🔗 Share this article Luigi: The Making and the Meaning by John H Richardson – Understanding a Criminal? On the fifth of December 2024, a major newspaper published the front-page story “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The report went on to state that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then walked coolly away”. The murder in broad daylight was indeed both cold and shocking. But numerous US citizens reacted differently: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt like a release. Online platforms erupted. One comment 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 created to increase earnings on your health.” Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus 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 capital punishment. So who is Mangione? And what might have motivated the alleged crime? These are the questions John H Richardson attempts to answer in an investigation that explores broader themes, 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 “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 295 books on a reading platform”. Their content covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson analyzes his communications with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on social media. These original materials, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead present him as an amorphous figure. Richardson tries to justify this by suggesting 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 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”, “refuse” and “depose”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases sometimes used by medical insurers to reject claims. He looks at the evidence Mangione had a chronic back condition, which could have been a reason 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 destroy us, or both. Gaps in the Narrative Conspicuous by their absence from the book are interviews with the key individuals. Richardson asked, of course, but did not anticipate time with Mangione himself. And his family made it clear that they had chosen not to talk to the press in advance of the trial. Another glaring gap is any significant information about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from 2021 to 2023, UHC profits rose significantly. Unclear Conclusions By the conclusion, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s personality or what could have driven his alleged crimes. Worse still, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him creates the uncomfortable impression of having been privy to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s final lines, Richardson delivers his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the mad king, the beast in the labyrinth and the naked leader.” In that tale “Robin Hoods come with a beautiful promise … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the population is in pain and everything is confusing anymore.” One thing is clear: as Mangione’s legal representatives continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the ultimate sentence dismissed, any mention of myths, Robin Hoods, champions or monsters will not be admissible as evidence in defence of this attractive individual with a “features reminiscent of classical art” facing judgment for murder.