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On the fifth of December 2024, a leading publication published the front-page story “Insurance CEO Gunned Down 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 daytime killing was truly chilling and disturbing. But many Americans reacted differently: for those who had been denied health insurance or struggled with medical bills, the news felt like a release. 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 designed to increase earnings on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a good-looking, 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 the district attorney seeking the death penalty. So who is Mangione? And what drove the accused offense? These are the issues John H Richardson attempts to answer in an investigation that explores broader themes, too.

The Making of a Subject

A writer for a major publication, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the groups that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, producing articles about people “cursed with realistic fears 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 295 books on Goodreads”. Their subject matter covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own personal growth, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson analyzes his communications with online personalities and authors as well as his many posts on social media. These primary sources, intended to depict a picture of Mangione, instead present him as an unclear character. Richardson tries to justify this by proposing that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Throughout the book, Richardson attempts to cast his subject in symbolic roles.

Mangione is profoundly worried about the world around him, one where ‘change is rapid 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”, “refuse” and “depose”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the terms occasionally employed by health insurance companies to reject claims. He looks at the evidence Mangione suffered from a long-term spinal issue, which might have provided motive for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what significance there is seems to lie in Mangione’s existential anxiety about the world around him, one where “everything is accelerating whether we like it or not, sliding faster and faster to the edge”; a world where the consensus seems to be that AI is going to eventually either take control, or destroy us, or both.

Missing Pieces

Conspicuous by their absence from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson made requests, but did not anticipate time with Mangione himself. And his family stated explicitly that they had chosen not to talk to the media in prior to the trial. Another flashing-yellow omission is any detailed data about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from 2021 to 2023, company earnings rose significantly.

Unclear Conclusions

By the conclusion, the audience has little insight of Mangione’s personality or what could have driven his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s obvious sympathy for him gives the reader the disturbing feeling of having been exposed to a subtle approval of an targeted killing. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson delivers his fairytale assessment: “We’ve entered a era of stories, the mad king, the monster in the maze and the emperor without clothes.” In that tale “outlaw heroes come with a appealing vow … They arrive in times of social turmoil, when the people are suffering and nothing makes sense anymore.”

One thing is certain: as Mangione’s defence team works to have accusations that could lead to the death penalty thrown out, any mention of myths, folk heroes, champions or villains will not be admissible as evidence in support for this attractive individual with a “features reminiscent of classical art” soon to be on trial for murder.