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On December 5, 2024, a leading publication published the headline “Insurance CEO Gunned Down In Manhattan”. The article went on to state that Brian Thompson was “shot in the back in Midtown Manhattan by a killer who then calmly departed the scene”. The murder in broad daylight was indeed both cold and shocking. But many Americans had a different response: for those who had been denied health insurance or faced exorbitant healthcare costs, the news felt like a release. Online platforms erupted. One post read: “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 created to increase earnings on your health.”

Five days later, Luigi Mangione, a handsome, twenty-six-year-old University of Pennsylvania alumnus with a master’s in computer science, was apprehended at a fast-food restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania. He faces court proceedings on federal and state charges of murder, with the district attorney seeking the death penalty. So who is Mangione? And what drove the accused offense? These are the questions John H Richardson seeks to resolve in an investigation that delves into wider topics, too.

The Making of a Subject

A journalist for Esquire magazine, Richardson devoted considerable time to studying the groups that exist in the hidden parts of the internet, producing articles about people “plagued by genuine concerns about an apocalyptic future”. To reveal “the making” of his subject, Richardson first examines Mangione’s extensive reading. We learn that “[when] he was arrested, Luigi had a list of 295 books on a reading platform”. Their content covered climate change to masculinity, along with a “emphasis on his own self-improvement, both body and mind”. Furthermore, Richardson analyzes his communications with online personalities and authors as well as his many updates on digital networks. These primary sources, meant to paint a portrait of Mangione, instead present him as an unclear character. Richardson tries to justify this by suggesting that “Luigi’s mystery, in fact, is what gives him a little of that old deceiver’s charm”. Here, as elsewhere, 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 uses as a clue three words – “delay”, “refuse” and “remove”, etched on the bullets left behind at the crime scene. These are the phrases occasionally employed by medical insurers to deny coverage. He looks at the indication Mangione had a chronic back condition, which could have been a reason for an attack, but discovers no confirmation; instead, what significance there is seems to rest in Mangione’s philosophical dread about the world around him, one where “the pace is quickening whether we like it or not, moving rapidly to the edge”; a world where the general belief seems to be that AI is going to eventually either dominate, or destroy us, or both.

Missing Pieces

Notably missing from the book are interviews with the principal actors. Richardson made requests, but never expected time with Mangione himself. And his relatives stated explicitly that they had decided against speaking to the press in advance of the trial. Another glaring gap is any significant information about the victim, Thompson, though we learn that under his guidance, from the early 2020s, company earnings rose significantly.

Ambiguous Findings

By the conclusion, the audience has no clear understanding of Mangione’s character or what could have driven his accused actions. More troubling, Richardson’s apparent empathy for him gives the reader the uncomfortable impression of having been privy to a veiled endorsement of an assassination. In the book’s closing remarks, Richardson presents his mythical interpretation: “We’ve entered a time of fables, the insane ruler, the beast in the labyrinth and the naked leader.” In that fable “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 dismissed, any mention of fables, folk heroes, heroes or monsters will not be admissible as evidence in support for this attractive individual with a “jawline … and lips … out of a Caravaggio painting” soon to be on trial for murder.