Mangione: The Making and the Meaning by John H Richardson – Understanding a Criminal?
On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper ran the headline “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The article went on to state that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was truly chilling and disturbing. But numerous US citizens reacted differently: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt cathartic. Online platforms erupted. One post read: “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 designed to maximize profits on your health.”
Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a master’s in computer science, was arrested at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He awaits trial on criminal counts of murder, with prosecutors seeking the capital punishment. So who is Mangione? And what might have motivated the alleged crime? 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 communities that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, producing articles about people “plagued by genuine concerns about an end-times scenario”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on a reading platform”. Their content ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own personal growth, both physical and mental”. Additionally, Richardson sifts through his correspondence with influencers and authors as well as his many updates on social media. These primary sources, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead render him an amorphous figure. Richardson attempts to explain this by proposing that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Throughout the book, Richardson attempts to cast his subject in symbolic roles.
Mangione is deeply anxious 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 uses as a clue 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 deny coverage. He looks at the indication Mangione suffered from a long-term spinal issue, which might have provided motive for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what meaning there is seems to lie in Mangione’s philosophical dread 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 consensus seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either take control, or destroy us, or both.
Missing Pieces
Conspicuous by their absence from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson asked, of course, but did not anticipate time with Mangione himself. And his family made it clear that they had decided against speaking to the media in prior to the trial. Another glaring gap is any significant information about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from the early 2020s, company earnings increased by 33%.
Unclear Conclusions
By the conclusion, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been privy to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s final lines, Richardson presents his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the insane ruler, the monster in the maze and the emperor without clothes.” In that fable “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the people are suffering 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 death penalty thrown out, any mention of fables, Robin Hoods, heroes or monsters will not be allowed in court in support for this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.
