Within a day of the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson on a New York City sidewalk on December 4, social media went berserk over alleged killer Luigi Mangione. For entirely different reasons though.
Many reports in the mainstream US media did thoughtfully bring attention to Thompson, the 50-year-old father of two sons, and his grieving family, but a staggeringly large number of youngsters, netizens and articles were devoted to the alleged suspect and killer Luigi Mangione.
Before Mangione’s social media accounts were taken down, his shirtless and beach photos had already circulated with the speed and admiration usually reserved for a celebrity.
With his schooling from an elite private school in Baltimore, followed by a master’s in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania, at one point in life, 26-year-old Mangione had the world at his feet.
He was arrested and taken into custody the following morning at a Pennsylvania McDonald’s. Reportedly, a few days later young men lined up in Washington Square Park to compete in a lookalike contest of Mangione.
By that time, all the front page headlines and significant media space across platforms had already been spent figuring out how a good-looking man from an enviably privileged background with one of the most coveted degrees landed up with charges of murder and forgery.
Even outside of the Italian community of Baltimore, the Mangione family has been strongly associated with wealth, prominence, power and philanthropy with businesses ranging from country clubs to golf courses to assisted living facilities.
His friends from the Ivy League college have been quoted in some of the US media, describing him as “super normal and smart.” His social media profiles described Mangione as being employed as a data engineer for TrueCar, a digital retailing website for new and used cars.
The company’s spokesperson said that he had not worked there since 2023. He vanished for months, and he also went on solo Asian trips. He had reportedly also spent time in a co-living surfing community called Surfbreak in Hawaii, which he reportedly left due to debilitating back pain. At what point he went off the grid is unclear, but it is being speculated that his health troubles may have shaped his views of the medical industry.
In one of the Reddit accounts, which was not taken down by the authorities, and is believed to belong to him, he talks about his “chronic back pain and brain fog.”
From Ivy League to prison
A part of the reverse fascination lies with the journey of the 26-year-old. Who would have thought? While many got down to making sense of things, others fawned over his good looks and ‘courageous’ approach to, “teaching greedy corporations a lesson.”
Murder to express a viewpoint or “teach a lesson” or resolve policy differences is extreme but a concerningly large number of the younger generation don’t think so. Pro-Mangione apparel has already found its place on Etsy, an online fund-raiser meant to help with Mangione’s legal fees has already raised over $97000, while the Internet dubs him as the “hot assassin.” His follower count increased to a whopping over 452k followers.
Mangione’s mother reported him missing to San Francisco police on November 18, mentioning that she hadn’t spoken to her son since July 1 and was unaware of his whereabouts.
It is reported that he had been carrying four fake IDs, a 3D-printed gun with a homemade silencer and a 262-page manifesto that reportedly mentioned UnitedHealthcare and accused health insurance companies of corporate greed.
According to a few reports in the media, a spiral notebook laid out his plot to “wack” Thompson at his, “parasitic bean-counter convention.”
Apart from facing murder charges, Mangione is also facing gun and forgery charges and is currently being held without bail in Pennsylvania. He is scheduled to appear in a preliminary hearing in Pennsylvania on December 23.
Follow us
