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On the fifth of December 2024, a leading publication ran the headline “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The report then noted that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then walked coolly away”. The daytime killing 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 cathartic. Online platforms erupted. One post stated: “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 designed to increase earnings 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 awaits trial on criminal counts of murder, with prosecutors 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 delves into wider topics, too.

The Making of a Subject

A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the groups that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, producing articles about people “plagued by genuine concerns about an end-times scenario”. 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 nearly three hundred titles on a reading platform”. Their content covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own self-improvement, both physical and mental”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his communications with influencers and authors as well as his many updates on social media. These original materials, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead present him as an unclear character. Richardson attempts to explain this by suggesting that “Luigi’s mystery, 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 ‘change is rapid whether we like it or not’

Interpreting the Incident

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson uses as a clue three words – “postpone”, “deny” and “depose”, engraved on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases sometimes used by medical insurers to reject claims. He examines the evidence Mangione suffered from a long-term spinal issue, which could have been a reason for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what significance there is seems to lie in Mangione’s existential anxiety about the world around him, one where “the pace is quickening whether we like it or not, sliding faster and faster to the edge”; a world where the general belief seems to be that AI is going to eventually either take control, or destroy us, or both.

Missing Pieces

Notably missing from the book are conversations with the principal actors. Richardson made requests, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his family stated explicitly that they had decided against speaking to the media in advance of the trial. Another glaring gap is any significant information about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from the early 2020s, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Ambiguous Findings

By book’s end, the audience has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him creates the disturbing feeling of having been privy to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s final lines, Richardson delivers his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the mad king, the monster in the maze and the naked leader.” In that fable “outlaw heroes come with a beautiful promise … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the population is in pain and everything is confusing anymore.”

One thing is clear: as Mangione’s legal representatives continues in its attempts have accusations that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any reference of myths, Robin Hoods, heroes or monsters will not be admissible as evidence in support for this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” facing judgment for murder.