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On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper published 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 murder in broad daylight 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. 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 artificial intelligence system the insurance company designed to maximize profits on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a master’s in computer science, was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on criminal counts of murder, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what drove the accused offense? These are the questions John H Richardson attempts to answer in an investigation that delves into wider topics, too.

Understanding the Person

A writer for a major publication, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the communities that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, writing stories about people “plagued by genuine concerns about an apocalyptic future”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. 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 “emphasis on his own self-improvement, both physical and mental”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his communications with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on social media. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead render him an unclear character. 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 tries to frame his subject in archetypal terms.

Mangione is deeply anxious about the world around him, one where ‘change is rapid whether we like it or not’

The Meaning Behind the Crime

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson takes as his lead three words – “postpone”, “deny” and “remove”, engraved on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases sometimes used by health insurance companies to deny coverage. He examines the evidence Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, 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, moving rapidly to the edge”; a world where the general belief seems to be that AI is going to eventually either dominate, or eliminate humanity, or both.

Missing Pieces

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are conversations with the principal actors. Richardson made requests, but never expected access to Mangione himself. And his family stated explicitly that they had chosen not to talk to the media in prior to the trial. Another glaring gap is any detailed data about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from the early 2020s, company earnings rose significantly.

Ambiguous Findings

By book’s end, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s character or what might have motivated his alleged crimes. More troubling, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been exposed to a subtle approval of an assassination. In the book’s closing remarks, 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 times of social turmoil, when the population is in pain and everything is confusing anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s defence team continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the death penalty dismissed, any mention of fables, folk heroes, champions or monsters will not be allowed in court in defence of this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” facing judgment for murder.