🔗 Share this article

On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper published the front-page story “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The article went on to state that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then walked coolly away”. The daytime killing was truly chilling and disturbing. But numerous US citizens had a different response: for those who faced insurance rejections or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt cathartic. Social media blew up. One post read: “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 maximize profits on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a graduate degree in computing, was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He awaits trial on criminal counts of murder, with the district attorney seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what might have motivated the accused offense? These are the issues John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an inquiry that explores broader themes, too.

The Making of a Subject

A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the communities that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, writing stories about people “plagued by genuine concerns about an apocalyptic future”. To uncover “the making” of his subject, Richardson first reviews Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of 295 books on Goodreads”. Their subject matter ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson analyzes his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many updates on social media. These original materials, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead render him an unclear character. Richardson attempts to explain this by proposing that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Throughout the book, 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 uses as a clue three words – “postpone”, “deny” and “depose”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases sometimes used by health insurance companies to deny coverage. He examines the evidence Mangione had a long-term spinal issue, which might have provided motive for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what significance there is seems to rest in Mangione’s existential anxiety about the world around him, one where “the pace is quickening 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 eliminate humanity, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Notably missing from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson asked, of course, but did not anticipate time with Mangione himself. And his family stated explicitly that they had chosen not to talk to the media in advance of the trial. Another glaring gap is any detailed data about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from 2021 to 2023, 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 alleged crimes. More troubling, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the uncomfortable impression of having been exposed to a subtle approval of an assassination. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson presents 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 nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s legal representatives works to have charges that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any reference of fables, folk heroes, heroes or villains will not be allowed in court in support for this handsome young man with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” facing judgment for murder.