From Life of Wealth and Privilege to Murder Suspect
Luigi Mangione, member of prominent Italian-Catholic family in Maryland, charged in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson
By Gary Gately
Luigi Mangione seemed to have it all.
He was the handsome class valedictorian, champion wrestler and computer coding whiz at a prestigious private Baltimore high school.
He went on to graduate cum laude with bachelor’s and master’s degrees he earned in a span of four years at the University of Pennsylvania.
A muscular, gregarious young man from a wealthy Italian-Catholic family, he posted social media photos of himself on beaches, at parties and hiking through the mountains of Japan.
Now, police believe the 26-year-old Mangione is the masked gunman who murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan last week.
Mangione’s arrest Monday at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, about 290 miles west of Manhattan, came after an employee noticed he resembled security-camera photos released by New York City Police and dialed 911, authorities said.
The arrest of Mangione shocked his family, Baltimore’s Catholic community, students and faculty at his alma mater, The Gilman School in North Baltimore, and the White House.
For decades, the Mangione family has been well known for contributing millions of dollars to the Archdiocese of Baltimore, St. Mary’s Seminary and University, parish construction projects, the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi and what is now Loyola University Maryland in North Baltimore.
Law enforcement officials said they found on bullet casings at the scene of Thompson’s December 4 murder the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” — a phrase commonly used to describe insurer tactics to avoid paying claims.
In a three-page “manifesto,” Mangione described the killing as a “symbolic takedown” challenging the healthcare industry’s “alleged corruption and ‘power games,’” according to an internal police report obtained by The New York Times . Investigators told the Times the suspect “likely views himself as a hero of sorts.”
On social media, even before police made an arrest in Thompson’s killing, some praised his murderer, and online debates about corporate greed and unfairness among medical insurance companies continue to rage. Many posts characterized Mangione, who has not been convicted, as some sort of folk hero, while many others condemned the killing of Thompson.
On Monday, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro denounced what he called “deeply disturbing” online reactions to the case.
“In America, we do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint,” the Democratic governor told reporters. “That is not what we do in a civilized society…. That is not how you make progress in this country.”
Meanwhile, on Monday, family members and friends laid the 50-year-old Thompson to rest after a private service at a Lutheran church in his hometown in Minnesota.
“Brian was an incredibly loving husband, son, brother and friend,” Thompson’s family said in a statement. “Most importantly, Brian was a devoted father to our two sons, and we will miss him for the rest of our lives. We appreciate the overwhelming outpouring of kind words and support we have received.”
The Times and other media reported that people who knew Mangione said he suffered painful back issues, and a social media account apparently belonging to him showed a spinal fusion involving screws and rods to treat misalignment — a treatment that can cause severe pain.
What appears to be Magione’s profile on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) displays an image of an X-ray of a spine reinforced with surgical implants.
In the manifesto, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press, Mangione stated: “I do apologize for any strife or traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.”
He also wrote that he acted alone.
A Blair County, Pennsylvania, judge denied Mangione bond Tuesday after authorities said he was arrested at the McDonald’s with multiple fake IDs and a 3D-printed “ghost gun” with a silencer. He was charged in Pennsylvania with counts including carrying a firearm without a license, possessing instruments of a crime and providing law enforcement with false identification.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul said Tuesday that she would sign a request for a warrant to bring Mangione back to New York, where he faces a second-degree murder charge as well as weapons and forgery charges.
Tom Dickey, Magione’s defense attorney, said he would fight extradition.
Dickey also said he would advise Mangione to plead not guilty to all charges, adding: “Remember — and this is not just a small thing — the fundamental concept of American justice is the presumption of innocence and until you're proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and I've seen zero evidence at this point.”
Meanwhile, the all-boys Gilman School said in a statement Tuesday: “Luigi Mangione's suspected involvement in this case is deeply distressing news on top of an already awful situation. Our hearts go out to everyone affected. Here on campus, our focus will remain on caring for and educating our students.”
For her part, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday: “Obviously, this is horrific. Violence to combat any sort of corporate greed is unacceptable.”
Jean-Pierre also offered condolences to Thompson’s loved ones but refused to comment on the investigation into his murder.
More Details About Suspect
In his valedictorian speech at Gilman, which had posted it online, Mangione said he and his classmates possessed “the fearlessness to explore new things and the obvious ability to excel.”
At Penn, Mangione, a brilliant student, certainly excelled.
In his four years at the Ivy League school in Philadelphia, he earned bachelor’s degrees in computer and information science and a master’s degree in computer and information science with a concentration in artificial intelligence.
Mangione was a member of Penn’s chapter of Eta Kappa Nu, an academic honor society for electrical and computer engineering students.
He learned computing coding in high school and in 2016 founded a Penn club for those who shared his passion for developing video games, Penn’s independent student newspaper, The Daily Pennsylvanian, reported. The club grew to include over 50 members.
In the summer of 2019, Mangione worked part-time at Stanford university in a program in which he taught more than 40 pre-college students artificial intelligence and counseled them, his LinkedIn profile says.
Joseph Kenny, NYPD chief of detectives, told reporters that Mangione had most recently been believed to be living in Honolulu, Hawaii, and spent about six months there at Surfbreak Coliving, where remote workers live and work.
Mangione’s LinkedIn profile also lists several data engineering jobs dating to 2020 and says he currently works at TrueCar Inc., an online marketplace based in Santa Monica, California.
But the company said in a statement that he has not worked there since 2023.
Mangione appears to have read widely.
On the site Goodreads, he has posted 65 reviews or ratings of books about politics, popular science, health and exercise, including his January review of the manifesto of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber.
In the review, Mangione wrote: “It’s easy to quickly and thoughtlessly write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies. But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out. He was a violent individual — rightfully imprisoned — who maimed innocent people, While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary.”
Mangione also gave high marks to books about recovering from pain, Vice President-elect JD Vance’s memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” several books about Elon Musk, Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World” and George Orwell’s “1984.”
Nicholas Mangione: A Classic Rags-to-Riches Story
Luigi Mangione’s paternal grandfather, Nicholas Bernard Mangione Sr., spent the first eight years of his life in a one-room apartment with an outdoor privy in Baltimore’s Little Italy until his family moved several blocks north to a three-story row house with two other families, The Baltimore Sun reported in his 2008 obituary. Nicholas Mangione’s father, Louis, an immigrant from Sicily who could not read or write, died of pneumonia at age 42, when his son was a sixth-grader at a Catholic school.
The son served in the Navy during WWII, obtained a high school-equivalency diploma after his discharge and worked as a bookkeeper while studying accounting at the Baltimore Business College.
In a 2000 interview with The Catholic Review, he noted that after he married in 1950, he and his wife, Mary, would often work together at the kitchen table until late at night to prepare job estimates for his first business, Commercial Contractors Inc. He sometimes had to ask the landlord to hold his checks for a few days until he had enough money in his bank account to cover them.
But Mangione, who died in 2008 at age 83, went on to build a sprawling business empire that included Turf Valley Resort and Conference Center, a country club, a Baltimore County hotel, radio stations and assisted living centers.
Mangione and his wife, Mary, who died last year at age 92, had served on the board of directors at Loyola University Maryland.
The couple, big believers in Jesuit education, financed acquisition of the St. John’s Bible, the first illuminated, handwritten Bible commissioned by a Benedictine Monastery in 500 years, and now permanently displayed at the Loyola-Notre Dame library. Mary Mangione also served on the steering committee for Loyola's Bright Minds, Bold Hearts Campaign, which raised more than $100 million for the university, and the university named its fitness and aquatic center after the family. (Six of the couple’s 10 children attended Loyola University.)
The Mangione family also has donated to numerous other charities and to Greater Baltimore Medical Center.
And Mary Mangione, also the daughter of immigrant parents of Sicilian lineage, became known for her support for the old Baltimore Opera Company, The Lyric performing arts center and the famed Walters Art Museum, where she eventually became a trustee.
The family is “shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest,” Nino Mangione, one of Luigi Mangione’s cousins and a Baltimore County Republican serving in the Maryland House of Delegates, said in a statement.
“We offer our prayers to the family of Brian Thompson and we ask people to pray for all involved,” the statement added. “We are devastated by this news.”
Nicholas and Mary Mangione had 10 children, all of whom worked for family businesses, and 37 grandchildren.
Luigi Mangione is the son of one of the couple’s children, Louis Mangione, and his wife, Kathleen Zannino Mangione.
In The Catholic Review’s 2000 profile, Nicholas Mangione said with the birth of each new child, the family business received a new construction contract.
“We always said it was a gift from God, both the baby and the new job,” he said. “I feel that all Catholics who have been successful should support the Church, if not the global Church, then at least the parish, because without God, what the heck have we got?”
Christian Kendzierski, executive director of communications for the Archdiocese of Baltimore, told The Catholic Observer: “We offer prayers of healing for those individuals and families affected by this tragedy.”