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On the fifth of December 2024, a leading publication ran the headline “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The report went on to state that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then walked coolly away”. The murder in broad daylight was truly cold and shocking. But numerous US citizens reacted differently: for those who had been denied health insurance or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt cathartic. Online platforms erupted. One post 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 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 faces court proceedings on federal and state charges of murder, with prosecutors seeking the capital punishment. So what is his background? And what might have motivated the alleged crime? These are the issues John H Richardson attempts to answer in an investigation that delves into wider topics, too.

Understanding the Person

A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson spent years researching the groups that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, writing stories about people “plagued by genuine concerns about an end-times scenario”. To reveal “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 295 books on Goodreads”. Their subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson analyzes his correspondence 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 tries to justify 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 tries to frame 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’

Interpreting the Incident

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson uses as a clue three words – “postpone”, “deny” and “depose”, engraved on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases occasionally employed by health insurance companies to deny coverage. He looks at the indication Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, which might have provided motive for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what significance there is seems to lie in Mangione’s philosophical dread about the world around him, one where “everything is accelerating whether we like it or not, moving rapidly to the edge”; a world where the consensus seems to be that AI is going to eventually either dominate, or eliminate humanity, or both.

Missing Pieces

Notably missing from the book are interviews with the key individuals. Richardson asked, of course, but did not anticipate access to Mangione himself. And his family made it clear that they had decided against speaking to the press in prior to the trial. Another glaring gap is any significant information about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from the early 2020s, UHC profits increased by 33%.

Unclear Conclusions

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 creates the uncomfortable impression of having been exposed to a subtle approval of an assassination. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson presents his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the insane ruler, the monster in the maze and the emperor without clothes.” In that fable “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the people are suffering and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s defence team continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the death penalty thrown out, any mention of fables, Robin Hoods, heroes or villains will not be allowed in court in defence of this handsome young man with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.