Luigi: The Making and the Meaning by John H Richardson – Understanding a Criminal?

On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper ran the headline “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 killer who then walked coolly away”. The daytime killing was indeed both chilling and disturbing. But many Americans had a different response: for those who faced insurance rejections or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt cathartic. Online platforms erupted. One comment stated: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who should live or perish. That’s the job of the artificial intelligence system the insurance company created to increase earnings on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a graduate degree in computing, was arrested at a McDonald’s 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 might have motivated the accused offense? These are the questions John H Richardson attempts to answer in an inquiry that delves into wider topics, too.

The Making of a Subject

A writer for a major publication, Richardson spent years researching the groups that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, writing stories about people “cursed with realistic fears about an apocalyptic future”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first reviews Mangione’s extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on a reading platform”. Their subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson sifts through his communications with online personalities 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 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 symbolic roles.

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

The Meaning Behind the Crime

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson uses as a clue three words – “postpone”, “deny” and “remove”, engraved on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms occasionally employed by medical insurers to deny coverage. He examines the evidence Mangione had a chronic back condition, which could have been a reason for an attack, but finds no proof; 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, sliding faster and faster 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.

Gaps in the Narrative

Notably missing from the book are conversations with the key individuals. Richardson asked, of course, but never expected access to Mangione himself. And his relatives stated explicitly that they had chosen not to talk to the press in advance of the trial. Another glaring gap is any significant information about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from 2021 to 2023, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Unclear Conclusions

By book’s end, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s character or what could have driven his alleged crimes. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him creates the disturbing feeling of having been privy to a veiled endorsement of an targeted killing. In the book’s final lines, Richardson delivers his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the mad king, the monster in the maze and the naked leader.” In that tale “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the population is in pain and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is clear: as Mangione’s defence team continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the ultimate sentence thrown out, any reference of myths, folk heroes, heroes or monsters will not be allowed in court in support for this handsome young man with a “features reminiscent of classical art” facing judgment for murder.