Luigi: The Story Behind the Story by John H Richardson – Sympathy for a Devil?

On the fifth of December 2024, a leading publication published the front-page story “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The report then noted 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 struggled with medical bills, the news felt like a release. 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 AI algorithm the insurance company designed to maximize profits on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a master’s in computer science, was apprehended at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on federal and state charges of murder, with the district attorney seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what drove the accused offense? These are the questions John H Richardson seeks to resolve 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 exist in the hidden parts of the internet, writing stories about people “cursed with realistic fears 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 arrested, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on Goodreads”. Their content ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own personal growth, both physical and mental”. 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 elusiveness, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Throughout the book, Richardson attempts to cast 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 uses as a clue three words – “delay”, “refuse” and “depose”, etched on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms sometimes used by health insurance companies to deny coverage. He looks at the evidence Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, which might have provided motive 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 “everything is accelerating whether we like it or not, sliding faster and faster 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 conversations with the key individuals. Richardson made requests, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his family stated explicitly that they had decided against speaking to the media in prior to the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any significant information about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from 2021 to 2023, UHC profits rose significantly.

Unclear Conclusions

By book’s end, the reader has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the uncomfortable impression of having been privy to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s final lines, Richardson presents his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the mad king, the monster in the maze and the naked leader.” In that fable “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the people are suffering and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s defence team works to have charges that could lead to the death penalty dismissed, any mention of myths, Robin Hoods, heroes or villains will not be admissible as evidence in support for this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” facing judgment for murder.