“What do you do? You wack the C.E.O. at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention. It’s targeted, precise, and doesn’t risk innocents.” Those lines reportedly come from a notebook found in the possession of Luigi Mangione, the 26-year-old man suspected of killing UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
After Mangione was taken into custody earlier this week at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, the public has slowly begun to learn about the man that police believe committed one of the most audacious murders in living memory.
That murder, which took place on Dec. 4th in midtown Manhattan, saw Thompson gunned down in front of his hotel by a masked assailant. Security camera footage shows a figure dressed in gray attire who, after killing Thompson, stepped onto an e-bike and rode away. Bullet casings found at the crime scene were etched with the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose”—which some have speculated may reference a book about the healthcare industry.
Now, police say they have gotten their hands on a notebook belonging to Mangione. The New York Times reports that the notebook “detailed plans for the shooting,” and also “described going to a conference and killing an executive.” The Times report doesn’t shed much light on the other contents of the notebook, writing that the lines that had been shared were communicated to the paper by two law enforcement officials. It’s possible that, as criminal proceedings progress, more of the notebook’s contents may be shared.
Mangione is also thought to have written a “manifesto,” which law enforcement sources claim is legitimate. This supposed document was published online earlier this week by independent journalist Ken Klippenstein and, in one section, reads: “I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy.” The manifesto also mentions a “spiral notebook” that the document states should “illuminate the gist of it,” seeming to allude to motivations for the shooting.
Thompson’s death has predictably polarized the internet—and America. Rightwing influencers almost immediately sought to portray Mangione as a leftist, with LibsofTikTok calling him an “anti-capitalist climate-change activist.” Meanwhile, left-leaning accounts were more than happy to lionize the young man, with many people commenting on Mangione’s good looks, and others expressing support for killing corporate executives. Indeed, a broad, bipartisan dislike of the healthcare industry has made itself known over the past week, with many people expressing their disdain for it via jokes and memes, many of which have been made at the murdered healthcare executive’s expense.
That said, a clear picture of Mangione’s personal politics hasn’t yet emerged. The Wall Street Journal referred to him as an “Ivy Leaguer with Anticapitalist Leanings.” The scouring of Mangione’s public-facing social media accounts has turned up a hodgepodge of interests and political leanings that don’t seem to fit into a coherent partisan picture. He did reportedly leave a favorable book review on Goodreads of Ted Kaczynski, the former promising young mathematician who took part in a CIA mind control experiment in the 1950s and went on to become “the Unabomber,” an anarchist terrorist who mailed bombs to people.
It’s been reported that Mangione is from a wealthy, well-connected family and that he previously worked as a computer programmer. A video posted online shows the young man giving a valedictorian speech at his private prep school graduation in 2016. At some point, Mangione suffered a debilitating back injury. He is said to have abruptly dropped off the radar in the months before the shooting, prompting some to speculate that something happened during that period to radicalize him towards violence. Mangione’s mother reportedly filed a missing person’s report with the San Francisco Police Department on Nov. 18th.
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