# Luigi Mangione

Luigi Nicholas Mangione (/luˈiːdʒi ˌmændʒiˈoʊni/ loo-EE-jee MAN-jee-OH-nee; born May 6, 1998) is an American man who has been identified as the suspect in the killing of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare.
Thompson was shot to death in New York City on December 4, 2024. Following a nationwide manhunt, Mangione was arrested and arraigned in Altoona, Pennsylvania five days after the shooting. After waiving extradition in Pennsylvania, he appeared in a federal court in New York City. Mangione was arraigned in the New York Supreme Court and pleaded not guilty to his state charges. Mangione has been indicted on eleven state charges and faces four federal charges. The charges against him include first-degree murder, murder in furtherance of terrorism, criminal possession of a weapon, and stalking. The federal murder by firearm charge makes Mangione eligible for the death penalty if convicted.
Since his arrest, Mangione has been celebrated as a folk hero by supporters online. Opinion polls have found that a plurality of American adult respondents held a negative view toward Mangione, while younger and left-leaning respondents are more likely than others to support him. The support Mangione has generated has been connected to negative views of the health insurance industry and its claim denial practices. The Thompson case has spurred growing calls for health insurance reform.

## Early life, education, and career

Luigi Nicholas Mangione was born in Towson, Maryland on May 6, 1998 to Kathleen (née Zannino) and Louis Mangione, a Baltimore-area couple of Italian descent. His paternal grandfather, Nicholas Mangione, was a successful Baltimore businessman who had 10 children (five sons and five daughters) and 37 grandchildren; one of his grandchildren is Nino Mangione, a member of the Maryland House of Delegates. After Nicholas Mangione's death, his children took over his businesses. The extended Mangione family owns Hayfields Country Club, Turf Valley Resort, Lorien Health Services, the WCBM radio station, and the Mangione Family Foundation.
Mangione attended Gilman School, an all-boys private secondary school in Baltimore, where he graduated as valedictorian in 2016. In 2020, Mangione graduated cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania. He received a Bachelor of Science in Engineering (BSE) in computer engineering and a Master of Science in Engineering (MSE) in computer and information science. His undergraduate studies included a minor in mathematics, and his graduate curriculum was concentrated in artificial intelligence. While an undergraduate student, he was a UI programming intern with Firaxis Games between May 2016 and August 2017.
From November 2020 to sometime in 2023, Mangione worked as a data engineer for TrueCar. Prior to his arrest, his last known residence was in Honolulu, Hawaii.

## Alleged role in the killing of Brian Thompson
### Background

Brian Thompson, CEO of the American health insurance company UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on December 4, 2024. The shooting occurred early in the morning outside an entrance to the New York Hilton Midtown hotel. Thompson was in the city to attend an annual investors' meeting for UnitedHealthcare's parent company UnitedHealth Group. The suspect, initially described as a white man wearing a mask, fled the scene.
The gunman was masked and had come to New York via a bus from Atlanta. The words "delay", "deny", and "depose" were written on the spent cases and an ejected cartridge. The three words are similar to the phrase "delay, deny, defend", a well-known phrase in the insurance industry alluding to insurance companies' efforts to not pay out claims. The suspect possibly left the city, being seen at a bus terminal afterward. Anger erupted on social media platforms at Thompson, UnitedHealth, and the health insurance system generally, with many praising the killing.

### Arrest

On December 9, 2024, local police arrested Mangione at a McDonald's restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, responding to a call from an employee made in response to a customer who noticed similarities between Mangione's appearance and images of Thompson's alleged killer released by the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Altoona is about 280 miles (450 km) west of New York City. The police reported that Mangione was "visibly shaken" when they asked him if he had recently visited New York City.
Upon searching Mangione, police said they found a 3D-printed gun and a 3D-printed suppressor that were similar to the weapons used in the shooting. Police stated that they also found a fake driver's license from New Jersey bearing the name "Mark Rosario". The same license was used by a man who checked into a Manhattan hostel in late November. Shell casings found at the crime scene reportedly matched the gun found on Mangione. The police also said that when they arrested Mangione, they found a 262-word handwritten document partly about the American healthcare system. The document was characterized by multiple media outlets as a manifesto. Mangione had no prior criminal record.

### State and federal charges

On November 9, 2024, Mangione was charged in Blair County, Pennsylvania with carrying a gun without a license, forgery, falsely identifying himself to the authorities, and possessing "instruments of crime". He was arraigned at approximately 6 p.m. at the Blair County Courthouse on firearms charges, was questioned by members of the NYPD, and was denied bail. As he was led into the courthouse, Mangione shouted to the gathered cameras that the news media coverage of the event was "completely out of touch" and "an insult to the intelligence of the American people and their lived experience".
Later that day, Mangione was charged in Manhattan with second-degree murder, three counts of illegal weapons possession, and forgery and was sent to the State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon, a close-security state correctional facility in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania.
On December 17, 2024, Mangione was indicted on eleven New York state charges by the Manhattan district attorney's office.
| Count | Charge | N.Y. Penal Law Citation | Remarks |
| 1 | Murder in the first degree | s. 125.27(1)(a)(xiii) and (b) | Murder in furtherance of an act of terrorism as defined under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001 |
| 2 | Murder in the second degree as a crime of terrorism | ss. 125.25(1) and 490.25 | A crime of terrorism under the Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001, in the form of murder |
| 3 | Murder in the second degree | s. 125.25(1) | Murder as such – intentional killing |
| 4 | Criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree | s. 265.03(1)(b) | Possession of a loaded firearm with intent to use the same unlawfully against another |
| 5 | Criminal possession of a weapon in the second degree | s. 265.03(3) | Unlicensed carrying of a loaded firearm |
| 6 | Criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree | s. 265.02(7) | Possession of an "assault weapon" under the gun laws in New York |
| 7 | Criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree | s. 265.02(2) | Firearm silencer |
| 8 | Criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree | s. 265.02(8) | Glock magazine |
| 9 | Criminal possession of a weapon in the third degree | s. 265.02(8) | Magpul magazine |
| 10 | Criminal possession of a weapon in the fourth degree | s. 265.01(9) | 3D-printed gun |
| 11 | Criminal possession of a forged instrument in the second degree | s. 170.25 | Fake ID |
On December 19, 2024, Mangione was charged with four federal crimes.
| Count | Charge | 18 U.S.C. Citation | Remarks |
| 1 | Stalking | ss. 2261A(1)(A) and 22661(b)(1) | Interstate via traveling from Georgia to New York |
| 2 | Stalking | ss. 2261A(2)(A) and 22661(b)(1) | Interstate via use of a cellphone and the Internet |
| 3 | Murder through use of a firearm | s. 924(j) | Capital offense (see paragraph below) |
| 4 | Firearms offense | s. 924(c)(1)(A)(i), (ii), (iii) and (c)(1)(B)(ii) | |
Possible remedies for murder through use of a firearm (the third federal charge) include the death penalty. On January 30, 2025, President Donald Trump signed an executive order which requires the death penalty to be used wherever possible, meaning that federal prosecutors will likely pursue it in Mangione's case.
Mangione was extradited to New York and held at the Metropolitan Detention Center, Brooklyn, under Federal Register Number 52503-511. On December 23, Mangione was arraigned in the New York Supreme Court and pleaded not guilty to his state charges.

### Defense

Mangione's Pennsylvania attorney Thomas Dickey said that Mangione would plead not guilty to all the charges against him. Mangione hired Karen Friedman Agnifilo, former prosecutor at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and former legal analyst with CNN, as his New York case defense attorney on December 13.
On December 13, crowdfunding platform GoFundMe removed fundraisers created in support of Mangione due to the site's Terms of service prohibiting fundraisers for the legal defense of violent crimes. A GiveSendGo fundraiser has remained live and as of March 2025, it has raised more than US$720,000. Donors have cited the "politicization" of the case, the potential use of the death penalty, due process, and frustrations with the healthcare system as reasons for their donations. Karen Friedman Agnifilo told Newsweek that Mangione is "aware of the fund and very much appreciates the outpouring of support" and "plans on utilizing it to fight all three of the unprecedented cases against him". On February 14, 2025, Mangione's New York defense team launched a website dedicated to providing updates on his prosecutions due to the "extraordinary volume of inquiries and outpouring of support".

## Personal life

Mangione has written that he suffers from spondylolisthesis and Lyme disease. He allegedly underwent a spinal fusion surgery in July 2023. Police stated that Mangione was not insured by UnitedHealthcare.
In the summer of 2024, Mangione stopped posting on social media. On November 18, 2024, his mother reported him missing to the San Francisco Police Department; she stated that the family had not heard from him since July, shortly after a trip to East and Southeast Asia. Mangione's mother contacted the San Francisco Police Department because she believed that Mangione lived in San Francisco and still worked for TrueCar, which had an office there.

## Views
### Handwritten letter

Upon Mangione's arrest, police said they found in his possession a 262-word handwritten document, which many media outlets characterized as a "manifesto", that, according to NYPD commissioner Jessica Tisch, spoke to Mangione's "motivation and mindset". Excerpts of the document included, "I do apologize for any strife or trauma, but it had to be done" and "These parasites had it coming". The document further expressed disdain for corporate greed and power. It also said that the U.S. had the most high-priced healthcare system in the world and corporate profits continued to rise while the life expectancy of Americans did not. The document also listed Michael Moore and Elisabeth Rosenthal as those who had "illuminated the corruption and greed" of the healthcare/health insurance industry, but noted that the "problems simply remained."
Ken Klippenstein is the only journalist to publish what was alleged to be the entire document police said was found on Mangione. However, the Complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney's office states "The Feds Letter also stated: 'P.S. you can check serial numbers to verify this is all self-funded. My own ATM withdrawals.'" which is not shown in the document that was released by Klippenstein.

### Analysis of social media presence

Several news outlets analyzed Mangione's social media in the wake of his arrest and drew conclusions on his social, political, and religious views. His posts were found to express concerns over the implications of pornography, DEI programs, falling fertility rates, wokeism, secularization, and the decline of Christianity, and he promoted traditionalist ideas. He leans in favor of religion in general on evolutionary grounds, opposing New Atheism while expressing interest in Japan's indigenous religion, Shintoism. Mangione showed a skeptical attitude toward both Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Multiple sources have reported that he followed Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as well as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others, labeling him as politically uncategorized and "anti-system".
According to Business Insider, Mangione's since-deleted social media posts supported the idea that "his worldview was influenced by reactionary right-wing thinkers". Time magazine said it could not discern whether his political views were left- or right-wing. The Spectator wrote that his worldview "wasn't pinned to a standard left-right axis". Jacobin stated that he held "a hodgepodge of views and political beliefs that don't neatly map onto any one category on the political spectrum".
Mangione posted a Goodreads review of "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski's Industrial Society and Its Future, describing Kaczynski as "rightfully imprisoned" and criticizing his use of violence against innocent individuals. The review was quoted as writing, "Clearly written by a mathematics prodigy. Reads like a series of lemmas on the question of 21st century quality of life", and "It's easy to quickly and thoughtless write this off as the manifesto of a lunatic, in order to avoid facing some of the uncomfortable problems it identifies [...] but it's simply impossible to ignore how prescient many of his predictions about modern society turned out." The review, which gave the manifesto four out of five stars, also contained a quote that the reviewer claimed to have found online. The quote contained the lines "'Violence never solved anything' is a statement uttered by cowards and predators," and "When all other forms of communication fail, violence is necessary to survive".
Journalist Robert Evans described Mangione as being associated with a loosely-defined online subculture called the "gray tribe" or the "rationalist movement", whose members he described as "self-consciously intellectual and open-minded, [and] preoccupied with learning how to overcome their own mental biases. They're deliberately eclectic in their information diet, invoking esoteric ideas from many different fields, [and are] often systems thinkers, who take pride in attributing social problems not to individual evil but to complex interplays of incentives and institutions".

## Public image

Following the Thompson shooting, the suspected shooter was celebrated as a folk hero by many social media users. Look-alike contests have been held in New York City's Washington Square Park and at the University of Florida.
After Mangione's arrest, he received support and praise on social media and gained over 460,000 followers after his identification on Twitter. According to the Network Contagion Research Institute, variations of "#FreeLuigi" have been shared over 50,000 times on Twitter after his arrest. The Altoona McDonald's where Mangione was identified by an employee and subsequently arrested was flooded with negative reviews (known as "review bombing"), many describing the restaurant as having rats. Mangione's fellow inmates at SCI Huntingdon in Pennsylvania were heard shouting "Free Luigi" from their cells during a live broadcast interview with NewsNation. Groups of people gathered outside the courthouses to show their support for Mangione during his court hearings.
The support Mangione has generated has been connected to the public's often negative view of the health insurance industry and what many consider to be unfair claim denial practices that inflict harm. The case has spurred growing calls for health insurance reform. A December 2024 NORC at the University of Chicago poll found that a majority of American adults believe that health insurance company denials for health care coverage and/or profits made by those companies share a moderate amount or a great deal of responsibility for Thompson's death.
Street art, graffiti, and signs in support of Mangione appeared on buildings, streets, highways, and other places. A billboard with the words "Free Luigi" was seen in Riverside County, California, and a mural portraying Mangione as the Nintendo character Luigi was seen in Seattle.
* "Deny Defend Depose" graffiti in New York City
* "Deny Defend Depose" graffiti in Miami Beach, Florida
* "Luigi Mangione hero of the people" graffiti in Marseille, France
Images and memes of Mangione depicted as a Roman Catholic saint have circulated online. Items and merchandise in support of Mangione were posted on Etsy, Amazon, and other e-commerce sites before being removed. Some merchandise were reportedly the subject of copyright and DMCA takedown requests from an entity purporting to be UnitedHealth Group Inc. Other social media users linked Mangione's jail commissary account soliciting donations for "snacks, sodas, an iPad, etc." The Independent reported that, during his time in custody in Pennsylvania, Mangione had received over 100 pieces of mail.
On February 14, 2025, Mangione thanked the public for their support in his first official statement since arrest, stating that "the support has transcended political, racial, and even class divisions".

### Perp walk

After being transported from Pennsylvania to New York on December 19, Mangione received a highly publicized perp walk, escorted by a large number of heavily armed law enforcement officials and Mayor of New York City Eric Adams. Stanford Law School professor Robert Weisberg said that "The FBI and NYDA could have transported Mangione discreetly, but they opted for a public show," and some legal experts stated that the perp walk was a "blatant and unnecessary attempt at self-promotion." Policy director for the Justice Collaboratory at Yale Law School Jorge Camacho said that, "In a case like Mangione's, where the suspect has garnered some sympathy and applause from people frustrated with greedy health-care insurance companies, the tactic can backfire".
Some social media users shared memes and compared Mangione's perp walk to the arrest of Jesus, perp walk scenes from the Superman movies, and Renaissance paintings. On December 23 during Mangione's New York court hearing where he pled not guilty to the state charges, his defense attorney Karen Friedman Agnifilo said that Mangione might not receive a fair trial due to publicity from law enforcement presentations of him, blaming Mayor of New York City Eric Adams for the "unnecessary" and "utterly political" perp walk. She added, "The mayor should know more than anyone about the presumption of innocence," suggesting Adams was attempting to distract from the charges he himself is facing.

### Opinion polls

An Economist/YouGov poll conducted from December 15 to 17 surveying 1,553 U.S. adult citizens found that 43% of American citizens had a "somewhat unfavorable" or "very unfavorable" view of Mangione, while 21% had a "somewhat favorable" or "very favorable" view of him. 37% were unsure. Mangione received the most support from citizens aged 18–29, who viewed him favorably by a 39%–29% margin, and very liberal citizens, who viewed him favorably by a 47%–31% margin. Mangione was viewed least favorably by citizens aged 65 and older (65%–5% unfavorable) and very conservative citizens (62%–8% unfavorable).
The Center for Strategic Politics ran an online poll with 455 American adults on December 11 and found that "61% of respondents said they have a strong or somewhat negative perception of Mangione", 19% had a positive or somewhat positive view, and 21% did not know. Opinions on Mangione vary "dramatically" by age, with respondents under 45 holding a more positive view of him than those over 45. Additionally, they indicated that men were more likely to support Mangione than women, and Black and Hispanic respondents were more likely to support him than White respondents. The poll also found that young Americans view Mangione "far more favorably" than they viewed Thompson and UnitedHealthcare.
A poll of 6,000 U.S. adults was conducted by CloudResearch on December 19, using artificial intelligence (AI). The poll found that roughly one in four respondents were sympathetic to Mangione.

### Physical appearance

Mangione has been noted for his perceived physical attractiveness, and Kara Alaimo, writing for Time, stated that he has become "somewhat of an online sex symbol".
After Mangione's Manhattan courtroom appearance on December 23, Maison Margiela trended on Twitter and Threads after social media users misidentified the brand of the burgundy sweater that Mangione was wearing. Users later determined that he was wearing a "washable Merino crewneck sweater" from Nordstrom, which social media users nicknamed 'Mangione Merino', quickly selling out. After his February 2025 court appearance, photographs of Mangione's shackled bare ankles in brown loafers went viral, with the search terms "luigi mangione loafers" and "luigi mangione ankles" spiking by 1,400% and 500% respectively on Google. A criminal justice professor, speaking about Mangione's online popularity, told Women's Wear Daily that "What we see with Mangione is he has quickly become a folk hero and a fashion folk hero."

### In popular culture

Mangione was referenced in various season 50 sketches of the late-night show Saturday Night Live. He was mentioned in the Weekend Update segments with anchors Colin Jost and Michael Che; in his opening monologue, comedian Chris Rock joked about the capture of Mangione; in another sketch, Nancy Grace (played by Sarah Sherman) expressed disbelief at the online support of Mangione and interviews a regular Pennsylvania McDonald's customer (played by Kenan Thompson) and an alleged Mangione look-alike (played by Emil Wakim).