Mangione: The Story Behind the Story by John H Richardson – Understanding a Criminal?

On the fifth of December 2024, a leading publication ran the headline “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The article then noted that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was truly chilling and disturbing. But many Americans reacted differently: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt like a release. 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 designed to maximize profits on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a graduate degree in computing, was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on federal and state charges of murder, with prosecutors seeking the capital punishment. So what is his background? And what drove the accused offense? These are the issues John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an investigation that explores broader themes, too.

The Making of a Subject

A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the communities that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, writing stories about people “plagued by genuine concerns 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 nearly three hundred titles on a reading platform”. Their subject matter ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own personal growth, both physical and mental”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his communications with online personalities and authors as well as his many updates on digital networks. These original materials, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead render him an amorphous figure. Richardson attempts to explain 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 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 takes as his lead three words – “postpone”, “deny” and “remove”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms sometimes used by medical insurers to deny coverage. He looks at the indication Mangione had a chronic back condition, which could have been a reason for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what significance 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 consensus seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either dominate, or destroy us, or both.

Missing Pieces

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson asked, of course, but never expected access to Mangione himself. And his relatives stated explicitly that they had chosen not to talk to the media in advance of the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any significant information about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from the early 2020s, company earnings increased by 33%.

Unclear Conclusions

By book’s end, the audience has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what could have driven his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been privy to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s final lines, Richardson presents his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the insane ruler, the beast in the labyrinth and the naked leader.” In that fable “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the people are suffering 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 thrown out, any mention of myths, Robin Hoods, champions or villains will not be allowed in court in support for this attractive individual with a “features reminiscent of classical art” facing judgment for murder.