Luigi Mangione: the brilliant young computer scientist arrested for killing UnitedHealthcare CEO
The detainee stopped communicating with his family and friends six months ago. He was suffering from back pain and a message found in his possession said that ‘these parasites simply had it coming’
Among the legion of admirers — and haters — of Luigi Mangione, accused of the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, there are many who wonder how someone with his IQ, who was the valedictorian of his Baltimore prep school, could have made the mistake of fleeing with all the material he used to commit the crime. Another, worse mistake was his flirtation with the employee of the New York hostel where he spent the night for several days before killing Thompson: amidst seductive laughter, Mangione lowered the mask that covered his face, offering a perfect target for the video surveillance cameras.
When local police officers in Altoona, Pennsylvania, 230 miles northwest of New York, arrived on Monday at the McDonald’s where Mangione was eating, focused on his computer screen, they had no doubts: “It was him, the one in the photos,” said the youngest of the officers, a rookie in the force. But apart from the fact that the young man began to shake when he was asked if he had recently been to New York, it was the contents of his backpack that provided the definitive evidence: a pistol and a silencer, both printed in 3D; a Glock magazine, nine-millimeter bullets like those found at the crime scene, abundant cash, a passport and a handwritten note that seemed not only incriminating, but a roadmap to get revenge on the companies that offer health insurance.
The 26-year-old is being held without bail in Pennsylvania on charges of possession of an unlicensed firearm, forgery and providing false identification to police. Late Monday, Manhattan prosecutors charged him with five counts, including murder, criminal possession of a weapon and criminal possession of a forged instrument. With undergraduate and graduate degrees in computer science in 2020 from the University of Pennsylvania, Mangione co-founded a club to develop video games, according to the university newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian.
He arrived in New York on November 24 on a regular bus from Atlanta, although he could well have gotten on at one of the stops along the way. His arrival in the city is as erratic as the rest of his life: a native of Maryland, where he was born into an influential family of real estate developers, his last known address is in Honolulu (Hawaii) and his family had not heard from him for six months. He suffered from back pain, and the image of an X-ray of what is supposed to be his spine, riddled with nails, appeared on his X account, which went from 60 followers on Monday morning to 100,000 by midday, before being closed. As further evidence of the animosity that Mangione felt towards insurance companies, the handwritten message found in his backpack could not have been clearer: “I do apologize for any strife or traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.”
Mangione stopped communicating with friends and family six months ago, The New York Times reported. Friends said Mangione was suffering from a painful back injury and then disappeared. Investigators will now try to figure out what the suspect did during that period when no one seemed to know his whereabouts.
His family, which grew rich from the business activities of the founder, a Sicilian immigrant who was penniless when he arrived in the United States, owns a country club in Maryland. His cousin is Nino Mangione, a Republican lawmaker who represents a Baltimore district in the Maryland House of Delegates. The New York Times notes that the grandparents of the suspect, Nick and Mary C. Mangione, bought Turf Valley country club in Ellicott City, Maryland in the 1970s and developed the golf course community. In the 1980s, the family bought Hayfields Country Club in Hunt Valley, Maryland. It also founded the Lorien Health Services nursing home company, in which the suspect’s father, Louis Mangione, became the owner. The family also owned the conservative radio station WCBM and has other real estate holdings.
Aaron Cranston, a friend from school quoted by the newspaper, describes Mangione as possibly the smartest guy in school. He describes him as a sociable, friendly person who was not particularly interested in politics. “He was a big believer in the power of technology to change the world,” Cranston concludes.
The suspect had multiple fraudulent IDs, including a fake New Jersey ID that matched the one the masked man used to check into a Manhattan hostel days before the shooting, authorities said. Police also found a handwritten document that speaks to “both the motivation and the mindset” of Mangione, New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said Monday. It is a manifesto against the healthcare industry. NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said that while the document did not mention specific targets, Mangione harbored “some ill will toward corporate America.”
The detainee had ties to San Francisco and his last known address is Honolulu, where he lived in a co-living space for remote workers called Surfbreak. Those who socialized with him in 2022 say that Mangione did not complain much, but suffered from back pain due to a deviated spine and a vertebra that pinched a nerve. This condition affected his life. Finally, he decided to have surgery; from that moment on, messages with his acquaintances became scarce.
According to the professional social network LinkedIn, Mangione worked as a data engineer at a company called TrueCar. “While we do not generally comment on personnel matters, we can confirm that Luigi Mangione has not been an employee of our company since 2023,” a TrueCar spokesperson told the media.
There is a hiatus, professional, sentimental, almost biographical, in Mangione’s life. Among his friends, with whom he had not kept in touch for some time, there were no words to express the shock that someone like Mangione, polite, kind, successful could have committed this crime. A voracious reader, he was a regular on the Good Reads page, where readers rate works and Mangione listed the almost 300 books he had read or wanted to read, including a favorable review of Unambober’s manifesto, Industrial Society and its Future, by Theodore Kaczynski —the real name of the terrorist who in 1996 planted a trail of bombs that killed three people. Mangione gave him four out of five possible stars in the rating and said that the author was “an extreme political revolutionary.” But over the summer, his comments suddenly stopped, prompting worried messages online from some of his friends.
“No one has heard from you for months, and it seems like your family is looking for you,” one user posted on X in October, tagging Mangione’s account. “I don’t know if you’re okay,” another posted. Until a simple gesture, removing the mask that covered his face to flirt with the employee of the New York hostel, fixed his image not only as a popular hero, capable of exacting justice over corporate abuses, but for his own police record.
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