Mangione: The Story Behind the Story by John H Richardson – Understanding a Criminal?
On December 5, 2024, a leading publication published the front-page story “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The article then noted that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was truly chilling and disturbing. But numerous US citizens reacted differently: for those who had been denied health insurance or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt cathartic. Social media blew up. One post stated: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who should live or perish. That’s the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company created to increase earnings on your health.”
Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a master’s in computer science, was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on federal and state charges of murder, with the district attorney seeking the death penalty. So who is Mangione? And what drove the alleged crime? These are the questions John H Richardson attempts to answer in an investigation that explores broader themes, too.
The Making of a Subject
A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson spent years researching the groups that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, writing stories about people “cursed with realistic fears about an apocalyptic future”. To uncover “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on a reading platform”. Their subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his correspondence with influencers and authors as well as his many posts on social media. These original materials, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead present him as 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”. Throughout the book, Richardson attempts to cast his subject in archetypal terms.
Mangione is deeply anxious 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 – “delay”, “refuse” and “depose”, engraved on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases occasionally employed by medical insurers to reject claims. He examines 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 rest in Mangione’s existential anxiety about the world around him, one where “everything is accelerating whether we like it or not, sliding faster and faster to the edge”; a world where the consensus seems to be that AI is going to eventually either take control, or eliminate humanity, or both.
Missing Pieces
Notably missing from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson made requests, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his relatives stated explicitly that they had decided against speaking to the media 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.
Unclear Conclusions
By book’s end, the audience has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been exposed to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s final lines, Richardson delivers 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 “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 certain: as Mangione’s legal representatives works to have charges that could lead to the ultimate sentence thrown out, any reference of myths, folk heroes, champions or villains will not be allowed in court in defence of this attractive individual with a “features reminiscent of classical art” facing judgment for murder.
