Luigi: The Making and the Meaning by John H Richardson – Sympathy for a Devil?
On the fifth of December 2024, a leading publication ran the headline “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 calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was truly cold and shocking. But many Americans reacted differently: for those who had been denied health insurance or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt like a release. Social media blew up. One post stated: “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, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a master’s in computer science, was arrested 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 accused offense? These are the issues John H Richardson attempts to answer in an inquiry that explores broader themes, too.
Understanding the Person
A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the groups that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, producing articles about people “cursed with realistic fears about an end-times scenario”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first reviews 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 subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own personal growth, both physical and mental”. Additionally, Richardson sifts through his communications with influencers and authors as well as his many updates on digital networks. These original materials, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead present him as an unclear character. Richardson tries to justify this by proposing 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 ‘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”, “deny” and “remove”, engraved on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases sometimes used by health insurance companies to deny coverage. He examines the evidence Mangione had a long-term spinal issue, which might have provided motive for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what significance 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, sliding faster and faster to the edge”; a world where the consensus seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either dominate, or destroy us, or both.
Missing Pieces
Conspicuous by their absence from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson asked, of course, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his relatives made it clear that they had decided against speaking to the media in advance of the trial. Another glaring gap is any detailed data about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from the early 2020s, UHC profits increased by 33%.
Ambiguous Findings
By the conclusion, the audience has no clear understanding of Mangione’s personality or what could have driven his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him creates the disturbing feeling of having been exposed to a veiled endorsement of an targeted killing. In the book’s final lines, Richardson presents his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the mad king, the beast in the labyrinth and the emperor without clothes.” In that tale “outlaw heroes 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 certain: as Mangione’s defence team continues in its attempts have accusations that could lead to the death penalty thrown out, any reference of myths, Robin Hoods, champions or villains will not be allowed in court in defence of this attractive individual with a “features reminiscent of classical art” soon to be on trial for murder.