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Suspected UnitedHealthcare CEO shooter Luigi Mangione was expected to appear in court Fri., Feb. 21, to enter a plea on federal murder and terror charges. Mangione, who allegedly shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan last December, had already pleaded not guilty to New York state charges related to the case.
Amid widespread dissatisfaction with the healthcare and health insurance industries, Mangione’s arrest and the accusations he now faces made him a controversial folk hero online. If he did gun down the CEO on a New York sidewalk in broad daylight, his possible motive to commit murder could have been to send a signal that the public was fed up with rising costs, denied claims, and unfair health insurance policies. On the surface, what’s known about Mangione’s possible motive suggests that’s the case. A deeper dive, however, presents a more complicated picture.
Mangione’s 2023 injury
All discussions of motive for Luigi Mangione have to start with his back pain. Anyone who has lived with it can tell you how debilitating it can be. There’s no relief. You feel it constantly, such that your back starts to numb to ease the pain. You’re prevented from not just… pic.twitter.com/pxpdaj0Ypx
— Joshua Rainer (@JoshRainerGold) December 9, 2024
Reportedly, one significant piece of evidence found in Mangione’s possession when he was arrested was a notebook, in which authorities say there was a three-page “claim of responsibility.” In it, Mangione writes of a 2023 back injury, according to CNN, suggesting Mangione’s experience with healthcare and health insurance companies could have motivated him to kill Thompson.
“We’re learning that he did possibly suffer an accident that caused him to visit the emergency room back on July 4, 2023,” NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny said early in the investigation, according to CBS News.
Referring to Mangione’s back injury, his former roommate in Hawaii, R.J. Martin, told CNN, “It was really traumatic and difficult, you know, when you’re in your early twenties and you can’t, you know, do some basic things.”
In his writing, Kenny later added, “he was discussing the difficulty of sustaining that injury. So, we’re looking into whether or not the insurance industry either denied a claim from him or didn’t help him out to the fullest extent.”
An obsession with Ted Kaczynski
Luigi Mangione reviewed the Unabomber manifesto “violence is necessary to survive”: pic.twitter.com/AbexHakZQY
— Mike Wendling (@mwendling) December 9, 2024
Since Mangione’s arrest, investigators have also found evidence that Mangione admired Ted Kaczynski, sometimes called the Unabomber, who in 1996 pleaded guilty to sending homemade bombs in the mail from 1978 through 1995, killing three and injuring two dozen people. Kaczynski laid out his motive for the attacks in an anti-technology manifesto published anonymously in The New York Times before his arrest.
After Thompson’s murder and Mangione’s arrest, investigators uncovered an online review Mangione wrote of Kaczynski’s manifesto, and he also reportedly defended the Unabomber in a Reddit thread. In the manifesto review, Mangione reportedly wrote, “It’s easy to quickly and thoughtless[ly] write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies.”
Mangione’s review added, “But it’s simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out.” Mangione called the Unabomber a violent individual who was rightfully imprisoned for maiming innocent people. But he wrote, “While these actions tend to be characterized as those of a crazy Luddite, however, they are more accurately seen as those of an extreme political revolutionary.”
Meanwhile, on Reddit, Mangione called Kaczynski’s crimes “war and revolution” and added the Unabomber had the courage “to recognize that peaceful protest has gotten us absolutely nowhere.” He also called anyone who says “violence never solves anything” a “coward or predator,” according to CNN.
“An anti-corporatist mentality”
CNN reports that a two-page document from Luigi Mangione was found, which included the lines:
“These parasites had it coming. I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done.” pic.twitter.com/v5d07Q6hRs
— Pop Base (@PopBase) December 9, 2024
Health problems and an interest in Kaczynski aside, Mangione’s alleged crime could have been, more than anything, a statement against corporate greed, according to TMZ’s Harvey Levin, speaking on NewsNation’s Banfield. Presuming Mangione’s guilt, Levin said, “Everyone thinks this assassination was about health insurance, that Luigi had a particular grievance about health insurance. It’s not true. Luigi’s gripe was over corporate greed. Health insurance was a symbol of it.”
Similarly, New York Deputy Commissioner for Intelligence and Counterterrorism Rebecca Weiner added, “When you start using rhetoric like ‘These parasites had it coming,’” as she said Mangione did in his “claim of responsibility” writings, “you are referencing an anti-corporatist mentality that goes beyond an individual grievance toward a particular injury he may have suffered.”