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On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper published the headline “Insurance CEO Shot Dead 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 murder in broad daylight was truly cold and shocking. But many Americans reacted differently: for those who had been denied health insurance or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt cathartic. Social media blew up. One comment stated: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who should live or perish. That’s the job of the artificial intelligence system the insurance company designed to increase earnings on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate 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 capital punishment. So who is Mangione? And what might have motivated the accused offense? These are the issues John H Richardson attempts to answer in an investigation that explores broader themes, too.

Understanding the Person

A writer for a major publication, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the groups that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, writing stories about people “cursed with realistic fears about an end-times scenario”. To uncover “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 a reading platform”. Their content covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. 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 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”. Here, as elsewhere, 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’

Interpreting the Incident

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson takes as his lead three words – “postpone”, “deny” and “remove”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases sometimes used by medical insurers to reject claims. He examines the indication Mangione had a long-term spinal issue, which might have provided motive for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what meaning there is seems to rest 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 eventually either dominate, or destroy us, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

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 stated explicitly that they had decided against speaking to the media in advance of the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any significant information about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from the early 2020s, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Ambiguous Findings

By the conclusion, the audience has little insight of Mangione’s character or what could have driven his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy 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 beast in the labyrinth and the emperor without clothes.” In that fable “outlaw heroes come with a beautiful promise … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the population is in pain and everything is confusing anymore.”

One thing is clear: as Mangione’s defence team works to have accusations that could lead to the death penalty thrown out, any mention of fables, Robin Hoods, heroes or monsters will not be admissible as evidence in defence of this handsome young man with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” facing judgment for murder.