Possible United HealthCare CEO Killer Caught, Had Manifesto Criticizing Profits Over Care
Photo by CCTV Camera in Manhattan
A 26-year-old man named Luigi Mangione has been detained in Altoona, Pennsylvania and is being held for questioning over last week’s shooting of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. According to a senior law enforcement official, Mangione was identified by a McDonald’s patron at 9:15 this morning and he offered police the same fake New Jersey identification a man showed to a hostel on the Upper West Side of Manhattan on November 24th. Mangione also had a gun and a silencer similar to the murder weapon, a so-called ghost gun assembled from parts on the internet, which the Supreme Court heard oral arguments about on October 7th.
Andy Newman of the New York Times is reporting that “The handwritten manifesto found on the person of the man detained in Altoona criticized health care companies for putting profits above care, according to a senior law enforcement official.”
This is a strange story, which does not mean it isn’t true. Just that the bits and pieces of it that we do know so far do not neatly fit together. There was this massive manhunt underway, but an “elderly” customer at McDonald’s is the one to spot him? The cops found a backpack the shooter supposedly dumped that was full of Monopoly money in Central Park, but the guy kept the gun on him? Keeping the fake ID is even a bigger mistake, but just because someone has proven they know how to pull the trigger does not mean they know how to get away with it. Additionally, as Craig Calcaterra found in Mangione’s supposed Goodreads, he’s a fan of libertarian classics Atlas Shrugged and Infinite Jest, and Charlie Warzel described what is believed to be his Twitter account as a “replacement-level lex fridman listener.” If Mangione is the shooter, the popular conception of him does, uh, not seem to be accurate.
We, as a society, have made it too easy to hear what other people think.
— Max Berger (@maxberger.bsky.social) December 9, 2024 at 11:48 AM
seems like CEO shooter’s cousin is nino mangione, a super conservative republican member of the maryland house of delegates. msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual…
here’s a photo from nino’s campaign website (luigi appears to be back left in checkered shirt):
— Marisa Kabas (@marisakabas.bsky.social) December 9, 2024 at 12:44 PM
It’s also possible that this is the wrong guy because the cops are not good at solving murders. Until we know a lot more than we do right now, we need to be careful. The discourse around this has been pretty astonishing to watch unfold, as it feels like a real cultural moment rooted in the deep injustice that is the American healthcare system and is so much larger than just another story about someone getting shot in America, but I would just like to remind everyone that it is still important to not get fired, not get placed on the FBI’s watchlist, and hold your horses before jumping to conclusions in an event that keeps looking like what a lot of folks think it is, but not quite.