shocking. But many Americans had a different response: for those who had been denied health insurance or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt cathartic. Online platforms erupted. One comment read: “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 created to increase earnings on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a graduate degree in computing, was arrested at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He awaits trial on criminal counts of murder, with the district attorney seeking the capital punishment. So what is his background? And what might have motivated the accused offense? These are the issues John H Richardson attempts to answer in an investigation that delves into wider topics, too.

The Making of a Subject

A writer for a major publication, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the communities that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, writing stories about people “cursed with realistic fears about an apocalyptic future”. To uncover “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, Luigi had a list of 295 books on Goodreads”. Their content covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own personal growth, both physical and mental”. Furthermore, Richardson sifts through his communications with online personalities and authors as well as his many updates on digital networks. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead render him an unclear character. Richardson attempts to explain this by suggesting that “Luigi’s elusiveness, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson attempts to cast 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’

The Meaning Behind the Crime

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson takes as his lead three words – “delay”, “deny” and “remove”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms sometimes used by medical insurers to reject claims. He examines the evidence Mangione suffered from a long-term spinal issue, which might have provided motive for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what significance there is seems to lie in Mangione’s philosophical dread about the world around him, one where “the pace is quickening 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 eliminate humanity, or both.

Missing Pieces

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are interviews with the key individuals. Richardson made requests, but never expected access to Mangione himself. And his family made it clear that they had decided against speaking to the press in advance of the trial. Another glaring gap is any detailed data about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from the early 2020s, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Unclear Conclusions

By the conclusion, the audience has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what could have driven his alleged crimes. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him creates the uncomfortable impression of having been privy to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson presents his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the mad king, the beast in the labyrinth and the emperor without clothes.” In that tale “outlaw heroes come with a appealing vow … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the people are suffering and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s defence team works to have accusations that could lead to the ultimate sentence thrown out, any reference of fables, folk heroes, heroes or villains will not be admissible as evidence in support for this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.