🔗 Share this article

On December 5, 2024, a leading publication ran the front-page story “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The report went on to state that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then calmly departed the scene”. The murder in broad daylight was truly chilling and disturbing. But numerous US citizens reacted differently: for those who had been denied health insurance or struggled with medical bills, the news felt cathartic. Social media blew up. One post stated: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who deserves to live or die. That’s the job of the artificial intelligence system the insurance company designed to increase earnings on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a graduate degree in computing, was apprehended at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He awaits trial on criminal counts of murder, with the district attorney seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what drove the accused offense? These are the issues John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an inquiry that explores broader themes, too.

Understanding the Person

A writer for a major publication, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the communities that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, writing stories about people “plagued by genuine concerns about an end-times scenario”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. 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 self-improvement, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson sifts through his communications with influencers and authors as well as his many posts on digital networks. These primary sources, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead render him an amorphous figure. Richardson tries to justify this by suggesting that “Luigi’s elusiveness, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Throughout the book, Richardson tries to frame his subject in symbolic roles.

Mangione is profoundly worried about the world around him, one where ‘everything is accelerating whether we like it or not’

The Meaning Behind the Crime

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson uses as a clue three words – “postpone”, “deny” and “remove”, engraved on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms sometimes used by health insurance companies to reject claims. He looks at the evidence Mangione had a chronic back condition, 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 “everything is accelerating whether we like it or not, moving rapidly 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

Notably missing from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson made requests, but did not anticipate 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 flashing-yellow omission is any detailed data about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from the early 2020s, UHC profits rose significantly.

Ambiguous Findings

By book’s end, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s character or what might have motivated his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been exposed to a veiled endorsement of an targeted killing. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson presents his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the mad king, the monster in the maze and the naked leader.” In that fable “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the people are suffering and everything is confusing anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s defence team works to have charges that could lead to the death penalty thrown out, any reference of fables, Robin Hoods, champions or villains will not be allowed in court in support for this handsome young man with a “features reminiscent of classical art” soon to be on trial for murder.