Luigi Mangione, suspect in UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson killing, was an ivy league grad with a grudge against the healthcare industry
The suspect nabbed in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson is an anti-capitalist Ivy League grad who liked online quotes from “Unabomber’’ Ted Kaczynski — and seethed in a three-page manifesto, “These parasites simply had it coming,” law enforcement sources have told The Post.
Tech whiz Luigi Mangione, 26, originally from Towson, Md., apparently hated the medical community because of how it treated his sick relative, sources said.
The suspect also may have held a grudge because of his own interactions with the industry, sources said — noting an X-ray photo on his X account showing four pins in a spine.
On Tuesday, as Mangione was led into a Pennsylvania courthouse for his extradition hearing, he shouted to reporters: “It’s extremely out of touch and an insult to the intelligence of the American people and the lived experience.”
Back surgery led to family estrangement
Mangione — who hails from a wealthy, well-known Maryland family, with a cousin in the state legislature — also had five books involving chronic back pain on his reading list on his Goodreads account.
They included titles such as “Crooked: Outwitting the Back Pain Industry and Getting on the Road to Recovery’’ and “Why We Get Sick: The Hidden Epidemic at the Root of Most Chronic Disease ― and How to Fight It.’’
They were added to his virtual bookshelf between May 2022 and February 2023.
A former classmate of Mangione’s at the $35,000-per-year Gilman School in Baltimore told The New York Times that he was one of several peers who received a message earlier this year indicating his family was trying to find him.
The classmate, Aaron Cranston, said the message indicated Mangione hadn’t been in touch with relatives since undergoing back surgery several months prior.
Sources told Fox that Mangione also seemed to disappear from friends’ lives this past fall, worrying them.
Mangione’s mother reported him missing on Nov. 18, just weeks before the killing, law enforcement sources told The Post. The 26-year-old had ties to San Diego and Honolulu, according to police.
The suspect’s family said Monday that they were “shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest,”
“We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved. We are devastated by this news,” the family said in a statement released by his cousin Nino Mangione, a Republican Baltimore County delegate.
‘A normal frat guy’
High school friends said they were shocked to learn that the onetime prep school valedictorian and stellar University of Penn graduate may have been struggling — and even more stunned to learn of his bust tied to the slay case.
He was “always doing the right thing,’’ a former classmate told Fox News Digital.
Mangione “always had a smile on his face. Never really got the vibes of him being socially awkward. So that’s why I’m really surprised.
“I graduated in 2015, he graduated in 2016. It’s crazy how 10, nine years later how people can change,” the source said.
A former classmate at Penn told The Post that Mangione belonged to the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.
“He was just a normal frat guy. He played beer pong. Some girls thought he was hot,’’ the source said.
An online Facebook chat called “Penn Crushes’’ tagged Mangione in May 2019, gushing, “Hot damn. Are you single? You make us engineers have hope!”
Mangione wrote back, “Despite all my best efforts … yup still single.’’
One of the surveillance photos put out by NYPD cops of the suspected killer days after Thompson’s slaying showed him flashing a flirty grin with a clerk at the hostel where he was hiding out in Manhattan.
“He’s not a monster,’’ a pal wrote on Instagram of Mangione.
“I can’t put into words on how worried I am for you right now,” the friend said, apparently addressing Mangione. “They have this story all upside down.’’
A manifesto and a ghost gun
What we know about the shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson
- Brian Thompson, the CEO of insurance giant UnitedHealthcare, was gunned down Wednesday outside a luxury Midtown hotel in a “brazen, targeted attack,” police said.
- Thompson was named CEO of UnitedHealth in April 2021. He joined the company in 2004. He was one of several senior executives at the company under investigation by the Department of Justice.
- Thompson’s wife, Paulette, said her husband had been getting threats before he was killed.
- Thompson’s shooting led to sick support online, and even spurred a tasteless lookalike competition in NYC.
- A person of interest has been nabbed by police officers inside a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa.
- The suspect has been identified as Luigi Mangione, 26, originally from Towson, Md. He’s an Ivy League graduate who hated the medical community.
Follow along with The Post’s live updates on the news surrounding Brian Thompson’s murder.
Mangione, who faces five charges, including second-degree murder in Thompson’s killing, was taken into custody Monday morning while eating at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pa.
His bust ended an intense manhunt sparked by the cold-blooded execution of Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel last week.
Mangione was caught with an unregistered ghost gun that uses 9mm bullets, a silencer, a US passport, four fake IDs with names used during the killer’s stint in New York City and the manifesto, sources said.
The handwritten manifesto mirrored the quotes that Mangione had posted on his Goodreads account from wacky anti-establishment Ted Kaczynski, the infamous “Unabomber’’ who terrorized the country for nearly two decades by mailing deadly bombs before he was nabbed in 1996, sources said.
“Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness,’’ a Kaczynski quote that Mangione liked online read.
“Science fiction. It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs,” said another.
Mangione added his own musings to his manifesto.
“The reality is, these [companies] have gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit,” Mangione wrote, according to the sources.
“I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done,” he wrote, according to the sources. “Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.”
Mangione said in the manifesto, which indicated he’d acted alone, that he targeted Thompson as a “symbolic takedown” and “a direct challenge” to the healthcare company’s corruption and “power games.”
As investigators desperately searched for the suspect, they revealed that the shell casings and live rounds left behind by the assassin had the words “deny,” “depose” and “defend” engraved on them.
It wasn’t clear who the relative was whose treatment may have enraged the suspect.
Online obituaries show he lost a grandmother in 2013 and grandfather in 2017.
His LinkedIn page indicates that he once worked in an assisted living facility for the elderly for a few months in 2014, while still in high school. His family owns a chain of nursing homes, Lorien Health Services, local outlets said.
An anti-capitalist brain
In addition to his serious issues with the health care industry, Mangione subscribed to anti-capitalist and climate change causes, according to law enforcement sources, citing online activity gleaned by authorities.
He was valedictorian of his 2016 high school graduating class at the Gilman School in Baltimore, where he played soccer, according to online sites. High school tuition at the all-boys school is nearly $40,000 a year.
“We recently became aware that the person arrested in connection with the killing of the UnitedHealthcare CEO is a Gilman alumnus, Luigi Mangione, Class of 2016,’’ the school’s leader, Henry Smyth, wrote in a letter to the community and obtained by local TV 11.
“We do not have any information other than what is being reported in the news. This is deeply distressing news on top of an already awful situation. Our hearts go out to everyone affected.”
Mangione said at the time of graduation that he planned to seek a degree in artificial intelligence, focused on the areas of computer science and cognitive science, at the University of Pennsylvania, according to an interview with the Baltimore Fishbowl.
The tech hotshot graduated cum laude from the private Ivy League institution in Philadelphia with a bachelor of science in engineering, computer and information science in 2020, according to his LinkedIn profile.
He also completed a master of science in engineering, computer and information science at the University of Pennsylvania, his profile states.
His LinkedIn suggests he is a data engineer at a car company based in California, although he lists his current home as Honolulu, Hawaii.
He once was cited for trespassing on the beach in Hawaii, The New York Times reported, but has no other apparent criminal history.
The state of the country’s government and economy were apparently on his mind for years.
He reposted a Wall Street Journal article on Facebook in 2019 titled, “Obstacle to Deficit Cutting: A Nation on Entitlements.’’
His Facebook account, which did not have any recent postings, says he is the co-founder of AppRoar Studios, which describes itself as “an app development start-up founded to provide the simplest and most engaging gaming experience.”
While at Penn, Mangione appeared in an article in a student publication that praised him for starting up a student-run video game development club. The club is now known as the University of Pennsylvania Game Research and Development Environment.
Classmate Alejandro Romero, who gamed with Mangione, told NBC News that the group would play “Among Us,” a game where some players have to secretly kill others without raising suspicions.
“I just found it extremely ironic that, you know, we were in this game and there could actually be a true killer among us,” Romero said.
Additional reporting by Rikki Schlott and Andy Tillett
