Luigi Mangione: What we know about man charged with murdering healthcare boss Brian Thompson
Luigi Mangione could face the death penalty over the killing of UnitedHealthcare boss Brian Thompson.
The 26-year-old has pleaded not guilty to New York state charges of murder as an act of terrorism and weapons offenses.
New York does not have the death penalty for state charges, and so he could face life in prison without parole if convicted in that case.
But he also faces federal charges over Mr Thompson’s killing – and US attorney general Pamela Bondi has directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty.
Mangione has not yet been asked to enter a plea to the federal charges.
Here’s what we know about him.
Wealth, private school and Ivy League education
Mangione was born and raised in Maryland and has links to San Francisco and Hawaii.
His social media lists him as being from Towson, a well-to-do area to the north of the city of Baltimore.
He is the grandson of a wealthy property developer and philanthropist and the cousin of a current Maryland state legislator.
He attended Gilman School – a private all-boys school in Baltimore. The school’s annual fees are up to $37,690 (around £29,000) and it boasts alumni including NFL stars and former senators.
After graduating in 2016, Mangione went to the University of Pennsylvania, one of America’s elite Ivy League schools.
According to his social media, he studied computer science and launched a group named UPGRADE (UPenn Game Research and Development Environment).
A university spokesperson said he earned undergraduate and graduate degrees there.
He later co-founded his own computer game company, which focused on small, simplistic games.
Mangione went to a prestigious Ivy League university. Pic: LinkedIn
‘No complaints – a great guy’
According to his LinkedIn page, Mangione moved to California in 2020 and worked for the car-buying website TrueCar. The firm’s boss said he left last year.
Mangione currently lists himself as from Honolulu on LinkedIn, with pictures on Instagram showing him on the Hawaiian island.
In the first half of 2022, he reportedly lived at Surfbreak, a co-living space aimed at remote workers in Honolulu’s Waikiki neighbourhood.
“Luigi was just widely considered to be a great guy. There were no complaints,” Josiah Ryan, a spokesperson for Surfbreak’s owner, told the AP news agency.
“There was no sign that might point to these alleged crimes they’re saying he committed.”
Mr Ryan said Mangione left to get surgery on the US mainland for chronic back pain he suffered from since childhood.
Document reveals back condition
Mangione wrote about his health issue online, saying he has spondylolisthesis – a condition where one of the bones in the spine slips forwards.
Sky News’ Data and Forensics team obtained a 14-page document uploaded to his Google Drive account in 2021.
He details the severity of his “injury” as “low grade two” and goes into fitness goals, diet advice and notes about the condition.
The suspect’s notes say he has back condition spondylolisthesis
His X banner image shows a back X-ray
It’s unclear if the condition is linked to the motive, which police have not publicly identified, but it gives context about his health issues.
Analysis of his Goodreads profile also shows he read books including Crooked: Outwitting The Back Pain Industry and Getting On The Road To Recovery, and Why We Get Sick: The Hidden Epidemic At The Root Of Most Chronic Disease – And How To Fight It.
A banner image on his X account also features an X-ray of a lower back with screws.
Law enforcement officials told NBC News they are looking at whether the X-ray is Mangione’s or from a relative and whether it’s connected to the shooting.
‘Violence is necessary to survive’
Mangione appears to have had an active social media presence.
His X account regularly shared and reposted pieces about topics such as artificial intelligence (AI), philosophy, and the future of humanity.
His Goodreads account also gave a four-star review to Industrial Society And Its Future – by notorious US terrorist Theodore Kaczynski.
The piece, which rails against technological advancement, became known as the Unabomber Manifesto after its author began a mail bombing campaign which lasted nearly 20 years.
Three people were killed and dozens were injured before Kaczynski’s arrest in 1996.
The Goodreads review said: “When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive. You may not like his methods, but to see things from his perspective, it’s not terrorism, it’s war and revolution.
“‘Violence never solved anything’ is a statement uttered by cowards and predators.”
Luigi Mangione. Pic: Facebook
Why are some calling Mangione a ‘hero’?
A search of social media sites such as Reddit reveals a thread of people who are sympathetic to the suspect.
Highly rated comments on the site include: “Screw the McDonald’s employee that ratted him out” and “Only a matter of time till shirts with #FreeLuigi start popping up”.
To many, these are shocking comments about someone accused of carrying out a cold-blooded killing. But what’s behind them?
Many in the US pay thousands in expensive insurance premiums to cover themselves and their family, while others rely on the Medicare federal insurance programme.
Support for Mangione appears to come from resentment over this and accusations that companies go to great lengths to avoid paying for treatments in order to maximise their profits.
“He got charged with murder quicker than insurance companies deny claims”, said a comment on Reddit with nearly 7,000 likes.
One post that went viral on X before the suspect’s arrest was from Anthony Zenkus, a Columbia University professor.
He wrote: “We mourn the deaths of the 68,000 Americans who needlessly die each year so that insurance company execs like Brian Thompson can become multimillionaires.”
Read more from Sky News:
Shooting prompts US healthcare debate
Police shared this picture of the suspect following the shooting. Pic: NYPD
A chart shared widely on X claims to show denial rates by UnitedHealthcare exceed those of competitors, using data from consumer finance website ValuePenguin. This is consistent with publicly available data from 2023 analysed by Sky News.
Other people online appear to be angry about what they say is the disparity between the resources put into Mr Thompson’s case and how less well-off people are treated.
One comment on Reddit with 4,000 likes says: “The murdered guy in death, like in life, is still sucking up a huge undeserved and unwanted portion of resources.
“How many underprivileged people’s murders are going unsolved because NYPD and the feds are spending millions on this overpaid, rich, morally questionable millionaire’s murder.”
Arrested in McDonald’s with ‘ghost gun’
Mangione was detained in a Pennsylvania McDonald’s after a five-day search, carrying a gun that matched the one used in the shooting and a fake ID, police said.
He was arrested in Altoona, around 230 miles (370km) west of New York, after a tip-off from a McDonald’s employee who recognised him from the police appeals.
Mangione also had a fake New Jersey ID matching one used by the suspect to check into a hostel before the killing, said New York police commissioner Jessica Tisch.
He was found carrying a “handwritten document” that Ms Tisch said “spoke to both his motivation and mindset”.
Joseph Kenny, New York’s chief of detectives, said it appeared to show “some ill-will towards corporate America”.
Pennsylvania prosecutor Peter Weeks said Mangione was found with a passport and $10,000 (£7,840) – $2,000 of it in foreign currency.
‘Message’ on bullets
Brian Thompson, 50, was chief executive of UnitedHealthcare – the fourth-largest public company in the US behind Walmart, Amazon, and Apple – and was paid about $10m (£7.8m) a year.
It’s the largest provider of Medicare Advantage plans and manages insurance for employers and state and federally funded programmes.
Mr Thompson – who was married with two sons – was shot on 4 December as he was walking to a New York hotel where his company was holding an investors’ conference.
CCTV showed a person shooting Mr Thompson from behind. Pic: NYPD/Reuters
As Mr Thompson walked towards the Hilton hotel on Sixth Avenue, a gunman appeared behind him from between parked cars.
He was shot in the back and calf and died from his injuries.
The words “defend”, “deny”, and “depose” were written on the cases of bullets found at the scene – similar to the title of a book that criticises health insurance companies.
Mr Thompson’s wife said he was an “incredibly loving father to our two sons” and a “loving, generous, talented man who truly lived life to the fullest”.
UnitedHealthcare called him a “highly respected colleague and friend to all who worked with him”.
US
Financial markets were always going to respond to Trump tariffs but they’re also battling with another problem
Stock markets around the world fell on Thursday after Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs – with some economists now fearing a recession.
The US president announced tariffs for almost every country – including 10% rates on imports from the UK – on Wednesday evening, sending financial markets reeling.
While the UK’s FTSE 100 closed down 1.55% and the continent’s STOXX Europe 600 index was down 2.67% as of 5.30pm, it was American traders who were hit the most.
Trump tariffs latest: US stock markets tumble
All three of the US’s major markets opened to sharp losses on Thursday morning.
The S&P 500 is set for its worst day of trading since the COVID-19 pandemic. File pic: AP
By 8.30pm UK time (3.30pm EST), The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 3.7%, the S&P 500 opened with a drop of 4.4%, and the Nasdaq composite was down 5.6%.
Compared to their values when Donald Trump was inaugurated, the three markets were down around 5.6%, 8.7% and 14.4%, respectively, according to LSEG.
Worst one-day losses since COVID
As Wall Street trading ended at 9pm in the UK, two indexes had suffered their worst one-day losses since the COVID-19 pandemic.
The S&P 500 fell 4.85%, the Nasdaq dropped 6%, and the Dow Jones fell 4%.
It marks Nasdaq’s biggest daily percentage drop since March 2020 at the start of COVID, and the largest drop for the Dow Jones since June 2020.
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The latest numbers on tariffs
‘Trust in President Trump’
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told CNN earlier in the day that Mr Trump was “doubling down on his proven economic formula from his first term”.
“To anyone on Wall Street this morning, I would say trust in President Trump,” she told the broadcaster, adding: “This is indeed a national emergency… and it’s about time we have a president who actually does something about it.”
Later, the US president told reporters as he left the White House that “I think it’s going very well,” adding: “The markets are going to boom, the stock is going to boom, the country is going to boom.”
He later said on Air Force One that the UK is “happy” with its tariff – the lowest possible levy of 10% – and added he would be open to negotiations if other countries “offer something phenomenal”.
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How is the world reacting to Trump’s tariffs?
Economist warns of ‘spiral of doom’
The turbulence in the markets from Mr Trump’s tariffs “just left everybody in shock”, Garrett Melson, portfolio strategist at Natixis Investment Managers Solutions in Boston, told Reuters.
He added that the economy could go into recession as a result, saying that “a lot of the pain, will probably most acutely be felt in the US and that certainly would weigh on broader global growth as well”.
Meanwhile, chief investment officer at St James’s Place Justin Onuekwusi said that international retaliation is likely, even as “it’s clear countries will think about how to retaliate in a politically astute way”.
He warned: “Significant retaliation could lead to a tariff ‘spiral of doom’ that could be the growth shock that drags us into recession.”
Read more:
Do Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariff numbers add up?
Tariffs about something more than economics: power
It comes as the UK government published a long list of US products that could be subject to reciprocal tariffs – including golf clubs and golf balls.
Running to more than 400 pages, the list is part of a four-week-long consultation with British businesses and suggests whiskey, jeans, livestock, and chemical components.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Thursday that the US president had launched a “new era” for global trade and that the UK will respond with “cool and calm heads”.
It also comes as Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney announced a 25% tariff on all American-imported vehicles that are not compliant with the US-Mexico-Canada trade deal.
He added: “The 80-year period when the United States embraced the mantle of global economic leadership, when it forged alliances rooted in trust and mutual respect and championed the free and open exchange of goods and services, is over. This is a tragedy.”
Tanking stock markets, collapsing world orders, devastating trade wars; economists with their hair ablaze are scrambling to keep up.
But as we try to make sense of Donald Trumps’s tariff tsunami, economic theory only goes so far. In the end this surely is about something more primal.
Power.
Understanding that may be crucial to how the world responds.
Yes, economics helps explain the impact. The world’s economy has after all shifted on its axis, the way it’s been run for decades turned on its head.
Instead of driving world trade, America is creating a trade war. We will all feel the impact.
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PM will ‘fight’ for deal with US
Donald Trump says he is settling scores, righting wrongs. America has been raped, looted and pillaged by the world trading system.
But don’t be distracted by the hyperbole – and if you think this is about economics alone, you may be missing the point.
Above all, tariffs give Donald Trump power. They strike fear into allies and enemies, from governments to corporations.
This is a president who runs his presidency like a medieval emperor or mafia don.
It is one reason why since his election we have seen what one statesman called a conga line of sycophants make their way to the White House, from world leaders to titans of industry.
The conga line will grow longer as they now redouble their efforts hoping to special treatment from Trump’s tariffs. Sir Keir Starmer among them.
President Trump’s using similar tactics at home, deploying presidential power to extract concessions and deter dissent in corporate America, academia and the US media. Those who offer favours are spared punishment.
His critics say he seeks a form power for the executive or presidential branch of government that the founding fathers deliberately sought to prevent.
Whether or not that is true, the same playbook of divide and rule through intimidation can now be applied internationally. Thanks to tariffs
Each country will seek exceptions but on Trump’s terms. Those who retaliate may meet escalation.
This is the unforgiving calculus for governments including our own plotting their next moves.
The temptation will be to give Trump whatever he wants to spare their economies, but there is a jeopardy that compounds the longer this goes on.
Read more:
Do Trump’s numbers on tariffs really add up?
Trump hits island home only to penguins with 10% tariffs
Could America’s traditional allies turn to China? Pic: AP
Malcolm Turnbull, the former Australian prime minister who coined the conga line comparison, put it this way: “Pretty much all the international leaders I have seen that have sucked up to Trump have been run over. The reality is if you suck up to bullies, whether it’s global affairs or in the playground, you just get more bullying.”
Trading partners may be able to mitigate the impact of these tariffs through negotiation, but that may only encourage this unorthodox president to demand ever more?
Ultimately the world will need a more reliable superpower than that.
In the hands of such a president, America cannot be counted on.
When it comes to security, stability and prosperity, allies will need to fend for themselves.
And they will need new friends. If Washington can’t be relied on, Beijing beckons.
America First will, more and more, mean America on its own.
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