Luigi: The Story Behind the Story by John H Richardson – Understanding a Criminal?
On December 5, 2024, a major newspaper published the front-page story “Insurance CEO Shot Dead In Manhattan”. The report then noted that Brian Thompson was “fatally wounded from behind in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then calmly departed the scene”. The daytime killing was truly cold and shocking. But many Americans had a different response: for those who had been denied health insurance or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt cathartic. Social media blew up. One post stated: “All jokes aside … no one here is the judge of who should live or perish. That’s the job of the artificial intelligence system the insurance company designed to maximize profits on your health.”
Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a master’s in computer science, was arrested at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on criminal counts of murder, with prosecutors seeking the death penalty. So who is Mangione? And what might have motivated the alleged crime? These are the questions John H Richardson attempts to answer in an inquiry that explores broader themes, too.
The Making of a Subject
A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson spent years researching the communities that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, producing articles about people “plagued by genuine concerns about an apocalyptic future”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was taken into custody, Luigi had a list of 295 books on Goodreads”. Their content ranged from climate change to masculinity, along with a “focus on his own self-improvement, both physical and mental”. Furthermore, Richardson sifts through his communications with influencers and authors as well as his many updates on social media. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead present him as an unclear character. Richardson attempts to explain this by proposing that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old trickster magic”. Throughout the book, Richardson attempts to cast his subject in archetypal terms.
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 uses as a clue three words – “delay”, “deny” and “depose”, engraved on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases occasionally employed by medical insurers to reject claims. He looks at the indication Mangione had a chronic back condition, which might have provided motive for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what meaning there is seems to rest in Mangione’s philosophical dread 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 eventually either take control, or eliminate humanity, 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 access to Mangione himself. And his relatives made it clear that they had chosen not to talk to the media in prior to the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any significant information about the deceased, Thompson, though we learn that under his leadership, from the early 2020s, company earnings increased by 33%.
Unclear Conclusions
By the conclusion, the reader has little insight of Mangione’s personality or what might have motivated his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been privy to a subtle approval of an assassination. In the book’s final lines, Richardson delivers his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the mad king, the monster in the maze and the emperor without clothes.” In that fable “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 clear: as Mangione’s defence team continues in its attempts have accusations that could lead to the death penalty thrown out, any reference of myths, folk heroes, heroes or villains will not be allowed in court in defence of this handsome young man with a “features reminiscent of classical art” facing judgment for murder.
