Mangione: The Making and the Meaning by John H Richardson – Understanding a Criminal?

On the fifth of December 2024, a leading publication published the headline “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The report went on to state that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was indeed both chilling and disturbing. But many Americans reacted differently: for those who faced insurance rejections or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt like a release. Online platforms erupted. One comment read: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who deserves to live or die. That’s the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company designed to increase earnings on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a graduate degree in computing, was apprehended at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on federal and state charges of murder, with the district attorney seeking the capital punishment. So who is Mangione? And what might have motivated the accused offense? These are the questions John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an investigation that explores broader themes, too.

Understanding the Person

A writer for a major publication, 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 examines Mangione’s extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, Luigi had a list of 295 books on a reading platform”. Their content ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson sifts through 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 render him an unclear character. Richardson attempts to explain this by suggesting 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 archetypal terms.

Mangione is deeply anxious 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 takes as his lead three words – “postpone”, “refuse” and “remove”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases occasionally employed by health insurance companies to reject claims. He examines the indication Mangione had a long-term spinal issue, which could have been a reason 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 general belief seems to be that AI is going to eventually either dominate, or destroy us, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson asked, of course, but never expected access to Mangione himself. And his family stated explicitly that they had chosen not to talk to the press in advance of the trial. Another glaring gap is any significant information 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 reader has little insight of Mangione’s character or what could have driven his alleged crimes. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him creates the disturbing feeling 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 era of stories, the mad king, the monster in the maze and the emperor without clothes.” In that tale “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the population is in pain and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s legal representatives works to have accusations that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any reference of fables, Robin Hoods, heroes or villains will not be admissible as evidence in defence of this handsome young man with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.