🔗 Share this article

On December 5, 2024, a leading publication published the headline “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The article went on to state that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was indeed both cold and shocking. But numerous US citizens had a different response: for those who faced insurance rejections or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt like a release. 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 designed to maximize profits on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a master’s in computer science, was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on federal and state charges of murder, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what drove the alleged crime? These are the questions John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an inquiry that explores broader themes, too.

The Making of a Subject

A writer for a major publication, Richardson spent years researching the communities that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, writing stories about people “cursed with realistic fears about an apocalyptic future”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines 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 covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own personal growth, both physical and mental”. Furthermore, 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 proposing that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Throughout the book, Richardson attempts to cast 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’

The Meaning Behind the Crime

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson takes as his lead three words – “delay”, “refuse” and “remove”, engraved on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases occasionally employed by medical insurers to deny coverage. He examines the evidence Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, which might have provided motive for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what meaning there is seems to lie in Mangione’s philosophical dread 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 ultimately either dominate, or eliminate humanity, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Notably missing from the book are conversations with the principal actors. Richardson asked, of course, but did not anticipate time with Mangione himself. And his relatives stated explicitly that they had decided against speaking to the media in prior to the trial. Another glaring gap is any detailed data about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from the early 2020s, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Ambiguous Findings

By book’s end, the audience has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him creates the uncomfortable impression of having been privy to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s final lines, 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 fable “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 clear: as Mangione’s defence team continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any reference of fables, Robin Hoods, champions or villains will not be allowed in court in support for this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” facing judgment for murder.