Police have charged a Baltimore native for the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was shot last week in New York City.
Luigi Mangione, a 26, was arrested Monday by police at a McDonald’s in Altoona, PA after they were alerted by a employee at the restaurant.
Police allege he was carrying multiple IDs, a passport and a 3D-printed ghost-gun. These ghost-guns are largely untraceable, due to the absence of a serial number.
Authorities also claim that he carried a three-page document containing a motive. According to NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny, Mangione had “some ill will towards corporate America.”
Investigators found cartridge cases at the crime scene with the words “deny,” “delay,” and “depose” written on them. These bare a striking resemblance to the phrase “Deny, Delay, Defend,” the title of a popular book criticizing healthcare insurers. Based on this, officials believe UnitedHealthcare’s insurance practices motivated the killing.
Under Thompson’s leadership, the industry giant began using AI to automate insurance claims. A 2023 class action suit alleged that the company used this AI model, knowing that it had a 90% error rate. As a result, the suit claims countless patients were unable to access medical care.
This year, an October U.S. Senate report revealed that post-acute care denial rates doubled coinciding with the AI model’s adoption.
Maryland ties:
Luigi Mangione was born and raised in Baltimore to the prominent Mangione family.
His grandparents, Nicholas and Mary Mangione, were real estate developers. In 1977, Nicholas founded the nursing home company, Lorien Health Systems.
Beyond purchasing Turf Valley and Hayfields Country Clubs, they also owned WCBM, a Baltimore-based radio station.
Shortly after the suspect was charged, Luigi’s cousin Nino Mangione, a Republican legislator and member of the state House of Delegates, spoke out on behalf of the family stating that he was shocked and expressed sympathy for Thompson’s family.
Luigi Mangione attended the Gilman School, a prestigious private all-boys high school in Baltimore. According to his LinkedIn page, he led the Gilman robotics team and graduated as valedictorian.
In a letter to the community, Gilman’s head of school Henry Smyth stated that Mangione’s arrest was “deeply distressing news on top of an already awful situation.”
After graduating high school in 2016, Mangione attended the University of Pennsylvania. There, he earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Computer Science, with a concentration in artificial intelligence.
Mangione would later live in Hawaii, with his last known address in Honolulu. According to a New York Times interview with RJ Martin, Mangione’s former roommate, the alleged shooter suffered from debilitating back pain and had surgery.
“His spine was kind of misaligned,” Martin told the Times, “He knew that dating and being physically intimate with his back condition wasn’t possible.”
Images on Mangione’s X account showed x-rays of a back, assumed to be his, with screws and plates inserted.
It’s not currently known if Mangione’s back condition influenced the shooting, but another friend in Honolulu claimed it was major source of pain and frustration in his life.
Replies to Mangione’s X account suggest he had not contacted relatives or close friends for months.
“I don’t know if you are okay or just in a super isolated place and have no service. But I haven’t heard from you in months,” read one post in July.
Photo courtesy of the PA Department of Corrections.
