Mangione: The Story Behind the Story by John H Richardson – Understanding a Criminal?
On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper ran the front-page story “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 walked coolly away”. The murder in broad daylight was indeed both cold and shocking. But numerous US citizens had a different response: for those who had been denied health insurance or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt like a release. Online platforms erupted. 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 created to maximize profits on your health.”
Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a master’s in computer science, was arrested at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on criminal counts of murder, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what might have motivated the alleged crime? These are the questions John H Richardson attempts to answer in an investigation that explores broader themes, too.
Understanding the Person
A journalist for Esquire magazine, 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 end-times scenario”. To uncover “the making” of his subject, Richardson first reviews 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 subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own personal growth, both physical and mental”. Additionally, Richardson sifts through his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many updates on social media. 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 mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson attempts to cast his subject in archetypal terms.
Mangione is profoundly worried 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 uses as a clue 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 deny coverage. He looks at the evidence Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, which could have been a reason for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what significance 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, moving rapidly to the edge”; a world where the consensus seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either dominate, or destroy us, or both.
Missing Pieces
Conspicuous by their absence from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson made requests, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his relatives made it clear that they had decided against speaking to the press in advance of the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any detailed data about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from 2021 to 2023, company earnings increased by 33%.
Ambiguous Findings
By book’s end, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his alleged crimes. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been privy to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s final lines, Richardson presents his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a time of fables, 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 people are suffering and nothing makes sense anymore.”
One thing is clear: as Mangione’s defence team continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the death penalty thrown out, any reference of myths, Robin Hoods, heroes or monsters will not be admissible as evidence in support for this attractive individual with a “features reminiscent of classical art” facing judgment for murder.