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On the fifth of December 2024, a leading publication published the headline “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The article 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 many Americans 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 comment 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 maximize profits on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a graduate degree in computing, was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on federal and state charges of murder, with the district attorney seeking the capital punishment. So what is his background? And what drove the alleged crime? These are the questions John H Richardson attempts to answer in an inquiry that explores broader themes, too.

Understanding the Person

A writer for a major publication, Richardson spent years researching the communities 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 wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of 295 books on a reading platform”. Their subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his correspondence with influencers and authors as well as his many updates on digital networks. These original materials, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead render him an unclear character. Richardson tries to justify this by suggesting that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson attempts to cast 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 takes as his lead three words – “postpone”, “deny” and “depose”, engraved on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases sometimes used by medical insurers to deny coverage. He looks at the evidence Mangione had a long-term spinal issue, which might have provided motive for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what significance there is seems to rest in Mangione’s existential anxiety 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 general belief seems to be that AI is going to eventually either take control, or destroy us, or both.

Missing Pieces

Notably missing from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson made requests, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his family stated explicitly that they had decided against speaking to the press in advance of the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any detailed data about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from the early 2020s, UHC profits rose significantly.

Ambiguous Findings

By the conclusion, the audience has no clear understanding of Mangione’s character or what might have motivated his alleged crimes. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been exposed to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson delivers his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the insane ruler, the monster in the maze and the emperor without clothes.” In that tale “outlaw heroes come with a beautiful promise … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the people are suffering and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is clear: as Mangione’s defence team works to have charges that could lead to the death penalty dismissed, any reference of fables, folk heroes, champions or villains will not be allowed in court in defence of this handsome young man with a “features reminiscent of classical art” soon to be on trial for murder.