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On the fifth of December 2024, a leading publication ran the front-page story “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The article then noted that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then walked coolly away”. The murder in broad daylight was indeed both cold and shocking. But numerous US citizens reacted differently: for those who faced insurance rejections or struggled with medical bills, the news felt cathartic. Online platforms erupted. One post stated: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who should live or perish. That’s the job of the AI algorithm the insurance company created to increase earnings on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a graduate degree in computing, was apprehended at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on criminal counts of murder, with the district attorney seeking the death penalty. So what is his background? And what might have motivated the accused offense? These are the questions John H Richardson attempts to answer in an inquiry that explores broader themes, too.

Understanding the Person

A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson spent years researching the communities that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, writing stories about people “plagued by genuine concerns about an end-times scenario”. To uncover “the making” of his subject, Richardson first reviews Mangione’s wide-ranging book list. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, Luigi had a list of nearly three hundred titles on a reading platform”. Their content ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Additionally, Richardson analyzes his correspondence with influencers and authors as well as his many updates on social media. These primary sources, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead present him as an amorphous figure. Richardson attempts to explain this by suggesting that “Luigi’s elusiveness, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Here, as elsewhere, 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 bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases sometimes used by medical insurers to reject claims. He examines the indication Mangione had a chronic back condition, which might have provided motive for an attack, but finds no proof; instead, what significance there is seems to rest in Mangione’s existential anxiety about the world around him, one where “everything is accelerating whether we like it or not, moving rapidly to the edge”; a world where the general belief seems to be that AI is going to ultimately either dominate, or eliminate humanity, or both.

Gaps in the Narrative

Notably missing from the book are interviews with the key individuals. Richardson asked, of course, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his relatives stated explicitly that they had chosen not to talk to the press in prior to the trial. Another glaring gap is any significant information about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from the early 2020s, company earnings rose significantly.

Ambiguous Findings

By book’s end, the audience has no clear understanding of Mangione’s character or what might have motivated his alleged crimes. More troubling, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been privy to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson presents his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the insane ruler, the monster in the maze and the emperor without clothes.” In that tale “Robin Hoods come with a appealing vow … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the population is in pain and everything is confusing anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s legal representatives continues in its attempts have charges that could lead to the death penalty thrown out, any reference of myths, Robin Hoods, champions or monsters will not be admissible as evidence in defence of this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” facing judgment for murder.