Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate, has been arrested and charged in connection with the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. After being arrested yesterday at a McDonald’s restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, he was charged with murder, second-degree criminal possession of a weapon, second-degree possession of a forged document and third-degree criminal possession of a firearm. He is currently incarcerated as law enforcement is investigating a motive.
Who is Luigi Mangione?
Mangione was raised in a wealthy family from Baltimore. His grandfather Nicholas Mangione’s real estate empire included several nursing home facilities and two country clubs in Maryland, according to CNN. His family also runs a foundation with nearly $4.5 million in assets. They have made donations to Loyola University, which named its aquatic center after the Mangione family.
The 26-year-old attended Gilman School, an all-boys private school, where he graduated as high school valedictorian in 2016. He then attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he obtained a master’s and bachelor’s degree in computer science and a minor in mathematics. Mangione has an active social life as a student. He was a member of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity, started a video game development club and regularly posted snippets of his life on social media.
After graduating in 2020, he started working as a software engineer for the online car sales company TrueCar, according to CNN. He moved to Hawaii, where he worked remotely and lived in a co-living space for about six months.
Although his cousin is Maryland State Delegate Nino Mangione, a Republican, Mangione is registered to vote without political party affiliation. Those around him have not noted any social or political issues he was particularly vocal about.
Luigi Mangione’s 6-Month Disappearance
Mangione kept an active online presence but stopped posting over the summer. Family and friends reportedly had little news of him, which prompted their concern.
“Nobody has heard from you in months, and apparently your family is looking for you,” someone wrote on X in October and tagging Mangione’s account, according to CNN. “I don’t know if you are okay.”
In July, a friend tweeted at Mangione, asking him if he was still planning on attending his wedding.
“You made commitments to me for my wedding and if you can’t honor them I need to know so I can plan accordingly,” they wrote in a now-deleted post, according to The New York Times.
Weeks before the shooting, someone else reached out, writing, “Thinking of you and prayers everyday in your name. Know you are missed and loved.”
Luigi Mangione’s Debilitating Back Injury
Mangione was about the health challenges he faced in recent years; he underwent surgery for back pain. It’s believed he has spondylolisthesis, a slippage of a vertebrae in the spine.
On a now-deleted Reddit account believed to associated with Mangione, the user says he has had spondylolisthesis since childhood but a surfing accident in Hawaii two years ago aggravated his case, according to CNN. Mangione was bedridden for days following his surfing accident.
“My back and hips locked up after the accident,” the Reddit user wrote in July 2023. “Intermittent numbness has become constant,” they added. “I’m terrified of the implications.”
R.J. Martin, who was Mangione’s roommate at the co-living space in Hawaii, said the accident was significant to Mangione.
“He knew that dating and being physically intimate with his back condition wasn’t possible,” he told The New York Times. “I remember him telling me that, and my heart just breaks.”
Mangione also shared past struggles with Lyme disease and severe brain fog.
A Murder Aimed ‘Toward Corporate America’
When Mangione was arrested, he was carrying a black 3D-printed pistol, a black 3D-printed silencer and a handwritten document that in part stated having “ill will toward corporate America” and that “these parasites had it coming.”
In the manifesto, the writer takes responsibility for the murder, a senior law enforcement official told The New York Times.
“To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn’t working with anyone,” the writer stated. The note also condemned companies that “continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allowed them to get away with it.”
At the scene of the crime, bullet casings engraved with words like “deny” and “delay” were found, while a backpack found in Central Park contained Monopoly money.
Although Mangione wasn’t outwardly politically committed, he left a favorable review of the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s manifesto via Goodreads.
“It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless(ly) 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,” Mangione wrote in January, per CNN. “He was a violent individual – rightfully imprisoned – who maimed innocent people. While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary.”
He also quoted comments that another person wrote about Kaczynski in a Reddit thread, saying the Unabomber “had the balls to recognize that peaceful protest has gotten us absolutely nowhere” and that “‘Violence never solved anything’ is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.”
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