Of
Massimo Gaggi
Luigi Mangione, accused of the murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of United HealthCare: schools of excellence, back surgery, the fight against capitalism
NEW YORK – The first thing a killer on the run does is get rid of any clues that tie him to the murder. Luigi Mangionearrested yesterday by the police in a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania, 400 kilometers from the Hilton in New York where he killed the head of United HealthCare last Wednesday, Brian Thompsoninstead, he was carrying with him the gun and silencer used to commit the crime, false documents with 4 different names, including the one used to register in the hostel where he slept before killing and also an anti-capitalist political manifesto in which he claims the his violent act: «I apologize for the traumas created but it had to be done, this parasite had to be eliminated…».
He was not a professional killer but a politically motivated extremist, an engineer with an excellent academic record, Thompson’s killer. A great love for technology: perhaps this is also why he hit his victim with a weapon made with a 3D printer. He did not try to flee abroad as would have been reasonable, given the manhunt sparked by his crime.
It almost seems that this 26-year-old of Italian origin born in Maryland, graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, until 2023 an engineer at TrueCar, a company in Santa Monica, California, which sells cars online and who had previously spent a semester of smart working and Honolulu, nelle Hawaiitook it for granted that sooner or later they would get him and prepared his defense.
After the capture, damning clues immediately emerged. The mayor of New York, Eric Adams, and Jessica Tisch, head of the NYPD, the city police, called a press conference to announce the capture even before their detectives arrived in Altoona. Then a few checks were enough to confirm that Mangione is Thompson’s killer: in the evening he was indicted by the Blair County court (where he has already appeared before the judge) for the illegal possession of weapons and false documents and for having given a false identity, while in New York the district attorney of Manhattan indicted him for murder and began extradition proceedings from Pennsylvania.
In the manifesto he had with him, Mangione was careful to clarify that he had no accomplices: “I acted alone.” As for the reasons, he gave a general policy, relative to his own hostility towards the inequities of the capitalist system which are particularly extreme and have the most serious social consequences in the world of private healthcare. To this he added a personal motivation: a sort of revenge for the suffering of some of his relatives who were unable to receive adequate treatment. He’s probably talking about himself.
He certainly doesn’t come from a poor family: his grandfather was a real estate developer with an immense fortune made up of country clubradio stations and a chain of retirement homes for the elderly, one of which was owned by Luigi’s father who, when still sixteen, worked as a volunteer in one of these facilities. In Baltimore Mangione attended Gilman, an excellent high school (tuition of 40 thousand dollars a year), graduating at the top of his class and finally giving a public speech full of praise for a school that had given him «incredible courage to go and explore unknown horizons.”
Then also the degree in an excellent academy: the University of Pennsylvania, an “Ivy League” university, and the first work experiences as an engineer. Remembered by all his friends as an open, sociable person, used to thinking in depth. Book club promoter, active on social networks where he commented on 300 books he read or intended to read.
But everything changed six months ago, when Luigi suddenly disappeared from social networks and no longer showed up even with his family and friends. A mysterious turning point, certainly linked to his approach to the philosophy of the anarchist terrorist Unabomber whom he praised in January in a comment on the site Goodreads an old ideological manifesto of his.
There is perhaps a traumatic event, a physical traumato contribute to the transformation of a sunny student into an avenger of healthcare managers. Luigi has suffered since childhood from a slippage of some vertebrae.
Despite this, he trains on artificial rock walls in the gym while he goes to windsurfing school in Honolulu. He falls, hits his back, his pathology worsens. Last year he operated on his spine. To friends who ask how it went he replies that it’s a long story. He sends someone x-ray images in which the column can be seen brought back into alignment even with the use of nails and prostheses. At the beginning he says he often felt numb, unable to lead a normal social life and have relationships. Then he disappears. Dark? Suffering? Does he develop addictions to opioid painkillers that alter his personality? He told the magistrate at his first interrogation that he had no drug or mental health problems.
The capture definitively overturned the theories of those who had thought of a killer, perhaps paid by other healthcare managers: United HealthCare is under investigation and it seems that Thomson, who was also under investigation, had begun to collaborate with the authorities. The mystery of the weapon not being found has vanished, not even after having searched the bottom of the Central Park lakes. The puzzle of the backpack found in the park, full of banknotes from the Monopoly game, has been cancelled. It remains to be understood how Mangione knew at what time and from which side entrance Thompson would enter the Hilton.
December 10, 2024 (modified December 10, 2024 | 08:08)
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