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On the fifth of December 2024, a leading publication published the headline “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The report then noted that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then walked coolly away”. The daytime killing was truly cold and shocking. But many Americans had a different response: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt cathartic. 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 artificial intelligence system the insurance company created to maximize profits on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a master’s in computer science, was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings 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 explores broader themes, too.

Understanding the Person

A writer for a major publication, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the communities that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, producing articles about people “plagued by genuine concerns about an apocalyptic future”. To uncover “the making” of his subject, Richardson first reviews Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, Luigi had a list of 295 books on Goodreads”. Their content covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson sifts through his correspondence with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on social media. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead render him 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 deceiver’s charm”. Here, as elsewhere, 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’

Interpreting the Incident

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson takes as his lead three words – “delay”, “deny” and “remove”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases occasionally employed by medical insurers to reject claims. 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 existential anxiety about the world around him, one where “everything is accelerating 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 take control, or destroy us, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson made requests, but did not anticipate 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 flashing-yellow omission is any detailed data about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from 2021 to 2023, UHC profits rose significantly.

Ambiguous Findings

By book’s end, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what could have driven his alleged crimes. Worse still, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him creates the disturbing feeling of having been exposed to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson delivers his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the mad king, 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 population is in pain and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s defence team works to have accusations that could lead to the ultimate sentence thrown out, any mention of fables, Robin Hoods, champions or monsters will not be allowed in court in defence of this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” facing judgment for murder.