Luigi: The Story Behind the Story by John H Richardson – Sympathy for a Devil?

On December 5, 2024, a leading publication ran the headline “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The article then noted that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then walked coolly away”. The murder in broad daylight was truly chilling and disturbing. But numerous US citizens had a different response: for those who faced insurance rejections or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt cathartic. Online platforms erupted. One post 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 created to increase earnings on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania graduate with a graduate degree in computing, was apprehended at a fast-food restaurant 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 accused offense? These are the issues John H Richardson attempts to answer in an investigation 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, producing articles about people “cursed with realistic fears about an apocalyptic future”. To uncover “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of 295 books on Goodreads”. Their subject matter ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his communications with influencers and authors as well as his many posts on social media. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead present him as an amorphous figure. Richardson attempts to explain this by proposing that “Luigi’s elusiveness, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Throughout the book, Richardson attempts to cast his subject in symbolic roles.

Mangione is deeply anxious about the world around him, one where ‘everything is accelerating whether we like it or not’

The Meaning Behind the Crime

As for “the meaning” of the title, Richardson takes as his lead three words – “delay”, “deny” and “remove”, etched on the ammunition left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms occasionally employed by health insurance companies to deny coverage. He looks at the indication Mangione suffered from a chronic back condition, which could have been a reason for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what meaning there is seems to rest in Mangione’s philosophical dread about the world around him, one where “the pace is quickening whether we like it or not, sliding faster and faster to the edge”; a world where the consensus seems to be that AI is going to eventually either dominate, or destroy us, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are interviews with the key individuals. Richardson asked, of course, but did not anticipate time with Mangione himself. And his family stated explicitly that they had chosen not to talk to the media in prior to the trial. Another glaring gap is any detailed data about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from the early 2020s, company earnings rose significantly.

Ambiguous Findings

By the conclusion, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s personality or what could have driven his accused actions. Worse still, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him creates the disturbing feeling of having been privy to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s final lines, Richardson presents his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the mad king, the beast in the labyrinth and the emperor without clothes.” In that fable “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in periods of unrest, when the population is in pain and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s defence team continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the death penalty dismissed, any reference of fables, Robin Hoods, heroes or villains will not be allowed in court in support for this handsome young man with a “features reminiscent of classical art” facing judgment for murder.