Luigi Mangione, 26, was charged Monday in connection with the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
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Authorities have not provided a motive, but the Maryland native was found with a ghost gun and a handwritten document that indicated “ill will toward corporate America,” police said.
Mangione, who holds a degree in computer science, belongs to a prominent business family in Maryland. He was last known to be living in Hawaii. Online, he frequently participated in discussions on philosophy, psychology and evolutionary biology. Some who knew him recalled his kindness; others described him as smart and well liked.
Now he is in custody facing charges including murder.
Here’s what we know about him.
He belongs to a prominent business family from Maryland
Mangione was born and raised in Maryland, part of a well-known family whose interests span the Baltimore area.
His grandfather, Nicholas “Nick” Mangione Sr., who died in 2008, was a businessman and real estate developer. He and his wife, Mary, acquired Turf Valley Country Club in Ellicott City, Maryland, in 1978. About 20 years later, they founded Hayfields Country Club in Cockeysville, Maryland. Mary served on the board of the Baltimore Opera and as president of the Catholic Daughters of the Americas, a women’s organization, her 2023 obituary said. Mangione’s parents own a home at the Hayfields Country Club, records indicate.
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The Mangione family owns the Baltimore-based radio station WCBM-AM and an assisted-living facility, Lorien Health Services in Ellicott City.
His cousin Nino Mangione serves in the Maryland House of Delegates. In a statement Nino Mangione posted online late Monday, the family said they were “shocked and devastated by Luigi’s arrest.”
He graduated from the Gilman School as a valedictorian
Mangione attended the all-boys Gilman School in Baltimore. He graduated high school in 2016 as a valedictorian, and former classmates and teachers recalled him as a well-liked, optimistic student.
“He was a good spirit,” a former teacher, speaking on the condition of anonymity to avoid being publicly associated with Mangione, told The Washington Post. “He was very bright, vivacious and full of life. … I’m gut-punched because it just doesn’t fit the boy that I knew those years ago.”
Mangione was a leader in a student robotics club and helped design a robot that advanced to the Maryland state finals.
In the 2016 high school yearbook, reviewed by The Post, Mangione wrote that he went from hating being sent to the school in the sixth grade to it becoming the “the best thing that’s ever happened” to him. Mangione spoke of his cohort’s “fearlessness to explore new things and the obvious ability to excel” in his valedictory speech.
He later attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity from 2017 to 2020, said Ron Ransom, the fraternity’s executive director. A LinkedIn account with his name and photo said he graduated from the university with a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in computer science in 2020. He founded a video game development club during his time at the school, the account said.
He once served as a counsellor at Stanford University
Between May and September of 2019, Mangione worked as a head counsellor at a Stanford University precollegiate studies program, according to a university representative. Mangione led a class on artificial intelligence and organized volleyball games and bonding activities, said a fellow counsellor who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he didn’t want to be associated with Mangione.
More recently, Mangione worked for the online car marketplace TrueCar until sometime last year, a company spokesperson said. According to the LinkedIn account, Mangione started working for the company as a data engineer in 2020, helping it expand its sources for pricing and loan-payment data.
He also interned at Firaxis Games, a Maryland-based studio known for its Civilization series of strategy games.
His X profile features an X-ray of four screws in a spine
A profile on the social media platform X that appears to belong to Mangione prominently displays an image of an X-ray showing four screws into a spine. The X-ray is in the middle of a triptych that includes a Pokémon character and a shirtless image of a man resembling Mangione.
The X-ray shows a “lumbar spine with posterior spinal instrumentation, possible fusion” – a procedure that involves screws or rods to stabilize the spine, said Zeeshan Sardar, an associate professor of orthopedic surgery at Columbia University Medical Center. Such a procedure is commonly performed to treat spondylolisthesis, a condition in which a vertebra shifts forward, as well as nerve compression or sciatica when significant bone removal is required.
On the website Goodreads, an unconfirmed account with Mangione’s name had listed books related to back procedures in recent years. Sarah Nehemiah, a producer and researcher who met Mangione when he lived at a Hawaii co-living space in 2022, said it was her understanding that he had a lifelong back injury.
His social media posts indicate a wide range of interests and affinity for books. In April, the X account replied to a post about the destructive potential of technology quoting from the 1932 dystopian novel “Brave New World,” in which human rights are determined by a rigid hierarchy and an all-powerful state imposes control through drugs and technology.
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin,” the quote reads.
In early 2023, Mangione started a book club in Hawaii, Nehemiah said. “Several members left due to discomfort in his book choices. The Unabomber Manifesto is what really pushed people over the edge.”
He was found at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania
A sprawling five-day manhunt led to Mangione’s arrest at a McDonald’s in Pennsylvania. He was recognized by an employee who contacted authorities early Monday.
Police in Altoona, a small city about 290 miles west of the Hilton where Thompson was killed, found Mangione in a blue medical mask with a laptop and backpack at a table toward the back of the restaurant. When the officers asked whether he had been to New York recently, Mangione “started to shake,” police said.
With him was a three-page handwritten document expressing ill will toward corporate America, police said. That document spoke to his “motivation and mindset,” Jessica Tisch, the New York City police commissioner, said at a news briefing. Officials did not elaborate.
Thompson, the chief executive of UnitedHealthcare, was fatally shot on Wednesday outside a Hilton hotel in Manhattan, in a shocking act of violence in one of New York’s busiest areas.