Luigi Mangione and Brian Thompson: What led smart, rich young man to allegedly kill healthcare CEO

Luigi Mangione was the kind of guy other students at his expensive all-boys private school wanted to be: smart, handsome and rich.

But the member of a property-developing family appears to have been sucked into a vortex of anti-capitalist conspiracy theories focused on America’s giant and troubled healthcare industry.

The 26-year-old was arrested at a McDonald’s outlet in Pennsylvania on Monday after staff matched him with photos of the man suspected of shooting chief executive Brian Thompson on a New York City footpath last week.

Thompson’s killing immediately became an iconic American crime: an almost old-fashioned street assassination with modern elements, including a share getaway bicycle, messages on bullet casings and monopoly money left near the scene, apparently to taunt authorities.

After Mangione’s arrest, though, Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro, challenged the romantic narrative that Thompson’s killer was a principled man of courage fighting a system preying on ordinary people.

“He is no hero,” Shapiro said. “The real hero in this story is the person who called 911 in McDonald’s this morning. In a civil society we are all less safe when ideologues engage in vigilante justice.”

Kaczynski connection

Arrested carrying a silenced “ghost gun” built with untraceable parts from a three-dimensional printer, Mangione was charged in Pennsylvania with firearms and false-ID offences on Monday. He was then transferred to New York City, where he was charged with murder around 10pm, local time.

He was carrying a document that said “these parasites had it coming” and apologising for “any strife and trauma, but it had to be done,” a police officer said.

People from around the world following the case scoured the internet for information after his name became public. They found Mangione studied computer science and mathematics at the prestigious Penn State and graduated top of his class from one of Baltimore’s fanciest private schools.

According to a now-deleted profile on the Goodreads book review website, he appeared to have read and liked an anti-technology manifesto written by Ted Kaczynski, the domestic US terrorist known as the Unabomber. A maths prodigy who became a recluse, Kaczynski murdered three people and injured 23 with mail bombs in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s.

Magioni developed a hatred of the healthcare industry over the treatment of a sick relative, the New York Post reported, although an ex-housemate told the New York Times he told them in 2022 he had a misaligned spine which he intended to have operated on.

An X-ray on his X account showed a spine penetrated by four large pins. His spinal condition was so painful that he could not have sex, and didn’t date, the ex-housemate said.

Financially, Magioni may have actually benefited from America’s private-dominated healthcare system. His family owns Lorien Health Systems, a nursing home chain in the state of Maryland.

Hate messages

Affable and popular, Thompson also graduated top of his year, although at a public high school in country Iowa. He became an accountant and joined UnitedHealth Group, America’s largest health insurer, in 2004. He was made head of its insurance division in 2021.

The 50-year-old was walking to a meeting with investors when a person following in a dark hoodie and baseball cap shot him in the calf at 6.45am, local time, last Wednesday. As Thompson limped away, the shooter fired bullets into his torso. Cars drove by, apparently oblivious as Thompson lay dying on the ground.

With limited public healthcare in the US, UnitedHealth and its competitors have become perennial targets of social activists.

When Minnesota Governor and failed vice-presidential candidate Tim Walz expressed his sadness at the killing – UnitedHealth is based in his state – readers on social media responded with hundreds of abusive messages.

“Hopefully healthcare CEOs learned something from this,” one person wrote.

The celebration of Thompson’s death even turned off some of the industry’s bitter critics, including a Guardian columnist, Francine Prose, who described it as “the latest eruption of the left’s destructive rage”.

Thompson’s widow, Paulette Thompson, described her husband as an “incredibly loving, generous, talented man who truly lived life to the fullest”.

The couple had two children together.