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On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper published the front-page story “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The article went on to state 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 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 comment 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.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate 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 who is Mangione? And what might have motivated the accused offense? These are the questions John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an inquiry that delves into wider topics, too.

Understanding the Person

A writer for a major publication, Richardson spent years researching the communities that lurk in the dark corners 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 examines Mangione’s extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, 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 body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his correspondence with influencers and authors as well as his many updates on digital networks. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead present him as an amorphous figure. Richardson attempts to explain this by suggesting that “Luigi’s elusiveness, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson tries to frame 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’

Interpreting the Incident

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson takes as his lead three words – “postpone”, “refuse” and “remove”, engraved on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases occasionally employed by health insurance companies to deny coverage. He examines 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 rest 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 consensus seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either dominate, or eliminate humanity, or both.

Missing Pieces

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are interviews with the key individuals. Richardson made requests, but did not anticipate access to Mangione himself. And his relatives made it clear that they had chosen not to talk to the media in advance of the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any significant information about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from the early 2020s, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Ambiguous Findings

By book’s end, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his alleged crimes. Worse still, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been exposed to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s final lines, Richardson delivers his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the insane ruler, the monster in the maze and the naked leader.” 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 clear: as Mangione’s legal representatives continues in its attempts have accusations that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any reference of fables, Robin Hoods, champions or villains will not be admissible as evidence in support for this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.