Despite all the precautions he adopted—the continued use of masks or his movements on different public transportation—Luigi Mangione, the suspect accused of murdering Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, last week in New York, has left an indelible mark. , the digital one, which offers a rough explanation of the reasons that led him to supposedly take the law into his own hands and hit the “corrupt sector,” in his words, of health insurance.
However, the interruption of its activity on-line In the spring, when he also stopped giving signals to family and friends, it casts a shadow over his subsequent homicidal determination and the plans to carry out the crime, in the heart of Manhattan. In addition to the police, experts in domestic terrorism are trying to elucidate whether behind Mangione there was an ideology or rather, as others consider, a psychiatric pathology.
Mangione left, among other writings, a 262-word manifesto that he had with him when he was arrested in Altoona (Pennsylvania). Comparing that text and the trail of comments on social networks—that mirror in which so many people surrender to the likes—, the New York Police Department has prepared an internal report that claims that he saw himself as some kind of hero. And not only him, but the thousands of Internet users who have practically applauded his action as an abduction of justice before large corporations, such as United Healthcare. A hero that fought against a “parasitic” health insurance industry.
In his statements, Mangione has not yet explained why he chose Thompson, 50, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a company he does not mention in any of his posts. The police analysis highlights that the suspect “appeared to consider the selective murder of the company’s top representative as a symbolic coup,” and includes other general complaints from the manifesto, such as that health care in the United States was expensive and that corporate profits had increased. , while “our life expectancy” had not.
Mangione resists being extradited to New York from Pennsylvania, a process that could leave him detained there for weeks, in the State prison, and that, in similar cases, such as that of the accused of stabbing two people at the MoMa in New York , it has taken even months. This Tuesday, upon entering the Hollidaysburg courthouse, near the town where he was arrested the day before, the young man struggled with the agents to try to break free and shouted with an angry gesture at journalists: “It is completely out of place and it is an insult.” to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience,” without specifying what.
When he left sight, however, he remained silent and appeared crestfallen, in a new display of erratic behavior. The judge denied him bail and the young man, in shackles and the orange prison jumpsuit, was returned to the Huntingdon state prison, also in Pennsylvania, where he will remain while his extradition is decided.
On Reddit, Mangione had detailed his back problems. Some of those messages appeared on a forum on that network about spondylolisthesis, a sometimes very painful disorder in which a vertebra becomes misaligned. The back pain became acute in 2022 after surfing and worsened shortly after after a fall, to the point, he says, of his legs stiffening. In another account he published an x-ray of an impingement. One of the photos on his
In July 2023, he underwent surgery, he also said on Reddit. “The surgery wasn’t nearly as scary as I thought and within a week I saw that it was the right decision.” According to the aforementioned post, his mobility improved significantly and he stopped taking painkillers. But lower back pain was not the only one of his health problems, and on occasions he alluded, also on social media, to “brain fog”—a possible state of confusion?—which during his university years sometimes made it difficult for him to concentrate. . Mangione said that the doctors had not found the cause.
In his Reddit posts, the young man mentions insurance coverage—from a company other than United Healthcare—for an irritable bowel diagnostic test only once in 2018, when he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania, which belongs to the prestigious Ivy League. Mangione’s possible apprehensive or hypochondriac character does not offer further details.
The Unabomber model
On social networks he also left some biographical details, such as his work as a computer technician in 2015 for the chain of nursing homes owned by a branch of his family, in which he was also a volunteer. But of all his digital tracks, it’s his Unabomber references on the reviews page goodreads those that provide the most light, according to the researchers. Police analysis confirms that the manifesto found in his backpack also cited Ted Kaczynski, the real name of the domestic terrorist who killed three people and injured 22 with pipe bombs mailed to scientists and executives. With the Unabomber, he writes, he shared “the need for unilateral action to draw attention to corporate abuses.”
Mangione discussed the lone wolf with an English Internet user in the spring. His interlocutor, who the newspaper The New York Times identified as Gurwinder Bhogal, said Mangione had only briefly mentioned health care, complaining that it was too expensive in the United States and showing his admiration for the United Kingdom’s public national health system, the famous NHS.
