Luigi Mangione: What do we know about the accused UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter?

On Wednesday, December 4, 2024, Brian Thompson was shot and killed outside his Manhattan hotel. Thompson was the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a health insurance company. Five days after his murder, the man of interest was arrested.

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On Monday, December 9, Luigi Mangione, 26, was arrested in a McDonald's in Altoona, after an employee recognised him. He is being held in a Pennsylvania jail without bond.

At the time of his arrest, Magione provided a fake ID card and was in possession of a ghost gun that matched the weapon allegedly used during the shooting, as per The Independent.

The 26-year-old is facing murder charges in New York as well as gun law violations in Pennsylvania. Here’s everything we know about the suspected killer.

Who is Luigi Mangione?

Booking photo of Luigi Mangione (QQ7787): https://t.co/5VIC4r4s0T pic.twitter.com/XKmJhxTl9V
— PA Department of Corrections (@CorrectionsPA) December 10, 2024

As reported by The Independent, Luigi Mangione attended the Gilman School in Baltimore, a private all-boys school where the tuition cost $37,690 per year. He graduated in 2016 and was valedictorian.

Following his graduation, he studied at the University of Pennsylvania, receiving a bachelor’s and master’s degree, per his suspected LinkedIn profile.

What could be the most important detail about the suspect however, is that Mangione suffers from severe back pain. It is believed that the 26-year-old has spondylolisthesis, a condition that causes vertebra to slip or shift forward onto the vertebra below, causing severe pain and nerve injury.

According to RJ Martin, a friend of the suspected killer, Mangione moved to Honolulu for roughly six months to get as healthy as possible before his upcoming back surgery. He reportedly left in April 2022.

As per The Independent, Martin explained the extent of his friend’s back pain:

His spine was kind of misaligned. He said his lower vertebrae were almost like a half-inch off, and I think it pinched a nerve. Sometimes he’d be doing well and other times not.

Luigi’s pain was allegedly so bad it hindered his romantic life as well as his ability to surf.

Luigi Mangione went missing after his surgery

It is believed that Luigi Mangione underwent surgery in 2023. However, he went missing after the procedure. As reported by The Independent, the 26-year-old lost touch with his friends and family.

Several of Luigi’s friends posted on X in October asking how he was, saying they hadn’t ‘heard from you in months’.

One wrote:

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

Moreover, two weeks before the shooting, on November 18, Mangione’s mother, Kathleen had filed a missing person’s report for her son to the San Francisco Police Department.

Luigi Mangione’s three-page ‘manifesto’

Every day, more concerning details are coming to light about Mangione. According to police, at the time of his arrest, the suspect had a ‘handwritten manifesto’ where he heavily criticised the healthcare system. Joseph Kenny, NYPD’s chief of detectives explained that this manifesto shows Mangione has ‘an ill will towards corporate America’.

The manifesto reportedly reads that ‘these parasites had it coming’ and that he does ‘apologise for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done’.

On Tuesday, December 10, Manigone was taken to a Pennsylvania court hearing, after exiting the police vehicle, the suspected CEO killer claimed it was ‘out of touch and an insult to the intelligence’, per The New York Post: