In love with a killer: How the internet became obsessed with Luigi Mangione

There’s a Luigi (green cap and overalls, bushy mustache, and lanky figure) who has been a video game icon for four decades, with merchandising generating over $36 billion in profits. Yet, today, he is the second most famous Luigi in the world. The first is 26-year-old Luigi Mangione: a brilliant student, from what some might call a good conservative family, who was anonymous until just two days ago. Then, Mangione was arrested as the primary suspect in the murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare. Alleged details of his life are now everywhere (for instance, in this in-depth profile published by EL PAÍS), but social media has added its own, even more outlandish, theories, fascinated by the oversimplified narrative that has brought us here: a handsome, idealistic young man has killed a corporate “monster” from one of the world’s most powerful companies.

Very active on social media, Mangione reportedly left behind a trail of information that creates an immediate, seemingly accurate profile of who he is — or at least, who he wanted to appear to be. Not long ago, one had to rely on a skilled writer or a team of psychiatrists to provide an exclusive profile of a criminal. Today, a quick glance at their most-played Spotify songs can give us an idea of who they are. Supposed nude photographs, which he allegedly sent to someone who wanted to receive them, have already surfaced. And now, in the age of social media, millions are also eager to see them, particularly on platforms like X and other, adult-rated sites.

Whether or not these clues — his Spotify profile, his nude photos, or even a supposed Tinder profile — are authentic remains unclear. After all, anyone with a cellphone can easily take fake screenshots. Already, some voices are claiming that the fake is Mangione himself, and that the real killer is someone else (“Look at the eyebrow!”), suggesting that the arrest is a farce. What is undeniable, however, is the frenzy this case has sparked. An alleged killer has become the antihero who will mark the end of 2024, a year in which the term “brain rot” — the mental decay linked to hours of exposure to uncontrolled content on social networks — was named word of the year by the Oxford Dictionary. “Rotten” has come to define us all.

The fascination with criminals and the allure of evil is well-documented. Truman Capote spent years exploring this obsession in his landmark work In Cold Blood (1966), which not only captivated readers but also exposed Capote’s own fascination with murderers to the point that the veracity of the story has often been questioned. In contemporary culture, television creator Ryan Murphy has crafted a formula that feeds into a similar fascination: glorifying infamous murderers (or alleged ones) in aesthetically rich, musically charged series designed for the Netflix generation, eager to see new angles on figures like O.J. Simpson, Andrew Cunanan, and the Menendez brothers. The case of the Menendez brothers is strangely connected to Luigi Mangione: attractive, well-positioned, and rebels with a cause (they claimed to have killed their parents after enduring years of abuse), the Menéndez brothers garnered groupies who sent them love letters and even married two of them in prison.

“When the reason for killing someone is seen as just or understandable, it is easy to put the murderer on a pedestal,” explains Clara Tiscar, the creator of the well-known podcast Criminopatía, where she has spent 128 episodes delving into the complexities of contemporary crimes. “In some cases, they do what others believe is needed, but would never dare to themselves — something many people want, but would prefer someone else to do. But, of course, this thinking is both dangerous and useless. In this case, killing a tyrant won’t end tyranny: insurance companies will keep profiting off the death and suffering of those who need them.

Mangione’s story seems almost too perfect to be believable. A handsome young man kills a villain with three shots (Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, earned more than $10 million annually leading the largest and most controversial health insurance company in the U.S.), and he does so with three bullets, each engraved with a word: Deny, Defend, Depose. An anonymous man eliminates the figurehead of a corrupt and decaying system — health insurance in the U.S., where a single night in a hospital can cost $2,000, and 47 million people lack health coverage.

Mangione also has a personal backstory to fuel the myth: chronic back pain, which would place him among the many Americans burdened by medical bills and endless bureaucratic red tape. However, something feels off: Mangione’s family was financially well-off. It’s rare for a wealthy person to garner sympathy unless they’re evading their position to champion a cause that’s not a matter of survival. In his letter to the authorities, Mangione made his perspective clear: “These parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the U.S. has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the largest company in the U.S. by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy?”

“There are fictional heroes more poorly written than Mangione, who has it all,” says Paul Pen, a mystery writer who has crafted complex killers with a cause in his novels (such as The Infinite Metamorphosis) and, like millions of internet users, has become fascinated by this real-life killer. “He has charisma, intelligence, a cause, a traumatic past that quickly explains his motivations, and even playful elements that make his story entertaining: bullets with words, a striking X-ray, Monopoly bills, and an arrest at McDonald’s. All of this is also anchored in the modern world, making the story more accessible, complete with reviews on Goodreads, Spotify playlists, and even his alleged nudes.”

On social media, Mangione shared posts about his anxiety and self-care, along with pictures of his travels and his body sculpted through exercise. If we can trust the information circulating online, just hours before the murder, he was listening to Britney Spears’ Criminal, a song with the lyrics: “Mama, I’ve fallen in love with a criminal / And this type of love isn’t rational, it’s physical.” But whether we can believe this information is another question — and it’s not wise to place too much faith in it.

Tiscar warns against jumping to conclusions based on the immediate details provided by social media profiles, even if they appear verified. “In some cases they provide information, but excessive information becomes noise,” says Tiscar. “Social media can speed up an investigation because things are often made public that would otherwise take a long time to uncover. But it depends on how each person uses them: social media is not always a true reflection of a person, or of their life, but of what they want to show or pretend.” Sorting through the fake or exaggerated data, driven by sensationalism and the desire to turn Mangione into whatever the public imagines him to be — whether it’s the Swiftie Killer, the sick hero, or the gay gym icon — makes it difficult to play the amateur investigator.

Virginia de la Cruz, who co-founded the Las amigas bastantes true-crime podcast and later turned it into a book, advises aspiring crime detectives to rely on official sources — “police statements, autopsies, court reports.” She explains: “In this case, which is very fresh because it has just happened, you have to follow the news in serious newspapers like The Washington Post, which contain police statements, and not in newspapers that reports news based on what someone has said on Twitter, like The Daily Mail.”

There’s no consensus among those interviewed on how to approach a figure like Mangione — whether it’s acceptable to be fascinated by him or if murder automatically negates any allure. Writer Paul Pen views Mangione’s aura as a murderer through a literary and cinematic lens: “Since the first news broke, I’ve been thinking about V for Vendetta or Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker — because they’re ordinary citizens battling huge systems. While his violence targets one specific victim, his real enemies are social injustice and the system itself.”

“I don’t think that, in general, murderers inspire admiration in us,” Tiscar adds. “They spark curiosity, a desire to understand the reasons that lead someone to kill. There are cases in which we understand the reasons why someone kills, without agreeing that it’s the solution. In cases like Luigi Manglione or the Menendez brothers, the victims have done something despicable, so we can share the rage that their murderers feel or think that it is a just cause. They have suffered an injustice and have taken revenge. That makes it very easy to empathize.”

Virginia de la Cruz disagrees: “Luigi Mangione is a terrible person who chose to kill another human being — there’s no defense for that. But the human brain often looks for convenient or sensational narratives, and that’s the problem. When faced with death, we ask ourselves: Why? And if someone tells you: because the murderer had three nails in his back that condemned him to suffer torturous back pain for life, we already start to take points off the sentence. And what’s more, the murderer is hot. And if his act is considered an attack on the heart of the American health system, we all applaud. But you can applaud the intention of that call to attention to a society broken by the lack of social security, you can applaud the figure of a masked avenger in the style of Robin Hood or Batman, but you can never applaud a murder.”

Social media, where memes — some elegant, others hilarious or explicit — elevate Mangione to the status of a modern-day Robin Hood, does not seem to care about the moral complexities. But it’s only been two days since his arrest. As more reports emerge, what we think of Mangione could change. For now, we’re still admiring his abs and the green Levi’s jacket he wore in the surveillance footage that led to his identification, which has already sold out. After all, there aren’t many killers with abs — but actors who portray them in future Netflix series usually do. In that sense, Mangione might just have outdone even Ryan Murphy himself.

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