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On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper published the headline “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The report then noted that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a assailant who then calmly departed the scene”. The murder in broad daylight was truly chilling and disturbing. But numerous US citizens had a different response: for those who had been denied health insurance 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 designed to increase earnings on your health.”

Less than a week after, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, 26-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a master’s in computer science, was arrested 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 who is Mangione? And what drove the alleged crime? These are the issues John H Richardson attempts to answer in an inquiry that explores broader themes, too.

Understanding the Person

A writer for a major publication, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the communities that lurk in the dark corners of the internet, writing stories about people “plagued by genuine concerns about an apocalyptic future”. To uncover “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on Goodreads”. Their content covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own self-improvement, both physical and mental”. Furthermore, Richardson analyzes his communications with influencers and authors as well as his many updates on digital networks. These original materials, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead render him an amorphous figure. Richardson attempts to explain this by suggesting that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Here, as elsewhere, Richardson attempts to cast his subject in symbolic roles.

Mangione is profoundly worried 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 – “delay”, “deny” and “depose”, engraved on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms sometimes used by health insurance companies to reject claims. He looks at the indication Mangione had 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 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 ultimately either dominate, or destroy us, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson made requests, but never expected time with 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, company earnings rose significantly.

Ambiguous Findings

By book’s end, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the uncomfortable impression of having been exposed to a subtle approval 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 emperor without clothes.” In that tale “Robin Hoods come with a beautiful promise … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the population is in pain and nothing makes sense anymore.”

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