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On the fifth of December 2024, a major newspaper ran the front-page story “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The report then noted that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then calmly departed the scene”. 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. Online platforms erupted. One post 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 designed to increase earnings on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a graduate degree in computing, was apprehended at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He awaits trial on criminal counts of murder, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what drove the alleged crime? These are the questions John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an investigation that explores broader themes, too.

Understanding the Person

A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the groups that exist in the hidden parts 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 Goodreads”. Their content ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his communications with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on social media. These primary sources, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead present him as an amorphous figure. Richardson tries to justify this by suggesting that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson tries to frame his subject in archetypal terms.

Mangione is profoundly worried 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 – “delay”, “deny” and “depose”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases sometimes used by health insurance companies to reject claims. He looks at the indication Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, which might have provided motive for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what meaning there is seems to lie in Mangione’s philosophical dread 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 take control, or eliminate humanity, or both.

Missing Pieces

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are interviews with the key individuals. Richardson asked, of course, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his relatives 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 deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from the early 2020s, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Unclear Conclusions

By the conclusion, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his alleged crimes. Worse still, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the uncomfortable impression of having been privy to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s final lines, Richardson delivers his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the insane ruler, 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 people are suffering and everything is confusing anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s defence team works to have accusations that could lead to the ultimate sentence thrown out, any mention of fables, Robin Hoods, heroes or villains will not be admissible as evidence in support for this handsome young man with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” facing judgment for murder.