Luigi: The Making and the Meaning by John H Richardson – Understanding a Criminal?
On the fifth of December 2024, a major newspaper published the front-page story “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The report went on to state that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then calmly departed the scene”. The murder in broad daylight was truly chilling and disturbing. But numerous US citizens had a different response: for those who faced insurance rejections or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt like a release. Social media blew up. One comment stated: “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 created to maximize profits on your health.”
Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a graduate degree in computing, was apprehended at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He awaits trial on criminal counts of murder, with the district attorney seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what might have motivated the accused offense? These are the questions John H Richardson attempts to answer in an investigation that explores broader themes, too.
Understanding the Person
A writer for a major publication, Richardson spent years researching the communities that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, producing articles about people “cursed with realistic fears 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 nearly three hundred titles on a reading platform”. Their subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own self-improvement, both physical and mental”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his correspondence with influencers and authors as well as his many updates on digital networks. These primary sources, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead present him as an unclear character. Richardson attempts to explain this by proposing that “Luigi’s elusiveness, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson tries to frame 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’
The Meaning Behind the Crime
As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson takes as his lead three words – “delay”, “refuse” and “remove”, engraved on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms occasionally employed by medical insurers to reject claims. He examines the evidence Mangione had 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, sliding faster and faster to the edge”; a world where the consensus seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either dominate, or eliminate humanity, or both.
Gaps in the Narrative
Notably missing from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson asked, of course, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his family made it clear that they had chosen not to talk to the press in prior to the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any detailed data about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from 2021 to 2023, UHC profits increased by 33%.
Unclear Conclusions
By the conclusion, the audience has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what could have driven his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him creates the uncomfortable impression of having been privy to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s closing remarks, 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 “outlaw heroes come with a beautiful promise … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the population is in pain and everything is confusing anymore.”
One thing is clear: as Mangione’s legal representatives works to have charges that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any mention of myths, folk heroes, heroes or villains will not be admissible as evidence in support for this attractive individual with a “features reminiscent of classical art” facing judgment for murder.
