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 article then noted that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then walked coolly away”. The daytime killing was truly cold and shocking. But many Americans reacted differently: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt cathartic. Online platforms erupted. One post stated: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who deserves to live or die. 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, twenty-six-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 capital punishment. So what is his background? And what might have motivated the alleged crime? These are the issues John H Richardson attempts to answer in an inquiry that delves into wider topics, too.
The Making of a Subject
A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson spent years researching the groups that lurk in the dark corners 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 extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of 295 books on Goodreads”. Their content ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many updates on social media. These original materials, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead render him an amorphous figure. Richardson tries to justify this by suggesting that “Luigi’s elusiveness, 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 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 – “delay”, “refuse” and “remove”, engraved on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms sometimes used by medical insurers to reject claims. He examines the evidence Mangione had a chronic back condition, which could have been a reason for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what meaning 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 general belief seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either dominate, or destroy us, or both.
Gaps in the Narrative
Notably missing from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson asked, of course, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his relatives made it clear that they had chosen not to talk to the press in advance of 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 rose significantly.
Unclear Conclusions
By book’s end, the audience has no clear understanding of Mangione’s character or what could have driven his alleged crimes. Worse still, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him gives the reader the uncomfortable impression of having been exposed to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s final lines, Richardson delivers his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the insane ruler, the beast in the labyrinth and the emperor without clothes.” In that fable “outlaw heroes come with a appealing vow … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the population is in pain and everything is confusing anymore.”
One thing is certain: as Mangione’s defence team works to have charges that could lead to the death penalty thrown out, any mention of fables, Robin Hoods, heroes or villains will not be allowed in court in support for this handsome young man with a “features reminiscent of classical art” soon to be on trial for murder.