InstagramA profile has been released of the 26-year-old man charged with murder in the shooting death of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City last week.
Police announced Monday that they arrested Luigi Mangione on firearms charges after recognizing him at a McDonald's in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
The man from Baltimore, Maryland, was found in possession of a nearly untraceable firearm, a so-called ghost gun, and a three-page handwritten document indicating his “motives and mindset,” officials said.
Just hours after his arrest, Mangione was charged by New York investigators with murder and four other crimes.
Who is Luigi Mangione?
New York State Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenney said Mangione was born and raised in Maryland and has ties to San Francisco, California.
Police said the suspect had no arrest record in New York and his previous last known address was in Honolulu, Hawaii.
He attended a private all-boys high school in Baltimore called Gilman School, school officials said. Mr. Mangione was named valedictorian, which is typically the highest academically successful student in the class.
The school said in a statement that the situation was “extremely tragic.”
Former classmate Freddie Leatherberry told The Associated Press that Mangione comes from a wealthy family, even by the private school's standards.
“Honestly, he had everything going for him,” Leatherberry said.
According to local media, Mr. Mangione comes from a prominent Baltimore-area family that owns businesses including country clubs and nursing homes.
Shortly after the suspect was indicted, Republican state Rep. Nino Mangione, who is believed to be the suspect's cousin, issued a statement saying his family was “shocked and devastated.”
“We keep the family of Brian Thompson in our prayers and ask everyone to pray for everyone involved,” the statement said, ending with “The Mangione Family.”
Mangione is also a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned bachelor's and master's degrees in computer science and founded a video game development club, the school said.
A friend who attended an Ivy League university at the same time as Mr. Mangione described him as “super normal” and “smart.”
According to his social media profiles, Mangione was employed as a data engineer at TrueCar, a digital retail website for new and used cars. A company spokesperson told the BBC that he has not worked for the company since 2023.
Mangione previously worked as a programming intern at video game development company Firaxis, according to his LinkedIn profile.
PA Department of CorrectionsHow was he discovered by the police?
Mangione was taken into custody at McDonald's after a customer alerted an employee, who tipped off the incident to authorities.
At the time, he was carrying a black ghost gun (one that could be assembled at home using a 3D printer), a silencer, and a magazine containing six 9mm bullets.
Police said the man was carrying multiple forms of identification, including a real one and a fake one.
Those IDs included a U.S. passport and a fake New Jersey ID that was used to check into the New York City hostel where the suspect was seen before the shooting.
When told that he would be arrested if he lied about his name, he admitted that he was Luigi Mangione.
When asked why he lied, the defendant said, “Obviously I shouldn't have lied,” according to court documents.
When asked if he had been to New York recently, the man “became quiet and began to shake,” according to a criminal complaint filed in Pennsylvania.
Police said they also found a three-page handwritten document in which he appears to have expressed “malice toward American businesses.”
The document also said “we expected these parasites to do this” and “we apologize for the conflict and trauma, but it had to happen,” a senior police official told The New York Times.
Police said his arrest was “peaceful” but he became uncooperative afterward.
What do his social media profiles tell us?
Social media profiles offer some clues about Mr. Mangione's thinking.
The person whose name and photo match his account has an account on Goodreads, a user-generated book review site, where he posted the text Industrial Society and its Future by Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber Manifesto. I gave it 4 stars.
From 1978 until his arrest in 1996, Kaczynski carried out bombings that killed three people and injured dozens.
“It would be easy to quickly and thoughtlessly dismiss this as the manifesto of a madman,” Mangione said in his review.
“He was a violent person who was rightfully incarcerated and seriously injured innocent people.
“While these actions tend to be characterized as the actions of insane Luddites, they are more accurately seen as the actions of extreme political revolutionaries.”
His social media profiles also suggest that he has lost contact with family and friends in recent months.
In an October post to X, someone tagged an account that appeared to belong to Mangione and wrote:
“Hello, are you okay? I haven't heard from you in months. Apparently your family is looking for you.”
