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. Authorities say that when Mangione was apprehended, he was carrying a 3D-printed pistol and a 3D-printed suppressor consistent with those used in the attack; a short handwritten letter criticizing the American healthcare system; an American passport; and multiple fraudulent IDs, including one with the same name used to check into a hostel on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. 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. United States Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty in Mangione's federal case.
Mangione has been described as the "most debated and polarizing murder suspect in recent history." Since his arrest, he has been celebrated as a folk hero by supporters online. Opinion polls have found that American adult respondents are more likely than not to hold a negative view toward Mangione, with younger and left-leaning respondents being more likely than others to support him. The support Mangione has generated has been connected to negative opinions of the health insurance industry and claim denial practices. The Thompson case has spurred growing calls for health insurance reform.
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 with 10 children (five sons and five daughters) and 37 grandchildren; one of his grandchildren is Nino Mangione, a Maryland House of Delegates member. 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 has two older sisters.
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 concentrated on artificial intelligence. While an undergraduate student, he was a UI programming intern with Firaxis Games between May 2016 and August 2017, where he worked on the video game Civilization VI.
From November 2020 to sometime in 2023, Mangione worked remotely as a data engineer for TrueCar.
Brian Thompson, CEO of the American health insurance company UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed in Midtown Manhattan on December 4, 2024. The shooting occurred early in the morning outside an entrance to the New York Hilton Midtown hotel and was captured on video. Thompson was shot in the leg and the back. 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 "delay, deny, defend", a well-known phrase in the insurance industry alluding to insurance companies' efforts to avoid paying claims. The suspect was seen at a bus terminal after the killing.
On December 9, 2024, local police arrested Mangione at a McDonald's restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. The police responded to a call from an employee made after a customer 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." A man who checked into a Manhattan hostel in late November used the same license. 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. Multiple media outlets characterized the document as a manifesto. Mangione had no prior criminal record.
On December 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 temporarily transferred to the State Correctional Institution at Huntingdon, a close-security state correctional facility in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania.
On December 17, 2024, the Manhattan District Attorney's office indicted Mangione on 11 New York state charges.
Mangione was extradited to New York City on December 19, 2024, and charged with four federal crimes. On December 23, he was arraigned in the New York Supreme Court and pleaded not guilty to his state charges.
He is being held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn under Federal Register Number 52503-511. He will remain at MDC Brooklyn until his trial.
Possible remedies for murder through the use of a firearm (the third federal charge) include the death penalty. During his second presidency, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that requires the death penalty to be used wherever possible. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced on April 1, 2025 that prosecutors would seek the death penalty in Mangione's federal case. The state charges carry a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
Mangione's Pennsylvania attorney, Thomas Dickey, said that Mangione would plead not guilty to all the charges against him. Mangione hired Karen Friedman Agnifilo, a 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 to support 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 April 2025, has raised more than US$830,000. 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."
Mangione resided at Surfbreak, a co-living space in Honolulu, Hawaii, from January to June 2022.
Mangione has written that he suffers from spondylolisthesis and Lyme disease. While he was living in Hawaii, his back pain worsened due to a surfing mishap, and he had expressed concerns to others about the pain. He reportedly underwent a spinal fusion surgery in July 2023 and wrote on social media that the surgery went well. Police have stated that UnitedHealthcare did not insure Mangione.
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 his backpacking 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.
Upon Mangione's arrest, police said they found in his possession a 262-word handwritten document, which many media outlets characterized as a "manifesto." The handwritten document spoke to Mangione's "motivation and mindset," according to NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch. Journalist Ken Klippenstein published a transcription of the document police said was found on Mangione. Police confirmed that the transcription was legitimate. The document reads:
The complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney's Southern District of New York calls the letter "The Feds Letter" because it is addressed "To the Feds." The complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney's office 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 released by Klippenstein.
After his arrest, several news outlets analyzed Mangione's social media to gather information about his social, political, and religious views. His posts were found to express concerns over the implications of pornography, diversity, equity, and inclusion (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."
Mangione's since-deleted social media posts supported the idea that "his worldview was influenced by reactionary right-wing thinkers," according to Business Insider. 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 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 the reviewer claimed to have found online. The quote included 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 associated Mangione with a loosely defined online subculture called the "gray tribe" or the "rationalist movement." Evans described its members 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."
After his arrest, Mangione received support and praise online and was celebrated as a folk hero and a modern-day Robin Hood. According to the Network Contagion Research Institute, "#FreeLuigi" variations have been shared over 50,000 times on Twitter after his arrest. 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.
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.
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 was reportedly the subject of copyright and DMCA takedown requests from an entity purporting to be UnitedHealth Group Inc. Different social media users linked Mangione's jail commissary account soliciting donations for "snacks, sodas, an iPad, etc." The Independent reported that Mangione had received over 100 pieces of mail during his time in custody in Pennsylvania.
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. Following the Thompson killing, anger erupted on social media platforms at Thompson, UnitedHealth, and the health insurance system generally, with many praising the killing. A December 2024 NORC at the University of Chicago poll found that most American adults believe that health insurance companies' 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. On February 14, 2025, Mangione thanked the public in his first official statement since his arrest, stating that "the support has transcended political, racial, and even class divisions."
After being transported from Pennsylvania to New York on December 19, Mangione received a highly publicized perp walk, escorted by many heavily armed law enforcement officials and Mayor of New York City Eric Adams. Stanford Law School professor Robert Weisberg said: "The FBI and NYDA could have transported Mangione discreetly, but they opted for a public show." 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: "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 that Adams was attempting to distract the public from the criminal charges he was facing at that time.
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. It 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 viewed Mangione "far more favorably" than they viewed Thompson and UnitedHealthcare.
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,' and quickly sold 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. Regarding Mangione's online popularity, criminologist Diana Rickard told Women's Wear Daily: "What we see with Mangione is he has quickly become a folk hero and a fashion folk hero."