Mangione: The Making and the Meaning by John H Richardson – Sympathy for a Devil?
On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper ran the headline “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The report 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 indeed both cold and shocking. But many Americans had a different response: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt like a release. Online platforms erupted. One post read: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who should live or perish. That’s the job of the artificial intelligence system the insurance company created to increase earnings on your health.”
Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a master’s in computer science, was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He awaits trial on federal and state charges of murder, with the district attorney seeking the capital punishment. So who is Mangione? And what drove the alleged crime? These are the issues John H Richardson attempts to answer in an investigation that delves into wider topics, too.
Understanding the Person
A writer for a major publication, Richardson spent years researching the communities that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, writing stories about people “cursed with realistic fears about an end-times scenario”. To reveal “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 “emphasis on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson sifts through his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on digital networks. These original materials, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead render him an amorphous figure. Richardson attempts to explain this by proposing that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Here, as elsewhere, 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 takes as his lead three words – “postpone”, “refuse” and “depose”, engraved on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms sometimes used by medical insurers to deny coverage. He examines the evidence Mangione had a long-term spinal issue, which could have been a reason 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 “the pace is quickening 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 eliminate humanity, or both.
Gaps in the Narrative
Conspicuous by their absence from the book are conversations 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 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 2021 to 2023, company earnings increased by 33%.
Unclear Conclusions
By the conclusion, the audience has no clear understanding of Mangione’s character or what might have motivated his alleged crimes. Worse still, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him creates the uncomfortable impression of having been privy to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson presents his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the insane ruler, the beast in the labyrinth and the naked leader.” In that tale “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the people are suffering and nothing makes sense anymore.”
One thing is clear: as Mangione’s legal representatives works to have accusations that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any mention of myths, folk heroes, heroes or villains will not be admissible as evidence in defence of this attractive individual with a “features reminiscent of classical art” facing judgment for murder.