Mangione: The Story Behind the Story by John H Richardson – Understanding a Criminal?
On the fifth of December 2024, a leading publication ran the front-page story “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The article then noted that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then walked coolly away”. The murder in broad daylight was truly cold and shocking. But numerous US citizens reacted differently: for those who had been denied health insurance or struggled with medical bills, the news felt like a release. Social media blew up. One post read: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who deserves to live or die. 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 handsome, 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 drove the alleged crime? These are the questions John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an investigation that delves into wider topics, too.
The Making of a Subject
A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson spent years researching the groups that exist in the hidden parts 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 taken into custody, Luigi had a list of 295 books on a reading platform”. Their subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Furthermore, 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 render him an amorphous figure. Richardson attempts to explain this by proposing that “Luigi’s elusiveness, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Throughout the book, Richardson tries to frame his subject in archetypal terms.
Mangione is profoundly worried about the world around him, one where ‘everything is accelerating whether we like it or not’
Interpreting the Incident
As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson takes as his lead three words – “postpone”, “deny” and “remove”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases sometimes used by medical insurers to deny coverage. He examines the evidence Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, which could have been a reason for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what meaning there is seems to rest in Mangione’s existential anxiety about the world around him, one where “everything is accelerating whether we like it or not, moving rapidly to the edge”; a world where the general belief seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either dominate, or destroy us, or both.
Gaps in the Narrative
Notably missing from the book are interviews with the key individuals. Richardson made requests, but never expected access to Mangione himself. And his relatives stated explicitly that they had decided against speaking to the press 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, company earnings rose significantly.
Ambiguous Findings
By the conclusion, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s character or what might have motivated his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him gives the reader the uncomfortable impression of having been privy to a subtle approval of an assassination. In the book’s final lines, Richardson delivers his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the insane ruler, the beast in the labyrinth and the emperor without clothes.” In that fable “Robin Hoods come with a beautiful promise … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the population is in pain and nothing makes sense 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 mention of myths, folk heroes, heroes or monsters will not be admissible as evidence in support for this handsome young man with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.
